Chris Whitty: tough Tier 3 Covid restrictions might not work

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The government’s Chief Medical Officer, Chris Whitty, has said that there is no guarantee Downing Street’s new “three-tier” lockdown strategy will halt the spread of coronavirus.

Speaking after the Prime Minister and the Chancellor at the Downing Street press conference on Monday evening, Whitty admitted that he is “not confident” that even the most severe, “Tier 3” restrictions will be effective by themselves, without additional measures also being put in place. The remarks were a startling revelation, casting doubts on the government’s new strategy for England on the same day that it has been unveiled.

Whitty said: “I am not confident, and nor is anybody confident, that the Tier 3 proposals for (areas with) the highest rates – if you did the absolute base and nothing more – would be enough to get on top of it”.

He added: “that is why there is a lot of flexibility in the Tier 3 level for local authorities…so they can do significantly more than the absolute base because the base will not be sufficient”.

Boris Johnson stressed that he wants to avoid another national lockdown and that this course of action is not planned… for now. That added to the sense that a weary country is being put on a warning for worse to come. Oh great.

Whitty’s remarks followed the now-ritual chart show (not that kind, nothing to do with pop music), in which he expressed his concerns about the way that the UK’s epidemic is developing. After bombarding viewers with charts showing rising cases in the North East, the North West, and Yorkshire and the Humber, he warned that the resurgence of the virus “is now extending considerably beyond ” these areas alone.

Still, Whitty did his best to end on an “optimistic note”. He said: “I am extremely confident that when we go into the next winter we will do so in a remarkably better place than we do today.”

Next winter! The current winter hasn’t even started yet.

It was a day of tough new restrictions. The Prime Minister confirmed that Liverpool City Region would be entering into the highest tier of the new lockdown system – “very high” alert – from Wednesday.  The framework for the country’s most elaborate, and possibly most expensive, traffic light has finally been put into action.

Mutaz Ahmed has outlined the new “three-tier” lockdown restrictions in his report today for Reaction.

Johnson was on sombre form, adopting the serious tone that has become a feature of his Covid addresses since he emerged from hospital. The Prime Minister warned the country that there “are now more Covid patients in UK hospitals today than on 23 March when the whole country went into lockdown”. He added that he is “as convinced as I’ve ever been” that the British people will make the new restrictions work.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer also announced an extra support package for local councils put under the “very high” alert restrictions.

The package, no doubt intended as a sweetener for local politicians who are now being asked to introduce tougher rules, will consist of £500m to aid local “activities” such as enforcement and contact tracing and a further £1bn to help “protect vital services”. It will only slightly soften the bitterness of the blow to the affected regions, however.

One of the most interesting features of today’s events is the manner in which Number 10 has forced Chancellor Rishi Sunak – popular so far for giving away lots of other people’s money – to share the spotlight on a grim day. They are binding him in, making him play his part in delivering bad news. He was there alongside Boris at the press conference and he joined the PM earlier in the Commons.

Bruising session for the PM

The critics were out in force in the Commons, where Boris faced a grilling. The hallowed House turned into a chamber of horrors for a Prime Minister tasked with divulging a heavy dose of difficult news.

It began with a robust riposte from the Labour Leader, Sir Keir Starmer, who accused the PM of being “several steps behind the curve”, and of having “eroded public confidence” with a failed Test and Trace programme. He added that he is “now deeply sceptical that the government has actually got a plan to get control of this virus.” Yet it is likely that Sir Keir will call on his MPs to support the measures, however hesitantly.

At times, it was difficult to know whether the next blow to the government’s strategy would be delivered from the opposition benches or from behind the Prime Minister’s own back.

Philip Davies, MP for Shipley, urged the PM to allow “individuals to make better choices for themselves, their families, and their communities than the state can make for them”. In response, Johnson vacillated.

Meanwhile, from another wing of the Conservative Party, Tobias Ellwood, MP for Bournemouth East, asked Johnson whether he would review the pub curfew in areas with lower rates of transmission. The PM refused to do so.

The session also raised some very serious questions about the coherence of the government’s tiered Covid strategy. Labour MP for Halton, Derek Twigg, expressed his dismay that his constituency was being placed under the very high alert restrictions of Liverpool City Region, despite the fact that, he said, his constituency has lower infection rates than other parts of the country that are not in the top tier of the new lockdown system.

All in all, it was an almost masochistic display. Johnson withstood the type of bombardment that one would usually expect under an embattled minority government rather than one with a majority of eighty seats.

Tough crowd

Boris Johnson isn’t the only one in for a rough ride. President Donald Trump is pressing ahead with the controversial Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, despite the presidential election being just 22 days away. The nominee’s first confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee got underway in Washington D.C. on Monday.

The hearings, which will continue for the rest of the week, started off on a partisan note, setting the tone for what will be a divisive war of words in the committee room. The Republican senators heaped praise on Coney Barrett’s impeccable academic and conservative credentials.

But Democrat Senator Amy Klobuchar denounced the election-year confirmation proceedings as a “sham” and said that they were an insult to the memory of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who Coney Barrett is set to replace.

Buckle up, it’ll get messy.

Jack Dickens
News Editor