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Boris Johnson defends new Covid tiers as ‘essential’ amid growing backlash

April Roach
·4-min read
<p>Boris Johnson looks at samples at the Lateral Flow Testing Laboratory with Doctor Abbie Bown</p> (REUTERS)

Boris Johnson looks at samples at the Lateral Flow Testing Laboratory with Doctor Abbie Bown

(REUTERS)

Boris Johnson has defended the tiered coronavirus controls for England as “essential”, amid growing backlash from Tory MPs over the new curbs.

Many Conservative backbenchers reacted with fury after it emerged that 99 per cent of the country is to be placed in the top two tiers of restrictions when the lockdown lifts next week.

The Prime Minister acknowledged on Friday that many people felt “frustrated”, particularly if they were in an area with low infection rates.

“I know it is frustrating for people when they are in a high-tier area when there is very little incidence in their village or their area. I totally understand why people feel frustrated,” he said during a visit to a public health laboratory in Wiltshire.

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“The difficulty is that if you did it any other way, first of all you’d divide the country up into loads and loads of very complicated sub-divisions – there has got to be some simplicity and clarity in the way we do this.

“The second problem is that, alas, our experience is that when a high-incidence area is quite close to a low-incidence area, unless you beat the problem in the high-incidence area, the low-incidence area I’m afraid starts to catch up.”

It comes after people living in Tunbridge Wells expressed anger that the spa town would be placed under Tier 3 restrictions along with the rest of Kent, despite having a lower Covid-19 infection rate.

<p> Boris Johnson wears a mask as he visits the Public Health England site at Porton Down science park near Salisbury</p>AFP via Getty Images

Boris Johnson wears a mask as he visits the Public Health England site at Porton Down science park near Salisbury

AFP via Getty Images

Several Kent MPs wrote a letter to Health Secretary Matt Hancock calling for lockdown restrictions to be conducted on a borough or district level.

“At the time of writing there are 180 cases in Sheppey East alone,” wrote the MPs in the letter.

"This compares to just 137 in whole of Tunbridge Wells Borough, and just 3 in the rural south of Sevenoaks District.

“It is clear that the best way to tackle the pandemic, while also preventing unnecessary restrictions, is to approach this on, at the very most, a borough or district basis.”

Former cabinet minister Damian Green, Tory MP for Ashford in Kent, said there is a lot of anger on the Conservative benches.

“I know colleagues in Dorset are very annoyed and our colleagues in Lincolnshire are very annoyed and and quite a lot in other areas where the the incidence is very low,” he told Times Radio.

He said his constituents do not understand why, after successfully driving down infection rates in their area, they now face the toughest controls.

It comes after Robert Jenrick said areas in England could see their tier allocation change in mid-December if the rate of coronavirus reduces in their area.

He told Sky News: “There were a number of places which were quite finely balanced judgments where they were on the cusp of different tiers. Those are the places that are more likely to be in that position."

Meanwhile the Prime Minister said more mass coronavirus testing was in the pipeline and the supply of quick-result tests was not an issue, with the UK set to make its own within months.

During yesterday’s Downing Street press conference Mr Johnson indicated that mass testing could provide an “escape” from the toughest lockdown restrictions.

<p>Boris Johnson (C) views a PCR diagnostics machine with biomedical scientist Jodie Owen (R) and Director PHE Porton Down Alex Sienkiewicz (L)</p>AFP via Getty Images

Boris Johnson (C) views a PCR diagnostics machine with biomedical scientist Jodie Owen (R) and Director PHE Porton Down Alex Sienkiewicz (L)

AFP via Getty Images

Speaking on Friday during his visit to the Public Health England site at the Porton Down science park, Mr Johnson said: “We’ve got tens of, perhaps hundreds of, millions of lateral flow tests coming into this country. We already have a huge stockpile.

“The difficulty is not the supply at the moment, the difficulty is actually working with local government, local communities to get them doing it.

“Liverpool already showed the way. We’re now looking at Barnsley, Doncaster and other places around the country where they want to pull together and do it.

“Just now, in this lab here in PHE (Public Health England) in Porton Down, I’ve been talking to some scientists – we are seeing real progress on a UK-made lateral flow test.

“We’re now quite there yet but in the months ahead we’ll be making them in this country as well.

“So the supply I don’t think is going to be the problem. The issue is going to be getting everybody mobilised, to understand the potential advantages of mass community testing.”

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