Boris Johnson was warned today by the leader of Tory backbench MPs that lockdown rules will look “silly” if Covid-19 cases continue to tumble.
Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the powerful 1922 committee of backbench Tory MPs, also criticised the five-week gaps between each stage of the Prime Minister’s roadmap out of lockdown.
He spoke out just days after England’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty warned that speeding up the easing of the restrictions would significantly increase the risk of a large surge in coronavirus and more deaths.
Ministers are insisting that the Government is sticking to its timetable for lifting lockdown, with the restrictions due to be largely gone by June 21.
But a growing number of Tory MPs are publicly challenging it as Covid-19 cases fall, as do hospitalisations and coronavirus deaths.
Sir Graham told talkRadio: “The danger is that the rules start to look silly.
“People can see what is happening with the figures...most people it’s a very long time since they knew anybody in their own circle who had been ill with Covid.
“These things start to become more and more apparent.”
He doubted that the re-opening of schools would lead to a “dreadful resurgence” of the disease.
“We should be seeing over the next week, two weeks, that the return to school has not impeded things, that we are still in a perfectly sustainable place, that the roll-out of the vaccinations is continuing at pace, and more and more people then are being protected,” he added.
“So the logic of having these five-week gaps between stages just really becomes harder and harder to justify.”
With nearly 23 million people having had a first dose Covid jab, some Tory MPs are calling for a far bigger easing of restrictions at the end of April.
But the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance has strongly defended the timetable and warned that without the five-week intervals between major relaxation of restrictions, the country would be “essentially flying blind” as there would not be enough time to fully see the impact of each step.
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Professor Whitty stressed that modelling suggested there will be another surge in the disease, leading to more hospitalisations and deaths, and the scale of it depended at least partly on the timing of lockdown easing.
Sir Graham also warned the Government against moving the goalposts in the timetable for lifting restrictions, arguing that hospitals were now not at risk of being ovewhelmed by a huge number of new coronavirus patients.
Ministers have warned that a new variant, which is more likely if disease levels are high, could see Covid cases spiral upwards quickly.
