‘Freedom lover’ Boris Johnson defends his lockdown roadmap as the quickest route back to normality

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Boris Johnson defended the pace of the lockdown today, saying it was the fastest safe way to freedom as he faced a rebellion by his own backbenchers.

The Prime Minister insisted he was a ‘libertarian’ as up to 60 Conservative lockdown sceptics threatened to vote against an extension of lockdown laws until the autumn.

MPs will vote this afternoon on plans to extend emergency powers to the end of September, despite the lockdown officially ending in June. 

Politicians in the Covid Recovery Group (CRG) blasted the ‘significant draconian powers’ and questioned the need for them to be in place if the UK has returned to relative normal.

But on a visit to a school in Greenford, north west London, this morning Mr Johnson defended his libertarian instincts. 

‘The libertarian in me is also trying to protect people’s fundamental right to life and their ability to live their lives normally and the only way really to restore that for everybody is for us to beat the disease, and the best path to freedom is down the cautious but irreversible road map that we’ve set out – that’s what the freedom-lover wants,’ he said.    

Any Tory rebellion is almost certain to fail to impede the legislation, with Labour planning to back it in this evening’s Commons vote.

But many are expected to show their dissatisfaction. CRG leader Mark Harper, who believes plans to ease the lockdown ‘could safely go more quickly’, told Sky News: ‘The biggest problem today is the extension of some very significant draconian powers in the Coronavirus Act which the Government doesn’t want to extend until June, it actually wants to extend all the way into October. 

‘And these are quite significant powers; they are powers, for example, for the police to detain people indefinitely and to continue having powers to shutdown events and so forth all the way through to October.

‘And I haven’t heard a single good answer about why the Government wishes to do that, given that the Prime Minister has said he wants to be out of all of our legal restrictions by June.’

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the success of the country’s vaccination programme means that restrictions can be ‘carefully’ replaced.

Opening a debate on the coronavirus regulations in the Commons this afternoon, he said: ‘Today we debate our road map to recovery and what is legally needed to take the cautious but irreversible path our of this pandemic. 

‘We propose to remove some of the emergency powers that the House put in place a year ago and set the steps of the road map that the Prime Minister has set out into law, replacing the existing national lockdown.’

He continued: ‘The success of this vaccination programme means that we are now able to carefully replace the short-term protection of restrictions we’ve all endured with the long-term protection provided by the vaccine.’

The legislation for restrictions over the coming months, as the Government sets out its road map for coming out of lockdown, will see some restrictions remain in place in England until at least June 21.

There are also question marks over summer holidays taking place after that date, amid a third wave of Covid infections in mainland Europe. 

But Conservative MP Steve Baker, deputy chairman of the CRG, said the vote was a ‘rare opportunity’ for MPs to ‘say no to a new way of life in a checkpoint society’.

‘I was glad to hear the Prime Minister reassure William Wragg MP at the Liaison Committee today that ‘anything that is redundant will go’ in relation to Coronavirus Act powers,’ the former minister said last night.

‘Draconian police powers under Schedule 21, which have a 100 per cent unlawful prosecution record, must be considered ‘redundant’ to say the very least.

‘I am seeking to table an amendment to the motion tomorrow asking ministers to suspend those powers.

‘I now hope the Government can support it.’ 

Government data up to March 23 shows 28,653,523 people have received a first vaccine dose, a rise of 325,650 on the previous day.

A further 98 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Wednesday, bringing the total by that measure to 126,382.

As of 9am on Wednesday, there had been a further 5,605 lab-confirmed cases in the UK, bringing the total to 4,312,908.

Sir Jeremy Farrar said he believes it is likely that the ban on international travel will need to continue.

The Wellcome Trust director said: ‘I think it will, until we can see progress in Europe with the epidemic coming down and vaccination rates going up in Europe.’

Asked about further testing of people coming in, he said lateral flow tests ‘don’t pick up every case but they do pick up the cases that are more infectious, and that is a very, very important public health intervention’.

On the issue of vaccine certificates and passports, he said he thinks they could cross the line ‘of individual freedoms and public health’, adding that ‘public health works when there is trust and when people want to do things that are their interests, and in the interests of their community, their families and their society’. 

Mr Hancock said this afternoon that the Government’s goal ‘is to be cautious yet irreversible’.

He told the Commons: ‘I must tell the House that whilst I am still by nature an optimist, there remain courses for caution.

‘Cases are rising in some areas and they are rising among those under 18. There are early signs of cases flattening among the working age population too.

‘I am delighted that uptake of the vaccine is now 95 per cent amongst over-60s and that protection against dying from the vaccine is around 85 per cent. Both of these figures, 95 per cent uptake and 85 per cent protection, both of these are higher than we could have hoped for.

‘But while we are confident that we have broken the link between the number of cases and the hospitalisations and deaths that previously inevitably followed, no vaccine is perfect and take-up isn’t 100 per cent.

‘So that link while broken is not yet severed. New variants also remain a risk because we don’t yet know with confidence the impact of the vaccine against the new variants.’