Dominic Raab admits there is a ‘risk’ of a third wave of coronavirus

Dominic Raab today admitted there is a ‘risk’ of a third wave of coronavirus infections in the New Year if ministers ‘don’t get the balance right’ on tiered restrictions. 

The Foreign Secretary said the Government is ‘doing everything we can to avoid’ a third national shutdown as he defended the decision to plunge the majority of the nation into the top two tiers of curbs from December 2. 

Mr Raab said the aim of the tiers is to enable England to ‘come out of national lockdown and stay out of it’ as he stressed areas will be able to move down to a lower tier if the virus is in retreat.

He said the tiered system, the roll out of vaccines and greater mass-testing in the coming months would provide a ‘crucial bridge to that light at the end of the tunnel in the Spring’. 

The intervention came after Boris Johnson attempted to head off a Tory rebellion over the tier system. 

Parliament will vote on Tuesday on whether the new curbs should be rolled out from December 2 and the PM last night said there would be a further vote early next year on keeping the measures in place. 

He has also announced there will be a sunset clause of February 3 on the restrictions which means if MPs reject extending the measures they could end within nine weeks. 

Mr Johnson has also stressed that at the first review of the measures on December 16 he will move areas down a tier where there is ‘robust evidence’ that coronavirus is in sustained decline. 

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab today admitted there is a ‘risk’ of a third wave of coronavirus infections in the new year if ministers don’t ‘get the balance right’ on restrictions

Boris Johnson today urged Britain not to 'blow it' in the battle against Covid-19 by flouting the rules of his controversial new three-tier system of restrictions

Boris Johnson today urged Britain not to ‘blow it’ in the battle against Covid-19 by flouting the rules of his controversial new three-tier system of restrictions

Mr Johnson wrote to Tory MPs on Saturday night as he tried to assuage their fears amid reports as many as 100 Conservative backbenchers could revolt.  

He has urged people to stick with the curbs, warning against trying to ‘jump the fence now’ in a bid to reach ‘the sunlit upland pastures ahead’.

In an allusion to the war film The Great Escape, dramatising attempts to flee a German prisoner-of-war camp, Mr Johnson said that if we do ‘we will simply tangle ourselves in the last barbed wire, with disastrous consequences for the NHS’.

With the mass rollout of the first coronavirus vaccines now expected to start within weeks, Mr Johnson deployed a reference to another war, as he wrote in the Mail on Sunday: ‘We will inevitably win, because the armies of science are coming to our aid with all the morale-boosting bugle-blasting excitement of Wellington’s Prussian allies coming through the woods on the afternoon of Waterloo’.

Labour is expected to back the Government’s tiered system at Tuesday’s vote which means the rules are almost certain to clear the House of Commons even if there is a massive Conservative rebellion. 

Mr Raab defended the plans this morning, telling Sophy Ridge on Sky News: ‘The reality is we want to come out of national lockdown and stay out of it.

‘There is hope, there is light at the end of the tunnel with the prospect, subject to regulatory approval, of the vaccine being ready to be in place and distributed by the Spring which will allow a real step change back to life resembling normal.

‘The two things we need between now and then, this tiered approach so that we can target the virus where it is the most dangerous, we are starting with a more restrictive approach than previously with a localised approach, but that allows us to ease up when we are confident the virus is going down and stabilises. There is a review every two weeks.

‘The second thing is just the testing and what we have seen, we have had 12 million people tested and we have seen in Liverpool with community wide testing at-scale done more quickly, that really helps us bear down on the virus.

‘Those two things are the crucial bridge to that light at the end of the tunnel in the Spring.’

However, Mr Raab conceded that if the tiers do not work and infection rates increase then there could be a third wave of infections in January and February. 

He told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show: ‘Well, there is a risk of that if we don’t get the balance right but so far the R level is coming down, that is really important, and that is why we are starting with the tiered approach, more restrictive than some people would like than previously, but that allows us to ease up.’

A further 15,871 people have tested positive for Covid-19 in the UK today, marking a 20 per cent drop on the number of cases reported last Saturday

A further 15,871 people have tested positive for Covid-19 in the UK today, marking a 20 per cent drop on the number of cases reported last Saturday

Official figures have also revealed a further 479 coronavirus deaths - a 40 per cent rise on the 341 figure seen last Saturday

Official figures have also revealed a further 479 coronavirus deaths – a 40 per cent rise on the 341 figure seen last Saturday

Mr Raab said ministers are ‘doing everything we can to avoid’ a third national lockdown and people are ‘getting well ahead’ by talking about a potential third wave given that the second national lockdown is yet to end. 

Many Tory backbenchers are angry that 99 per cent of England’s population will be subject to the most stringent restrictions in tiers 2 and 3, which they argue will prove a disaster for the economy, and especially the battered hospitality industry in the crucial run-up to Christmas.

Last night, in an attempt to buy off the rebels ahead of Tuesday’s vote on the restrictions, Mr Johnson promised to give MPs another vote on January 27, and said that a ‘sunset clause’ would mean that the current rules would automatically expire on February 3. It means the tier system could end in just nine weeks.

Mr Johnson also reiterated that the current measures – which economic experts project will cost the UK £900 million a day – would be reviewed on December 16.

Rebel leader Steve Baker, of the Covid Recovery Group, said that he and fellow Tory backbenchers would ‘digest the content’ of Mr Johnson’s offer over the weekend, but called on Number 10 to publish a full analysis of the ‘health, economic and social impacts of Covid and the measures taken to suppress them’. 

Mr Baker said the rebels were ‘grateful for the constructive approach being taken by the Prime Minister’, but said: ‘The key thing MPs have been asking for before next week’s vote has not yet been published.

Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove had previously moved to quell the rebel Tories. 

He told the MPs, who include backbench 1922 Committee chairman Sir Graham Brady, that their failure to back Number 10’s policy on Tuesday – the day before tiers are set to be introduced – could lead to every hospital in England being ‘overrun’ with Covid-19 cases.

Backbench anger was fuelled by reports that senior officials plan to ban all indoor socialising until Easter, although in his Mail on Sunday article Mr Johnson said that ‘with the help of these scientific advances we hope to make progress – and to de-escalate – BEFORE Easter’.

Also writing in the newspaper, senior Tory MP Tom Tugendhat, the powerful chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, criticised the way the tiering regime was devised and implemented. 

In a stern warning, he said the isolation of lockdowns has made ‘some people question whether life is worth living’.

Elsewhere in this newspaper, fellow Tory MP Charles Walker said that the arrest of an elderly anti-lockdown protester outside Parliament last week demonstrated a ‘cavalier approach to the trashing of our constituents’ civil liberties’.

The tier system will be reviewed on December 16, with Number 10 hopeful that some areas in the most restrictive tier 3 band will then be able to move to tier 2 as a ‘morale booster’.

In his article, Mr Johnson mounted a plea for patience by the British public as he said: ‘We have worked too hard, lost too many, sacrificed too much, just to see our efforts incinerated in another volcanic eruption of the virus’.

But he insisted we will soon ‘drive Covid out of our lives’. 

We are so nearly out of our captivity, we can see the sunlit upland pastures ahead… but if we try to jump the fence now, we will tangle ourselves in the last barbed wire, writes PRIME MINISTER BORIS JOHNSON 

We can’t blow it now. We can’t just throw it all away – not when freedom is in sight. We have worked too hard, lost too many, sacrificed too much, just to see our efforts incinerated in another volcanic eruption of the virus.

Once again, the British people have come together to bring Covid under control. Once again, our collective efforts have paid off – and as I write the R rate is once again below one.

Across the country, the disease is no longer doubling in prevalence. It is halving. We did it before, in the spring, and now we have done it again.  

But this time it is different. This time we know in our hearts that we are winning, and that we will inevitably win, because the armies of science are coming to our aid with all the morale-boosting, bugle-blasting excitement of Wellington’s Prussian allies coming through the woods on the afternoon of Waterloo.

We have secured 40 million doses of the highly promising Pfizer-Biontech treatment, with millions possibly available by the end of this year, writes Boris Johnson

We have secured 40 million doses of the highly promising Pfizer-Biontech treatment, with millions possibly available by the end of this year, writes Boris Johnson 

In months, or even weeks, we will have a viable vaccine against coronavirus – giving elderly and vulnerable people the durable protection they need. And we are not just backing one vaccine, but seven.

We have secured 40 million doses of the highly promising Pfizer-Biontech treatment, with millions possibly available by the end of this year. We have obtained 100 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine that is now going for approval by the regulators at MHRA. And as of yesterday, the Government has bought a total of 7 million doses of the Moderna vaccine, which has proved 95 per cent effective in clinical trials.

All told, Kate Bingham and her Vaccines Taskforce have secured early access to more than 350 million doses of vaccine – more than enough to inoculate everyone in the UK, as well as our Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories.

The people of Liverpool have come together to do mass community testing, with 240,000 getting tested – including with new rapid turnaround tests, writes Boris Johnson. Pictured: soldiers prepare to swab Liverpudlians at a testing centre in Liverpool on November 6

The people of Liverpool have come together to do mass community testing, with 240,000 getting tested – including with new rapid turnaround tests, writes Boris Johnson. Pictured: soldiers prepare to swab Liverpudlians at a testing centre in Liverpool on November 6

If and when we can begin delivering those shots in the national arm – beginning with the most vulnerable groups – we will know we have won. And even before we roll out the vaccine, we are equipping ourselves with new and encouraging methods of fighting Covid.

The people of Liverpool have come together to do mass community testing, with 240,000 getting tested – including with new rapid turnaround tests. There is no doubt about it. Thanks in part to strict adherence to the rules, and thanks also to community testing, the rate of infection in Liverpool is now substantially lower than in other comparable cities.

Liverpool is now in tier 2 and not tier 3 – and so we want to use this community testing in other tier 3 areas to achieve the same effect and to identify and isolate the one in three hidden carriers who have the disease but suffer no symptoms.

Soldiers pictured preparing to swab Liverpool residents for coronavirus at Croxteth Sports Centre on November 7

Soldiers pictured preparing to swab Liverpool residents for coronavirus at Croxteth Sports Centre on November 7

Thanks in part to strict adherence to the rules, and thanks also to community testing, the rate of infection in Liverpool is now substantially lower than in other comparable cities, writes Boris Johnson. Pictured: Two people are pictured being swabbed at St John's Hall on November 7

Thanks in part to strict adherence to the rules, and thanks also to community testing, the rate of infection in Liverpool is now substantially lower than in other comparable cities, writes Boris Johnson. Pictured: Two people are pictured being swabbed at St John’s Hall on November 7

We have procured vast supplies of these pregnancy-style tests – hundreds of millions of them by January. We are working with local leaders across tier 3 to do the same mass testing exercises – to squeeze the disease and kick Covid out.

We have seen it work in Slovakia and in Liverpool, and there is no reason why it should not work everywhere.

Indeed, there is every reason to hope that we can use mass testing to help us open all kinds of sectors that have been under the greatest pressure – sports, entertainment, hospitality, aviation, business events – you name it. All this is possible. We can do it and we will do it. But we MUST be realistic.

We know that mass testing can work, but we must accept that as a medical technique it is still in its infancy. To work in towns and cities, let alone regions, it relies on high levels of public buy-in and community spirit.

As for the vaccines, I now have no doubt that they will come, and possibly very soon. But they are not yet here. They are passing all kinds of tests, but none of them has yet been completely approved as fit to be injected in the arms of our parents and grandparents. Even if that great moment is just days away – as it could be – there are still long weeks and months ahead before we can be completely confident that we can vaccinate enough people in the country, and thereby remove enough targets for the virus, in order to beat the disease.

And as of yesterday, the Government has bought a total of 7 million doses of the Moderna vaccine, which has proved 95 per cent effective in clinical trials, writes Boris Johnson (file photo)

And as of yesterday, the Government has bought a total of 7 million doses of the Moderna vaccine, which has proved 95 per cent effective in clinical trials, writes Boris Johnson (file photo)

Those will be the coldest and darkest months of the year, the period in which the NHS is always most vulnerable.

And the brutal truth is that we are entering that winter period with rates of Covid infection still high throughout the country – perhaps one person in 85 – far higher than in September.

We have almost as many Covid patients in our hospitals as we had in the April peak; we have deaths running, alas, at several hundred per day; and with the real prospect of the NHS being unable to cope, we simply cannot let our foot off the throat of the beast. On Wednesday we can and must come out of lockdown, and we will. But we cannot afford to let things rip.

To all those who are in a tier higher than they believe they deserve, and especially to our wonderful hospitality sector, I not only sympathise. I grieve for what we have to do.

We will review the position, and all the data, on December 16, and we will continue to support lives and livelihoods as the Government has done throughout the pandemic, to ensure that businesses have the chance to bounce back ever more strongly next year.

It is worth remembering that the world of this Wednesday is not a lockdown, even in tier 3. You will be able to leave your home for any reason. You can do your Christmas shopping, indeed any type of shopping; visit the gym; have a haircut; play organised sports; take part in communal worship; and meet friends in outside public places subject to the rule of six.

Over the coming weeks, I am convinced we will be able to use these two new scientific tools – mass testing and vaccines – to drive Covid out of our hospitals and schools and homes and out of our lives.

With every substantial reduction in infection, across the country, we will de-escalate restrictions and allow whole areas to come down the tiers. We believe that Easter will mark a real end point and a real chance to return to something like life as normal.

But it is crucial to understand that with the help of these scientific advances we hope to make progress – and to de-escalate – BEFORE Easter.

We are so nearly out of our captivity. We can see the sunlit upland pastures ahead. But if we try to jump the fence now, we will simply tangle ourselves in the last barbed wire, with disastrous consequences for the NHS.

So let’s do the job properly. Let’s work together, and with tiering, testing and vaccines let’s make 2021 the year we kick Covid out, take back control of our lives and reclaim all the things we love.