Boris Johnson Says Lifting Lockdown Restrictions From Next Month Will Be “Irreversible”
3 min read
The prime minister is proposing a “cautious but irreversible” plan for the UK to come out of lockdown when he publishes the government’s roadmap next week.
Boris Johnson said he hopes to provide target dates for when individual sectors will reopen "if we possibly can”, but warned they may later change depending on coronavirus data.
Speaking to broadcasters on a visit to a vaccination centre in Kent this morning he said: "The dates that we will be setting out will be the dates by which we hope we can do something at the earliest – so it's the target date by which we hope to do something at the earliest.
"If, because of the rate of infection, we have to push something off a little bit to the right, to lay it for a little bit, we won't hesitate to do that.”
He added: "I think people would much rather see a plan that was cautious but irreversible and one that proceeds sensibly in accordance with where we are with the disease."
Johnson also reiterated health secretary Matt Hancock’s comments today that so-called “vaccine passports” will not be used within the UK as a barrier to taking part in activities once lockdown is eased.
There had been confusion after foreign secretary Dominic Raab suggested yesterday such a system may be used “domestic or local level”, prompting fears people may not be able to go into shops or pubs without proving they have had the jab.
But the PM, speaking at Orpington Health and Wellbeing Centre, said: "I think inevitably there will be great interest in ideas like can you show that you had a vaccination against Covid in the way that you sometimes have to show you have had a vaccination against Yellow Fever or other diseases in order to travel somewhere.
"I think that is going to be very much in the mix down the road, I think that is going to happen.
"What I don't think we will have in this country is - as it were - vaccination passports to allow you to go to, say, the pub or something like that. I think that that would be going it a bit."
It is expected that the first part of the government’s roadmap will be a move to re-open schools from 8 March, but Johnson would not say if all pupils will go back to the classroom on that day or if year groups will be staggered.
"No decisions have been taken on that sort of detail yet, though clearly schools on March 8 has for a long time been a priority of the government and of families up and down the country,” he said.
"We will do everything we can to make that happen but we've got to keep looking at the data, we've got to keep looking at the rates of infections, don't forget they're still very high, still 23,000 or so Covid patients in the NHS, more than in the April peak last year, still sadly too many people dying of this disease, rates of infections, although they're coming down, are still comparatively high.
"So we've got to be very prudent and what we wanted to see is progress that is cautious but irreversible and I think that's what the public and people up and down the country will want to see."
PoliticsHome Newsletters
PoliticsHome provides the most comprehensive coverage of UK politics anywhere on the web, offering high quality original reporting and analysis: Subscribe
