Is Boris right to delay the lockdown easing?

It now seems likely that freedom day is going to involve rather less freedom than everyone had hoped. Later today, Boris Johnson is expected to announce that the 21 June easing of lockdown will be delayed by up to four weeks, until every adult has been offered at least one vaccine by the end of next month. The delays mean that nightclubs will stay closed and work from home guidance will remain in place – although the 30-person limit on wedding guests is expected to be lifted and there will be more outdoor events allowed to take place.

The abrupt change to the lockdown easing plan comes as the Indian (or Delta) variant sweeps across Britain. But is it the right course of action to delay the lockdown lifting, when so many have already been vaccinated and so many livelihoods are at stake?

Our writers have been following the 21 June debate in intense detail here at The Spectator – below is all our coverage on the costs and benefits of delaying freedom day.

On Coffee House this week, Kate Andrews makes the case for what’s at stake when it comes to continuing the current restrictions. She points out that although we may be approaching something that comes close to normal life, this delay comes after over a year of some of the greatest restrictions to our freedoms in living memory:

“‘A delay is not just a minor change to the roadmap. An additional week, two weeks, or month of restrictions does not exist in some bubble in time: it comes after fifteen months of lockdowns, circuit-breakers, red tape around park benches and laws dictating who you can and cannot host in your own home. Last March it was three weeks to ‘flatten the curve’; now we’re preparing to be told it’s a matter of weeks to return to normal. There’s more than a year in between these promises; for plenty of good reasons, but let’s not play down just how long our lives have been put on hold.’

Kate also asks what criteria the government are using to justify the restrictions. At the beginning of the pandemic we were told that we locked down to protect the NHS, now concerns about hospitalisations have switched to infections and oxygen supplies. The worry, Kate writes, is that ‘we are also in danger of abandoning a return to normal altogether.’

Fraser Nelson took the other side of the debate this week. Fraser makes the point that with the Indian variant circulating exponentially, it makes sense to delay until we can work out the impact it’s having:

“‘While the Indian variant spreads, almost everyone in the at-risk age groups is now protected - so we expect it to translate farther less into hospital numbers (as per Bolton). But it’s early days. The Indian variant has been dominant for only a few weeks. For a long time, Britain had the lowest Covid levels in Europe. Now, we're mid-range and our Covid is growing at pretty much the fastest rate in the continent. If Matt Hancock's figures are anywhere near accurate, the UK may soon be the Europe's capital of the India variant.’

Like Kate, Fraser suggests that it would be worrying if ministers use new criteria to justify continuing lockdown, but he suggests that’s unlikely at this stage:

“‘What if ministers move the goalposts again and pursue a ‘circuit breaker’ for Indian variant cases — ignoring the low hospital numbers? It’s possible, but that would be a massive rupture: all previous lockdowns have been defended on the basis that hospitals would be overrun. There is nothing in the data to point to that and no talk about it even from Neil Ferguson and John Edmunds, who have been on the more pro-restriction wing of the Sage advisors.’

Kate and Fraser battled it out on the Coffee House Shots podcast this week, where they discussed the relative costs and benefits of lifting the restrictions here:

In the magazine this week, Philip Thomas, professor of risk management at Bristol university, attempted to unpick how damaging this wave of the virus would be, with or without a delay to the restrictions. His argument, based on a model which has been successfully tracking the pandemic in Britain, is that cases and hospitalisations and deaths are now very seriously de-coupled, and this should have prevented the NHS from collapsing. He predicted that if restrictions were lifted:

“‘We ought to brace ourselves for a surge of infections, one that has started already and may be greater than the wave seen in January. But crucially, the NHS should not come close to being overwhelmed. Cases will be mainly among the young, who are far less likely to get seriously sick — so daily deaths will run at a quarter of what they once did, before subsiding. There is no point delaying reopening, because a landmark has been reached: Covid-19 has been downgraded into a nasty bug which is now no more lethal than viruses such as influenza. My model points to about 7,000 more deaths to come. A daunting figure, yes, but about a third less than in a typical flu season.’

And he pointed to the lack of hospitalisations in Bolton – which was the first area to be seriously hit by the Indian variant – as proof that now a huge proportion of people have been vaccinated, the rest of the country can cope with a greater number of cases:

“‘Take Bolton. Its third wave, which happened last month, saw the number of confirmed Covid cases surge back to where it was in January. But crucially, teenagers and children accounted for about half of these infections. The over-sixties (those most likely to get ill) accounted for just 3.5 per cent of them. It is too early to speak with any finality about deaths from Bolton’s third wave, but the number of Covid patients in hospital did not get above a third of the January peak. So Bolton offers a useful guide to what we can expect in Britain’s third wave: a significant number of cases, but mainly among the young, who mostly will emerge unscathed.’

Looking ahead to Boris Johnson’s announcement later today, Katy Balls suggests on Coffee House that the way the Prime Minister introduces the lockdown extension will be key to understanding how the next few weeks and months play out. If Boris suggests that we should continue the lockdown and promise a review of the data in a few weeks’ time, many in the Tory party believe that this could lead to endless reviews and lockdown never properly being lifted.

But if the PM announces a delay with a hard deadline, there is more hope that this will be the final hurdle before our freedoms are restored. But, Katy points out that any delay still comes with a risk:

“‘Given cases are rising, it's unclear whether scientific advisers will be relaxed about higher case numbers in a few weeks' time even with increased vaccinations. There is a creeping concern among Tory MPs that with booster shots required in the autumn and cases on an upward trajectory, any delay to the roadmap will be the first of many – no matter what the Prime Minister promises on Monday night.’

James Forsyth noted as well that Boris Johnson, when speaking at the G7 yesterday, refused to say what percentage of the population would need to be fully vaccinated for the government to be confident a full reopening would be safe. As James says:

“‘This is a question that does need to be answered when the delay is announced. If it is not, there is a real danger that the people and businesses will lose confidence about the prospect of a full and sustained reopening this year.’

However the Prime Minister chooses to frame this delay to the lockdown easing, we’ll keep you updated on Coffee House throughout the day.