Tory rebels hold fire on new Covid-19 lockdown rules

Boris Johnson faces ongoing backbench rebellion to his latest tweaking of lockdown rules across England.

Boris Johnson is beamed in to the House of Commons on Monday. Picture: AFP

Boris Johnson faces ongoing backbench rebellion to his latest tweaking of lockdown rules across England, after introducing a three-tier system until next March that bans most people from meeting others indoors for another four months.

The British Prime Minister said on Monday night the next few months would be “still a hard winter” and that the coronavirus was not part of a Christmas truce, as he lifted the national lockdown from next Wednesday but replaced it with the tier system.

He added that vaccine developments were encouraging, but warned: “Christmas cannot be normal and there is a long road to spring, but we have turned a corner and the escape route is in sight.”

He is rolling out daily mass testing for contacts of people who have tested positive so that they can avoid automatic two-week quarantine if they test negative for five days.

Many families will continue to remain isolated from other households except for a small window across the Christmas ­period, although regions in tiers one and two will allow up to six people to socialise outside.

The government is liaising with administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to ensure a co-ordinated Christmas plan.

“It will be important to allow families and friends to meet in a careful and limited way, while recognising that this will not be a normal festive period and the risks of transmission remain very real,’’ Mr Johnson said.

For some parts of the country, however, most elements of the harsh second lockdown, in place for the past four weeks, will continue in the guise of tier-three ­restrictions across all of the northern hemisphere winter.

London is expected to be in tier-two restrictions.

Up to 70 rebel Tory MPs, and the Labour Party, have reserved their judgment on the new ­English rules, until when details of which regions are placed into which tiers are unveiled on ­Thursday.

Mr Johnson may face the embarrassing necessity to obtain the support of Labour — which has been sceptical about the tier concept to control the virus — to get the measures passed in the House of Commons.

Mark Harper — who chairs the rebel group of Tory MPs demanding economic and health ­assessments of any coronavirus measures — said people would struggle to tell the difference between tier three and a full lockdown. “Many MPs will hold their judgment on this until we know which areas go into which tiers,” Mr Harper said.

The government has extended its job retention scheme, supporting 9.6 million workers, until the end of March. An updated budget will be released on Wednesday by the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak.