Sir David Davis comments on proposed ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown

As published in the Express:

David Davis hit out at Sir Keir Starmer’s plea for the UK to be placed in a fixed period national lockdown, issuing a dire warning regarding the effectiveness of the Labour leader’s strategy.

Sir Keir Starmer’s urging for another national lockdown will not work at all, former Brexit Secretary, David Davis, has told ITV’s Peston. The Conservative MP was responding to calls for the UK to be placed in a circuit break shut down for a few weeks in order to suppress the coronavirus and buy time to fix the test and trace system. The Labour leader has given the idea his full backing, claiming that the Government’s plan “simply isn’t working” and “another course is needed”.

Mr Davis analysed the plan: “Number one, let’s deal with the issue of science. This is a scientist’s opinion, not the science. The data from the lockdown before is that it didn’t do much to the R number. The R number went seasonally, and many other countries saw the same.”

He continued: “Number two, this argument that it will give us time to bring it under control. Government’s been struggling for six months to make track and trace work. It’s not going to work in another two, three, four weeks. If we start down this process, we’ll be in a permanent lockdown until we get that right and it’s going to be a long time away, I think.”

The former Brexit Secretary added: “I don’t think the lockdown itself works at all. Also in terms of fixing track and trace, we seem to have lost our memory. Nationalised industry is not the answer. Public Health England were the ones that failed it in the first place.”