Mark Harper and Steve Baker – the Chair and Vice-Chair of the Covid Recovery Group – have come out swinging today, demanding the Government end all social distancing restrictions on June 21st and allow the country to return to normal.
Steve has written a piece for the Sun today arguing it would be morally wrong to prolong our agony after June 21st:
The data is so good, and the doomsayers so wrong, that it cannot possibly be rational or morally right for us to have to socially distance from each other in any context or setting in the UK beyond June 21st. Being social is key to being well so by June 21st at the latest, Britain must meet again, must be reunited in every sense, and we must start healing the broken bonds of the last year with social contact and normal human interaction.
Worth reading in full (although the effusive praise for Boris’s leadership in the throat-clearing section at the top may irritate some readers).
And Mark has written for the Telegraph making a similar argument:
As Parliament returns, with his personal authority enhanced, the Prime Minister faces a choice. Last week, he gave us a fairly clear indication of what he would like to see when he hailed the “good chance” of social distancing being completely scrapped next month. With financial support schemes soon winding down, as they cannot go on forever, removing social distancing is crucial to the survival of many sectors of our economy such as hospitality, that simply cannot make any money and pay wages if it remains in place.
There needs to be early confirmation that social distancing will be completely scrapped from June 21st so that businesses can plan to fully reopen and ensure that we are truly on the “one way road to freedom” that the Prime Minister promised.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Steve Baker appeared on Julia Hartley-Brewer’s talkRADIO show this morning to talk about why all restrictions need to be lifted on June 21st.
