Environment Secretary George Eustice said the Government has introduced tiered restrictions for local areas in a “timely way” and a national lockdown is “not appropriate”.
Speaking on Times Radio on Wednesday morning, he said: “In some ways we’ve always anticipated that there would be a second spike.
“That’s why we have been monitoring the situation closely since September, introducing, in a timely way, restrictions that are appropriate to the level of prevalence in particular parts of the country with these three different levels of intervention.
“And we’re adding to that all the time, so yesterday Warrington was put into the very high risk area, and there’s discussions now about Nottingham.
“So we’re trying to intervene in things in a proportionate way across the country, but we don’t think it’s appropriate to have a national lockdown, because there’s parts of the country, like Cornwall, where the incidence of the disease is actually very low.”
Environment Secretary George Eustice said there is “no point having a lockdown in those parts of the country where the incidence of the disease is very low”.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We always knew that there would be a second wave and indeed we’ve been experiencing that since September.
“We’ve been monitoring the progress of the virus very, very closely, acting in a timely way to introduce appropriate measures and tougher restrictions where we had a problem, for instance in some of those northern cities, particularly in the North West, establishing this three-level approach.”
The MP for Camborne and Redruth added: “We have learnt and I think our view at the moment is there’s no point having a lockdown in those parts of the country where the incidence of the disease is very low.
“My part of the world, down in Cornwall, very low levels, the incidence of the disease, it would make no sense to lock down the economy in those areas.”
