Boris Johnson placed England into a third national lockdown on Monday 4th January which was overwhelmingly voted into law by MPs two days later with lockdown restrictions set to last until Wednesday 31st March, with a statutory requirement to review the restrictions every two weeks.
In his address to the Commons The Prime Minister said the national lockdown could start to be lifted “by the middle of February, if things go well and with a fair wind in our sails. By this time “we expect to have offered the first vaccine dose to everyone in the four top priority groups identified by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation,” he said.
When asked about the restrictions being voted in until the end of March he said it was “not because we expect the full national lockdown to continue until then, but to allow a steady, controlled and evidence-led move down through the tiers on a regional basis – carefully, brick by brick, as it were, breaking free of our confinement but without risking the hard won gains that our protections have given us.”
“These restrictions will be kept under continuous review with a statutory requirement to review every two weeks and a legal obligation to remove them if they are no longer deemed necessary to limit the transmission of the virus.”
Despite recent increases in Covid-19 infections and Mr Johnson warning that coronavirus restrictions could be tightened if people flout the rules, the first review of the current lockdown will take place on Wednesday 20th January.
