A former government chief whip has joined the growing backbench Tory rebellion against Boris Johnson’s lockdown plans, claiming that the prime minister’s warnings of hospitals being overwhelmed is not backed up by the data.
Mark Harper also warned that allowing community support officers and other “agents of the state” who are not police officers to enforce lockdown regulations, as the prime minister proposes, could result in unnecessary deaths.
The decision of the normally loyal former chief whip, who had responsibility for parliamentary party discipline under David Cameron, to rebel against Mr Johnson’s plans is a mark of deep unease on the Tory benches over the return to lockdown in England, due to start on Thursday and last until 2 December.
At present only around 20 backbenchers are expected to defy the PM.
But a rebellion of 40 or more on Wednesday afternoon would leave him reliant for the implementation of his lockdown plans on the votes of Labour MPs, whose leader Sir Keir Starmer backs the new restrictions.
Mr Johnson will appeal for MPs’ backing at the start of a three-hour debate, extended from 90 minutes by the government in the hope of assuaging concerns of restive Tories.
Many have questioned a controversial graph which suggested on Saturday that without a second lockdown, deaths could reach 4,000 a day.
Chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance yesterday told MPs that there was “uncertainty” over the long-term projection, which did not take into account the possible impact of Mr Johnson’s tiered regional approach to Covid-19 restrictions.
Writing on the ConservativeHome website, Mr Harper said that reputable scientists had shown that the data underpinning Mr Johnson’s warnings was “overestimating the actual position”.
Published data “does not substantiate” the PM’s claim that hospital capacity in the southwest could be exceeded within weeks, while public health and NHS officials in his own Forest of Dean constituency “have not substantiated the concerns referred to by the Prime Minister”, he said.
And he added: “I have a fundamental objection to the use of reasonable force to enforce these regulations by agents of the state who are not properly trained to safely use that force. As a former Home Office minister, I have seen that when reasonable force is used incorrectly, it can lead to unnecessary deaths.”
Meanwhile, Tory former minister Steve Baker confirmed he will vote against lockdown, saying the month of “painful” restrictions may not be enough to avoid higher levels of infection later.
“I’m not convinced,” Mr Baker wrote in an article in the Daily Telegraph. “Compliance must be high, a month may not be long enough, the breakthroughs may not come soon enough, and so on.
“And if we really are locking down for this purpose, keeping schools open is a huge compromise. Most importantly, the cost-benefit is today a guess.”
