Good evening.
It is with sorrow and regret that I must announce that my Government’s efforts to control the spread of Coronavirus have failed.
Confirmed new cases are now running at above 20,000 per day, and deaths are averaging 240 per day. R is above 1 throughout the country, meaning the virus is not controlled, and in London the R number is close to 3.
When it comes to patients in hospital with the virus, we are just one doubling away from the peak of the first wave of the virus. Many hospitals will be overrun in two to three weeks, and it is already too late to stop that.
I must level with the British people. It is also too late to stop thousands, even tens of thousands of deaths arising from current infections. I am sorry.
I should have acted sooner. I was advised by SAGE, the government’s own scientists, to institute a limited lockdown on September 21st. I did not follow that advice, choosing instead the so-called “Rule of 6” which we now know had no effect on the spread of the virus.
Influenced by libertarians in my own circle, by a few questionable scientists outside of the mainstream, and by disruptive members of my parliamentary party, I attempted to respond to the spread of the virus with a targeted, or tiered, approach. This approach, apart from causing confusion with a proliferation of rules which have been hard to follow and understand, while seeming contradictory and unfair, has also failed to constrain the virus. I apologise.
Furthermore, those parts of the country in the lowest tier of risk may have been given false confidence, given that R was above one in those areas too, and we now see an effect of “levelling up” with the rest of the country. The targeted approach has not worked, and was inappropriate given the national picture. Again, I apologise.
I now announce a 4-week lockdown in which we as a country must work together to hit the R number hard, and achieve a manageable level of new cases, at around 3,000 per day or fewer. We must therefore reduce the R number to 0.6, which means a lockdown including schools and universities. Nobody wants to do this, but if we kept educational establishments open, reducing R to only 0.85, we would need to lock down for 5 extra weeks to achieve the same level of daily infections. The additional time and cost of this would present an additional burden to our communities and our economy, and entail a further 300,000 infections, according to calculations published yesterday by Independent SAGE.
It has been pointed out that lockdowns do not eradicate the virus. But they do buy time. That time should be used to prepare for life when measures are relaxed. At present, in the absence of vaccine, our best hope of controlling the virus, once infections are running at a manageable rate, is Test and Trace. We need a functioning Test and Trace system if we are to live, as some have phrased it, “alongside the virus” – allowing us to find and isolate outbreaks with speed and precision. I admit that our existing system, for which we all had such high hopes, has failed. I placed too much trust in individuals, including Dido Harding, and in the private sector, and together they have undeniably let the country down.
Therefore I am announcing a return to a genuinely NHS-led public health approach, to be properly resourced and supported, and only when this new system is in place and working, will our lockdown be relaxed.
When that relaxation comes, it will be phased and evidence-based. There will be no more macho-posturing or suggestions that it is an Englishman’s duty to “eat out to help out”, or risk his own health, and risk fuelling the spread of the virus, by returning to offices which are not proven safe, via public transport which is not proven safe. Nor will we be gung-ho about safety and infection risk in schools and particularly universities, because we now know that infections there can spread to the wider population and cause further surges, illness and death.
There are many more mistakes which we have made. Because of them, many thousands of our people will die before their time. I can only apologise and endeavour to make sounder decisions, sooner. I make that promise now.
Further, I repeat a promise I made on Monday, 27th April, when, after my brush with the brink at the hands of Covid, I said:
“I want to serve notice now that these decisions will be taken with the maximum possible transparency. And I want to share all our working, our thinking, my thinking, with you, the British people.”
I did not keep that promise. The Government massaged figures, and hid the details of contracts given out to friendly firms, sometimes with little or no public benefit. Sometimes these contracts have involved the wasting of extraordinary sums of public money. I apologise. The Government did not even keep up briefings of the Coronavirus situation, making it harder for people to find information, and introducing an entirely false sense of public safety. I now announce that daily Coronavirus briefings will resume; they will be as factual and apolitical as possible, and in particular, given that some patients die after a battle with Covid which lasts more than 28 days, the headline death toll will be honestly accounted.
Finally, a word on unity. It has, I admit, suited the Government from time to time to allow, or even encourage, febrile arguments in the public domain. This debate has relieved pressure on me and my Cabinet by bringing confusion and disagreement to a situation which badly needed clarity and unity. There have been very grave consequences in terms of compliance with, and faith in, our measures to combat Covid. I am sorry.
Insofar as the arguments turn on the so-called “balance” between the economic cost of lockdowns, and the human cost of failing to lockdown, I am here to tell you that that distinction is bogus. Countries with the most effective, and toughest anti-Covid measures, have fared the best economically. The best economic measures are the best anti-Covid measures. Full stop.
The virus presents a challenge to the individualist ideology which I usually espouse. Because with a virus, it is not enough for an individual to judge the risk to himself. The risks we take are not privately borne, but publicly shared. We each have a responsibility to each other, and that means we must decide on a joint, collaborative plan. In short we must work together, to protect each other. Government and leadership are therefore key, and I commit my government to a new relationship with you, the British people. A relationship of openness, transparency and responsibility. If those qualities have not exactly been “my style” to date, it is never too late to change. Our lives, it is now clear, depend upon it.
Good night.