Chris Green MP: Lockdowns do immense damage

Rochdale is leading with a figure approaching five hundred positive tests per hundred thousand.

The figures keep rocketing up no matter how strict the lockdown.

Bolton had all of its pubs, cafes and restaurants closed along with a series of other small businesses and they are in the same position as the City of Salford which had them all open.

More people are doubting that this approach is working but the Mayor of Greater Manchester, along with all 10 Greater Manchester Borough leaders, has just negotiated a Tier 3 lockdown with the Government. This has a wide variety of new restrictions which includes the closure of “wet” pubs.

Obviously, having a group of politicians talk about anything will result in argument but the Government has given us a lockdown deal in line with that in Liverpool and Lancashire County Council.

I have been pressing for there to be a retrospective element of this deal and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, has listened and our Council is going to receive a surprise boost which should help us all.

Local councils have had an incredibly tough time in recent years and Covid-19 has really stretched them to their limit so any support like this is welcome news.

One of the impacts of having different restrictions in different areas was that people pop over the boundary for a pint.

I know that many local taxi drivers were frustrated at pub closing time to be getting a fare over to Bolton when they had the highest rates of positive tests and their pubs were closed.

We all have about the same rate now and our pubs are all being closed but I am not sure that this is the solution many want.

It is a relief that cafes, restaurants and pubs that serve food will still be open. This means that we should all be able to enjoy good food as we see the nights draw in earlier in the approach to Christmas.

Let us hope that normality resumes in good time for Christmas as this lockdown is going to knock us down even further.

There is an increasing range of voices, especially including those of professors and other academics from some of the world’s best universities who are now setting out an alternative to a cycle of damaging lockdowns.

Having been told, by my constituents, how great an impact this lockdown has had I resigned my ministerial assistant position so that I could speak out more openly on their behalf.

A potential vaccination may be years away from being delivered and I believe that it would be wrong to carry out this cycle of lockdowns until that time.

The debate is changing and we have to change our default position to Covid-19 lockdowns as they do not work and they do cause immense damage.

When we think of who has the toughest time during the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown we quite naturally think of our elderly relatives.

Very few young or even middle-aged people have succumbed to Covid-19 whilst, to my amazement, the average age of death is older than our average life expectancy.

I think we have to look again at where the impact falls.

We know that, for children growing up today, they face challenges today they we would never have dreamt of in our youth.

Yes there are advantages as well but, with schools having been closed for six month and many opportunities for employment having dried up, the Covid-19 lockdown has taken many of them away.

When politicians and scientists talk of their enthusiasm for a “circuit breaker” or Tier 4 lockdown and look over to Wales in admiration, I think of the economic collapse which means school leavers cannot find that first job.

Our high streets are quiet and our pubs closed. It did not work first time yet we are putting hundreds of billions of pounds more onto our national debt.

The people who have already seen their education damaged and opportunities taken away will pay our debts for decades to come.

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