UK coronavirus live: Matt Hancock leads Downing Street briefing; pubs in Wales banned from selling alcohol
Latest updates: health secretary to focus on testing; pubs, restaurants and bars in Wales to be banned from selling alcohol from Friday
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If you are interested in what a proper cost-benefit analysis of lockdown measures might look like, do take a look at this report (pdf) rom the Centre for Economic Performance published in April. It sought to compare the impact of long and short lockdowns on overall “wellbeing years”. There is a summary here.
Mark Harper, the chair of the Covid Research Group, which represents anti-lockdown or lockdown-sceptic Tory MPs, has criticised the government for releasing its analysis so late. In a statement he said:
I welcome the fact that the government has at last published some cost-benefit analysis and data in support of its proposals. I am disappointed MPs, journalists and the public have been given so little time to digest information of this magnitude. We are, after all, talking about imposing some of the most severe restrictions on our constituents and the way they lead their lives and run their businesses. This information is what ministers should have been insisting on before they made their decisions so it surely could have been made available earlier.
As I have said before, I and a number of colleagues are particularly keen to understand the likely impact of the restrictions on Covid and the full extent of some of the non-Covid health implications they have, as well as the undoubted impact on livelihoods.
