If it's a regular partner, I don’t think people are likely to listen to advice not to see them for three weeks or maybe more. Sir Patrick said the "strict answer" was that couples shouldn't meet "or bunker down in the same house", with Mr Slack revealing his fears that the government was "entering choppy waters" over the issue.īut Sir Chris appeared to offer a slightly softer approach: "I think a bit of realism will be needed. James Slack, who was Boris Johnson's official spokesman at the time, asked Sir Chris and Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, whether couples who didn't live together could meet up. Messages which appear to be sent 24 March 2020 - the first full day of the COVID lockdown in the UK - reveal the issue sparked a strong debate. Sir Chris warned "a bit of realism will be needed" over the issue in a new leaked WhatsApp exchange between health officials and Number 10, published by The Telegraph. The chief medical officer for England said the public were not "likely to listen" to advice warning couples not to mix households if they didn't live together. Professor Sir Chris Whitty warned the government that people in relationships wouldn't abide by a lockdown rule preventing them from seeing their partners, new leaked texts show. Mr Davis said he originally submitted a freedom of information request for the polling results in July 2020, but it was refused repeatedly. "Recent reportage about wanting to 'frighten the pants off everyone' leads me to believe that I was correct in that belief." I was concerned at the time that opinion polling as much as science was driving the creation of policy. Raising a point of order in the Commons, Mr Davis said: "Starting early in 2020, the Government spent over £1.5 million on opinion polling public attitudes to Covid. The cache of more than 100,000 WhatsApp messages revealed Matt Hancock said he wanted to "frighten the pants off" the public about a new strain of the virus.ĭuring the pandemic, ministers insisted they were following scientific guidance when imposing lockdown measures and other restrictions to curb the spread of COVID. The Haltemprice and Howden MP claimed revelations from the Telegraph newspaper's Lockdown Files suggested that public opinion was driving decision-making as much as scientific advice. Senior Conservative MP David Davis said more than £1.5 million had been spent by the government on polling public attitudes to COVID, but that his calls to release results of the opinion-gathering exercises had been rejected for nearly three years. A Tory former minister has urged the government to release publicly-funded information about polling linked to the pandemic.
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