The current government timetable is to announce any tier changes on Wednesday for implementation 00.01 Saturday. But there is evidence that when people fear their tier level will rise, which is a well-grounded expectation in infection-growing London, they bring...
forward socialising, they discount the shift to increased restrictions. There is evidence these behavioural changes increase infections by 10 to 15 per cent. It is a basic flaw in a system of tiers being reviewed every couple of weeks. By the way,...
there is also evidence that when an area comes out of restrictions, it is like unpopping a cork of a fizzy drink: there is such a sense of relief and release, that again people accelerate their virus-spreading socialising. All of which is an argument for having fewer tiers,...
perhaps just two, a moderate-restrictions tier and an extreme-restrictions tier, with an expectation of no change unless local hospitals are in danger of being overwhelmed. The problem of course is we are unlikely to know whether the current three-tiers system, with...
fortnightly reviews, is sub-optimal till it has comprehensively failed and we are on the way to third lockdown.

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More from @Peston

9 Dec
Here is the fundamental stumbling block to a free trade deal. And truthfully I am not sure how it can be sorted. The EU wants the unilateral right to toughen up its labour laws, or environmental standards or other so-called level-playing-field rules. Any such new rules...
would not automatically apply to the UK. But the EU wants an arbitration mechanism to determine whether the change in rules would confer a competitive advantage to the UK. And if the balance of competitive advantage tilted to the UK, the EU would want to allow...
the possibility of tariffs being imposed on relevant UK exports. And the UK would have the symmetrical right if it so chose to toughen labour laws etc. This is not an issue of sovereignty but of complexity and uncertainty for business. And it is difficult to see...
Read 6 tweets
9 Dec
.@michaelgove is conspicuously desperate for the UK to agree a free trade deal with the EU, in the way that @BorisJohnson is not (and the gap between the two has been there for months, according to his ministerial colleagues). But in saying that "like Canada" the UK is happy...
to sign up to "non regression" he was being startlingly disingenuous, because the kind of "non regression" agreed by Canada is a world apart from the level-playing-field non regression on offer from the EU (and from the point of view of EU...
leaders, that difference is reasonable because Canada's economy is not integrated with the EU's in the way that the UK's is). There is a growing view in Brussels that the prime minister's conception of the sovereignty he wants for the UK is not compatible with a zero tariff,...
Read 6 tweets
8 Dec
There is one more thing about @ONS’s Covid19 survey which is driving me up the wall. As I pointed out, it has revised down its daily data for coronavirus incidence per 10k from an original estimate of 9.52 on 17 Oct to 4.89 for that date, and 4.90 on 18 Oct, 4.91 19 Oct...
4.90 20 Oct, 4.89 21 Oct, 4.86 22 Oct and 4.83 23 Oct. That means the revised daily average in the week to 23 Oct is 4.88 per 10k. Which is therefore the latest @ons revised daily number of infections per 10k people. Except it isn’t. Because the @ons continues to insist that...
it stands by its data in “table 2a” - which shows that the average daily incidence rate for the week to 23 October was (believe it or not) 9.52 per 10k. So is the newly revised daily data correct or the unrevised old weekly data? Both cannot be correct. And yet the ONS...
Read 4 tweets
8 Dec
There is a ton of contradictory stuff flying around about what @MichelBarnier says is the EU's bottom line for fair competition in any free trade agreement with the UK. As I understand it, what follows is the EU's position. For the "level playing field commitments" there...
should be "non regression" - ie on standards for working practices, environmental etc, the UK must stick to current EU rules, subject to tests and the risk of legal challenge if there is a perceived breach of the obligations. And the non-regression rules apply to the EU as...
well as to the UK. They are mutual symmetrical obligations in that sense. The requirements not to give unfair subsidies to businesses, the state aid rules, are different, and more complicated, because subsidies to businesses given out of EU funds (as opposed to national funds)...
Read 13 tweets
8 Dec
When shaping policy to protect us from Covid-19, the government relies on data from @ONS to provide the scientific basis for its actions. The weekly @ONS coronavirus survey is supposed to be the information gold standard - and in particular it underpinned...
@BorisJohnson's controversial announcement at the end of October to put England back into national lockdown. No other course of action seemed sensible, given that the ONS survey on 30 October showed the incidence of coronavirus in the community in England had surged...
from 4.3 per 10,000 people on 2 October to 9.52 on 17 October, the latest date for data then available. This was a terrifyingly fast doubling rate. So the advice from @uksciencechief and @CMO_England to the PM was unambiguous: lockdown was the only reasonable course of action...
Read 7 tweets
6 Dec
On the UN Climate Change Conference, which the UK is hosting next year, it has become increasingly unsustainable for Alok Sharma to be its PART-TIME president, ministers tell me, when US president-elect @JoeBiden has appointed John Kerry as America's FULL-TIME negotiator. As...
I understand it, @BorisJohnson would dearly love @David_Cameron to take over from Sharma. But Cameron can't, on principle, because he is hopping mad about Johnson cutting the commitment to spend 0.7% of national income on overseas aid. Another fine mess
PS a source close to the PM tells me that the PM does not in fact want David Cameron to be COP26 president. Which is not what well-placed sources told me. But I am very happy to record the disclaimer! For what it's worth, that is not quite the same as saying the PM is happy...
Read 4 tweets

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