Tory MP Philip Davies accuses Matt Hancock of 'nanny state socialist' approach to pandemic

A Conservative MP today accused Matt Hancock of taking a “nanny state socialist” approach to the coronavirus pandemic.

Tory MP Philip Davies said the “arbitrary” 10pm curfew was damaging pubs, restaurants, bowling alleys and casinos.

He asked the Health Secretary if he was aware of the jobs being lost because of the 10pm rule while people congregate in the streets and shop staff receive abuse.

The outspoken MP, who recently married former cabinet minister Esther McVey, said: “When will the Secretary of State start acting like a Conservative with a belief in individual responsibility and abandon this arbitrary, nanny state socialist approach which is serving no purpose at all apart from to further collapse the economy and erode our freedoms?”

He also said Bradford had been in locked down “for weeks” and the numbers were not going down.

Mr Hancock responded: “There are some people who rail against some of the measures that we have to put in place and of course I understand the impact that they have and there’s reasons for each one of them but collectively they are vital for the strategy that we are pursuing of suppressing the virus, protecting the economy, education and the NHS until a vaccine arrives.

“My honourable friend doesn’t agree with that strategy and I think that’s a perfectly honourable position, it’s just something I profoundly disagree with him on. He indeed last night was one of the handful of colleagues who voted against the renewal of the Coronavirus Act.”

Mr Hancock added: “It’s perfectly reasonable to make the argument that we should just let the virus rip I just think that the hundreds of thousands of deaths that would follow is not a price that anyone should pay.”

It comes after the Health Secretary announced that Liverpool and three major northern towns were being ordered into social lockdown .

More than a million people will be banned by law from mixing indoors with different households from this weekend, he announced.

They are Liverpool — with a population of 550,000 and another 900,000 in the wider Merseyside region — Middlesbrough, Hartlepool and Warrington.

It comes after an uprising of Tory MPs who have hit out at heavy restrictions that have been imposed on the public and businesses without proper debate or scrutiny in Parliament.

In a partial climbdown yesterday, it was agreed that the government would hold more Commons votes on emergency coronavirus laws.