The UK prime minister is braced for a damaging Tory rebellion as MPs vote on a new toughened system of tiered coronavirus controls for England.
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The government is expected to win Tuesday's Commons vote on the new rules which are due to come into effect the following day after Labour said it would abstain.
Keir Starmer who has previously backed government measures said while his party had "serious misgivings" it would not be in the national interest to vote them down when the virus still posed a "serious risk".
However, with scores of Conservative MPs deeply unhappy at the extent of the restrictions, the vote is likely to throw Tory divisions into sharp relief.
Many backbenchers are furious their constituencies face stricter controls than before the latest lockdown which ends on Wednesday.
At a No 10 news conference on Monday, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said he hoped some areas could be moved into lower tiers when the restrictions come up for their first fortnightly review on December 16.
But scientists advising the government have made clear they see little scope for any widespread easing before Christmas.
It could mean most areas of England will go into the new year in one of the toughest two tiers with a ban on households mixing indoors and strict controls on the hospitality sector.
Only the Isle of Wight, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly have been designated for the lightest Tier 1 restrictions.
Meanwhile, the government said a rapid coronavirus test that gives results in 20 minutes has been confirmed as having high sensitivity to the virus, according to the government.
An evaluation carried out by NHS trusts and universities found the OptiGene RT-Lamp test to be effective in identifying infectious cases, including for people not displaying symptoms, in contrast to a report by the Guardian earlier this month that the test identified only 46.7% of infections during a trial in Manchester and Salford.
On Monday the government published its promised impact assessment of the health, economic, and social effects of the pandemic and its tiered approach.
But while it acknowledged there would be "significant costs" to individuals, society and the economy, it said the consequences for public health in allowing the virus to run unchecked would be "much worse".
It said that with strong measures in place, the R number the rate of reproduction of the virus was likely to rise significantly above 1, leaving the NHS unable to cope.
"At the outset of the most difficult time of year for the NHS, and with hospital admissions already high, a sustained period with R above 1 would result in hospitals rapidly becoming overwhelmed," it said.
"The government's view is that the severe loss of life and other health impacts of allowing the NHS to be overwhelmed would be intolerable for our society."
However Mark Harper, chairman of the Covid Research Group of Tory MPs opposed to tougher restrictions, said the document acknowledged the "precise size and duration" of any breach in the capacity of the NHS to cope was "not possible to predict".
"Before the current lockdown, incorrect death and hospital capacity modelling was leaked into the public domain to justify it, we asked for full details," he said.
"We have asked repeatedly for the information that vindicates these hospital projections and they have not been forthcoming.
"We are now seeing that, once again, the wheels are coming off the government's arguments."
There was also frustration among MPs that the analysis did not include a detailed breakdown of the effects of the measures on different sectors of the economy particularly hospitality, which has been among the hardest hit.
Those concerns are likely to be heightened by a report in The Times that ministers have received an unpublished dossier on the economic impact, with a dozen sectors rated "red" and facing significant job cuts and revenue losses.
However the published document simply pointed to the latest projections of the Office for Budget Responsibility, published with last week's Spending Review, which forecast an 11.3% hit to national income if restrictions continue into the spring.
Mel Stride, Conservative chairman of the Commons Treasury Committee, said it contained little that was new.
"It's frustrating that there is little here that sets out how the different tiers might impact on the specific sectors and regions across the country," he said. ■
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