Scarborough And Whitby MP: 'Rule Of Six' Is The Right Move

The MP for Scarborough and Whitby says 'the rule of six' is the right move to help contain the spread of coronavirus.

Robert Goodwill has been reacting to new measures which have been announced for England from Monday.

They outlaw gatherings of more than six people inside or outside.

Robert said:

"The rule of six is a good way of enabling, for example, a group of six people to go and have a meal in a pub garden, to go and socialise in each other's houses, in a way that doesn't spread the disease.

By concentrating on places and people where we know there's infection, rather than having a widespread lockdown, I hope we can continue in that way for some time and keep on top of the disease.

But it's down to every single one of us to protect ourselves.

There's always a balance to be struck. I mean, if we wanted to get rid of the disease completely, we could make every single person stay in their house and never go out at all.

That would mean that many businesses would fail, many people would lose their jobs, so I think the balance is being struck right.

I think we always did expect there might be some increases, some local outbreaks where we've had to take towns into lockdown.

But the number of cases we've had in Scarborough and Whitby takes us nowhere near the level that you would need to have before you brought a local lockdown."