Second national lockdown 'only way to control disease' says Scarborough and Whitby MP

The MP for Scarborough and Whitby has been giving his thoughts on the national lockdown.

It comes into effect from tomorrow (Thursday 5th November) with a vote in parliament today on the tougher measures.

Robert Goodwill said:

"This disease isn't fair on all of us and moving as England into this new lockdown is the only way of doing it; because we're not looking at large travel distances from Leeds to Scarborough or Middlesbrough to Whitby and that's the increased risk.

"We have seen high levels of infection, high levels of hospital admissions and sadly that would follow on to high levels of mortality.

"We've also seen the disease increase in nursing and care homes, which is very worrying indeed.

"I'm in no doubt whatsoever that this will affect particularly retail, the hospitality sector and we don't do this because we want to do it, we do it because it's only way to control this disease.

"The first lockdown was very effective in reducing the very high levels of infections, the very high levels of deaths.

"This lockdown isn't quite as severe, we still have schools open so it will work in a different way.

"I'm optimistic that we'll manage to knock the disease back a few paces.

"We won't completely eliminate the infection in the country; but we should get it back to a level where we can allow people to get back to doing all the things they want to do in preparation of Christmas."

Robert Goodwill has been speaking to Greatest Hits Radio's Jon Burke: