MPs have warned that if London is lockdown it could last for months should coronavirus infections continue to rise.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan wants the capital to be shut down and more than eight million Londoners should fight coronavirus “as one city.”
MPs are questioning if all Londoners should be treated as one and subject to the same rules, if it is decided that social lockdown measures must be imposed to prevent a rapid rise of infections across the capital.
The fears are that millions of Londoners will be placed into city-wide restrictions which could prolong the duration of the lockdown for all.
Orpington MP Gareth Bacon said, “London is not all the same.
My constituency is more akin to Kent, than it is to central London.
“Cases are going up in our borough, Bromley, but not enough to justify restrictions at the moment.
“I do not think it would be received favourably here if we were put into restrictions because of rises in the centre of the city.”
Harrow East MP Bob Blackman asked, What happens if east London has a high rate of infections one month, and west London has a high rate a month later when east London has come down?
“If you lock down the entire capital then it could stay locked down for longer than necessary.
“It does not make sense to treat a city of eight million people as being all the same, or to restrict the movements of all of those people.
“It should be done on a borough by borough basis, otherwise people are naturally going to say, ‘hang on, this does not make sense’.”
A spokesman for Mayor Sadiq Khan said, “The Mayor, London leaders and public health advisers met to discuss the spread of coronavirus in the capital, with some boroughs seeing much higher incidences of the virus than others.
“The meeting agreed to monitor the situation very closely over the coming days and to continue to move forward and tackle the virus together as one city.”
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