Sir Graham Brady warns of ‘mass unemployment’ over prolonged lockdown

Ministers are putting increased pressure on the government and are insisting on easing the lockdown measures to protect the economy.

Sir Graham Brady who is the Tory 1922 Committee chairman has given a stark warning to the Prime Minister.

Sir Graham said, on prolonging the lockdown for “longer than necessary would have its own toll of mass unemployment, business failure and catastrophic deterioration of the public finances.”

Michael Spencer, the Tory donor, and City grandee said the lockdown “should not continue a day longer than necessary,” and has called on the government to release a blueprint in easing lockdown measures.

On Saturday, the former Chancellor Philip Hammond also called on the government to ease the lockdown measures and reopen the UK economy.

Hammond told the BBC’s Radio 4’s Today programme on Saturday, “The reality is that we have to start reopening the economy.

“But we have to do it living with Covid.

“We can’t wait until a vaccine is developed, produced in sufficient quantity and rolled out across the population.

“The economy won’t survive that long.”

During a three-hour meeting at Chequers Rishi Sunak the Chancellor set out options with Boris Johnson to exit the lockdown.

However, an expert who advises the government has warned that if the lockdown was to be lifted too early then 100,000 people will die by the end of this year.

Professor Neil Ferguson from Imperial College, said if the government send the young and healthy back to work with the elderly and vulnerable to remain in lockdown, there will be a spike in deaths.

His warning comes after US scientists have used data to predict the number of British coronavirus cases will triple by the start of August.

Whilst British scientists have warned that case numbers must be in the hundreds and not the thousands before there can be any end to the lockdown.

The national medical director of NHS England, Professor Stephen Powis warned, “It won’t take much for this virus to start increasing its transmission again and to spread more widely.”

He added, “It would be foolish and not right if we lost the benefits that we have gained over the last four weeks, which I know have been hard for everybody.

“So, it’s really important that despite the weather, we stay at home, we keep to the guidelines that we’ve been issued with.”

This comes as a further 813 people died from coronavirus in hospitals across the UK on Saturday, bringing the total death toll to 20,319 in just 51 days.