Prime minister Boris Johnson on England local lockdown rules

The prime minister told the House of Commons that cases had quadrupled in the last few weeks, and deaths had begun to rise.

He said: “There are those who say that on that logic, we should go back into a full national lockdown of indefinite duration, closing schools and businesses, telling people again to stay at home as we did in March. Once again shattering our lives and our society.

“I do not believe that would be the right course. We would not only be depriving our children of their education, we would do such damage to our economy as to erode our long-term ability to fund the NHS and other crucial public services.

“And on the other side of the argument, there are those who think that the patience of the public is now exhausted, that we should abandon the fight against Covid, stand aside, let nature take her course and call a halt to these repressions of liberty.”

Instead, the prime minister sought to bring clarity on the "complex" local lockdown rules.

In order to bring local lockdown areas in England in line with each other, Mr Johnson announced that a new three-tier local lockdown system would launch.

The three tiers, representing risk levels of medium, high and very high, will each have their own set of restrictions.

Most of England will be placed in the medium tier.

This will see restrictions currently in place nationally in England, such as the rule of six for social gatherings and the 10pm pub curfews, continued.

The high risk tier will see restrictions brought in line with the majority of areas currently in local lockdown in England.

The focus of this tier, the prime minister said, was to stop household to household transmission.

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Mixing indoors would not be allowed in this tier, but the rule of six will continue to apply outdoors.

The very high tier will be for areas where transmission rates are rising most rapidly.

Social gatherings will be prohibited, including in people's gardens, and pubs will be closed.

Regardless of tier though, Mr Johnson said retail, schools and universities would remain open.

However, he did not mention travel restrictions.

Earlier in the day Vaughan Gething, health minister for Wales, expressed his disappointment at the lack of action from the UK Government in preventing people from lockdown areas in England travelling to Wales.

In Wales, unlike England, people in local lockdown must have a reasonable excuse to leave their area.

This can include work, childcare or health reasons.

Mr Gething also questioned whether England's new three tier system would succeed in bringing the R rate below one.

"We will be watching with interest what the prime minister does have to say because we didn't get clarity on that in this morning's Cobra meeting," said Mr Gething.

"It's also clear there will be measures beyond tier three as well, and we understand some part of England will have additional measures put in place to go beyond tier three.

"The tier three measures as we understand them in England won't be enough to bring the R number below one, so we are going to have to think about additional measures beyond that."