If my hon. Friend would allow me, I would like to make a little bit of progress, otherwise I will have remarkably little time left.
We have a clear strategy, which is to control and suppress the virus while doing all we can to protect the economy, people’s work, schools and the NHS, so that it, in turn, can care for us.
Let me turn to some of the points made by hon. Members. Various reasons have been suggested for the rapid introduction of the regulations. In fact, the shadow Minister made some suggestions. The Government have had to act fast. When we see the rates of increase—particularly when we take away the average across the country, and look at specific areas and parts of the population where the doubling rate can be going up really quickly—it is clear that we need to act fast. The alternative is to act slowly—and if we did that for several days, it would be inaction. That just means that the virus would be left to spread further and faster.
Colleagues have asked for further information about the impact and effectiveness of measures. I get the sense that some Members would like to hear, “If you do x, you get y,” in a very mathematical way. We are dealing with a new disease that simply is not known to the level of “A leads to B exactly.” We look at a huge amount of evidence, including at what is happening overseas, the difference made by local lockdowns and evidence from the test and trace system. All that evidence informs the decisions that are made. We know that social contact is a particular cause of the spread, so we must reduce social contact.