Small business minister Paul Scully tried to reassure the public over the rising Covid rates across Europe on Monday morning by saying the UK was in a very different position.
Austria has become the first western nation to lockdown again following a surge of Covid infections, while Germany is thinking about making vaccinations mandatory and vaccine passports are being introduced in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Downing Street, on the other hand, has maintained that it has no plans to introduce restrictions any time soon in England.
Addressing concerns about Europe, Scully told TalkRADIO: “Clearly we’ve got plan B in our back pocket, as any responsible government would do.
“But we’re in a very different position to the rest of Europe.
“We will always work on the latest data, but we want to make sure – we don’t see anything yet that suggests we’re going anywhere near plan B.”
Talk show host Julia Hartley-Brewer pushed for further promises that England would remain without restrictions for the foreseeable future, asking: “Why can’t the government reassure us that vaccine mandates and lockdowns won’t be imposed here?”
Scully replied: “The government has got a slightly different approach to the one you have espoused over the last 18 months – we will never say that we will never do something because we’ve seen the extraordinary situation which has been totally unprecedented.
“But we’ve been really clear here, the fact that chasing the virus like we did last year didn’t particularly work, we know we don’t really want to be locking down unless something really radically changes, and there’s no suggestion that that’s anywhere near the case at the moment.
“But we want to make sure like any responsible government would do, we do have a plan B, we are working through different scenarios and contingencies.”
Indeed, not everyone is concerned about the rising Covid cases across Europe.
Professor Mark Woolhouse from Edinburgh University recently told The Observer: “I think the UK is ahead at present and Europe is following us.”
He claimed that the Delta variant “hit many European countries much later than it did in Britain”, and that it has now reached these nations when vaccine protection is beginning to wane.
However Covid cases have gradually crept up since the UK unlocked back in July.
Winter is considered the peak period for the virus as well, because people spend more time indoors making it easier for Covid to travel from one person to another.