Transport Secretary Grant Shapps admitted on Good Morning Britain on Monday that he is “gutted and devastated” about the new Christmas restrictions.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson put London and most of the South East into Tier 4 on Saturday, and cancelled the relaxing of guidelines during the Christmas period.
Mr Shapps said while it was heartbreaking to have cancelled Christmas, it was necessary because of the sharp rise in Covid cases.
But Adil Ray, who is covering for Piers Morgan, clashed with Mr Shapps over whether he was doing what the scientists recommended.
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The MP said: “It’s pretty sad to be cancelling Christmas, obviously, it’s something we do with a heavy heavy heart, but when the facts change, and that’s what this new variant of the virus has done, we have to respond, because it is much more easily transmitted.
Charlotte Hawkins asked how they could dash hopes at the last minute, and said GMB viewers were furious about it.
Mr Shapps said: “I can absolutely share that frustration, I am gutted I can’t see my family, I haven’t seen some of my family the whole year, and I share your viewers’ frustration.
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“Unfortunately, this is man versus virus, and we don’t control this variation of it.
“There have been thousands of mutations of this virus, but this particular one, we know transmits up to 70% more easily.”
Charlotte told him: “The thing is, even before you realised it was this new variant that was to blame, you know Tier 3 restrictions weren’t working in Kent.
“Why didn’t we see action taken sooner to prevent this from spreading across the country?”
Mr Shapps replied: “We didn’t have the data, we didn’t have the facts, scientists came to us on Friday and said we have done more work on this and we have fully sequenced the genome.
“That’s something this country has done more of for coronavirus than any other country in the world, in fact we are approaching half of all the sequencing of the coronavirus has been done in the UK.”
Charlotte argued: “But you could see from the figure without looking at the genome that there was an issue, haven’t you lost control of this situation because you didn’t act sooner?”
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Mr Shapps replied that at first the government considered the blame fell on the public for not adhering to lockdown measures, until the science showed it was the new strain.
“I am gutted, I am devastated about this Christmas like all your viewers, but I would rather we saw this Christmas out on our own than not get to next Christmas,” he said.
Adil clashed with Mr Shapps over whether he was following the scientists advice, or cherry picking it and then making his own choices.
“Tell us what you are doing, are you following the scientists or are you simply being guided?” he asked, as the two men loudly talked over each other.
Mr Shapps continued that any other minister faced with the figures would have made the same decision.
Adil told Mr Shapps the relaxing of the rules over Christmas were a dangerous rule to begin with, asking Mr Shapps why he did not take the scientific advice at the end of November not to do so.
Mr Shapps said at the time the figures were falling and the government wanted to help boost the mood of the nation.
“We wanted to provide something for the people at Christmas, unfortunately that cannot be the case, and I am really really sorry, we all are,” he added.
* Good Morning Britain airs weekdays on ITV at 6am
Originally from https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/grant-shapps-admits-hes-gutted-23199377