MPs Andrew Lewer and Andrea Leadsom both rebel against Government's 'Plan B'

Northampton South MP Andrew Lewer and Andrea Leadsom rebelled against the Government's 'Plan B' restrictions, joining the largest rebellion of the Prime Minister's premiership.

Under the planned restrictions, people wanting to attend large events will require either proof of two doses of a vaccination, which will become three after a "reasonable" amount of time, or a recent negative lateral flow test.

While the restrictions still passed, the two MPs joined almost 100 rebel Conservatives as well as most Liberal Democrats and relatively few Labour MPs in their opposition.

In a column he wrote for this paper, Mr Lewer has defended his decision, saying the Britain we see now is far better prepared for the current Covid pandemic than it was this time last year.

Mr Lewer said: "We were told that the delivery of our vaccination programme would be a game changer and by getting the most vulnerable vaccinated, this would be enough to relax restrictions.

"By the 25th January, the vaccination programme was powering ahead with almost 80% of the over 80s protected. 32% of all hospital beds were occupied by Covid patients, but hospitals coped and the system did not collapse.

"Twelve months on, even with Omicron, we are in a profoundly different situation. We have administered over 120 million vaccines with 22 million booster jabs already delivered.

"Even with infections at last January’s levels, the recent Covid bed occupancy rate only around 5% (not 32%) and deaths are a fraction of January levels."

The MP argued that vaccinations have 'broken the back of infections versus hospitalisations and deaths', meaning the new restrictions, posed in response to a Covid strain generally referred to as 'mild', are 'draconian' and unnecessary.

Mr Lewer went on: "In the absence of proper evidenced based decisions, we are not only back in the realms of mandatory face coverings, being forced to work from home and mandatory quarantine for travelling from a number of African countries.

"But the Government want to go further and make it illegal to go about certain parts of our lives without mandatory vaccine passports.

"We were promised last year that the vaccine programme was the path away from what then Health Minister Matt Hancock described as 'draconian lockdowns.'

"He was right and this is why I will be voting against the ever more draconian restrictions this week."

A representative of Mr Lewer also cited concerns that staff are being driven out, both from the NHS and the Civil Service, either by mandating vaccines for the NHS staff or intense six to seven day work weeks brought on by the pandemic.

The representative said the conditions are pushing experienced candidates away from these roles and towards companies like Amazon, leaving the Government to fill the gaps with less experienced personnel.

Mr Lewer's full column will be featured in this paper tomorrow (Thursday 16th December) where he goes more in-depth on his reasons for opposing the new restrictions and the impact existing ones have already had.

Andrea Leadsom MP was not available for comment at the time of writing.