Johnson criticized over post-lockdown plans

With national lockdown scheduled to end just after midnight on Tuesday, members of the United Kingdom's Parliament spent the evening debating and then voting on a new regional tiered system of restrictions to be introduced from Wednesday onwards, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson's proposals coming in for criticism from many members of his own Conservative Party.

The opposition Labour Party and Scottish National Party had announced in advance that they would be abstaining on the vote, which would see 55 million people being moved into tiers 2 or 3, with only a handful of areas in the lower-risk tier 1.

The absence of those votes against the government should have ensured that the measures were passed, but not without outspoken criticism can open it now of the government's position from within its own ranks.

Johnson said he "understood people's frustration" at the prospect of the tier system being brought in, but said it was "designed to be tough to keep (the virus) under control".

"What we can't do is forsake and abandon all the gains we have made now just when we are starting to see real progress in the science," he added.

One of the critics, former Conservative chief whip Mark Harper, accused the government of failing to produce information to justify the restrictions, saying the "wheels are coming off the government's arguments".

Speaking ahead of the vote, another former minister, Mel Stride, said he was also unimpressed by government attempts to explain away the limitations it wanted to bring in.

"On a number of occasions, I've requested from the chancellor and Treasury officials that they publish an analysis of the economic impacts of the three tiers," he said.

"With little over 24 hours until MPs vote on the new tiered system, this rehashed document offers very little further in economic terms other than that which the (Office for Budget Responsibility) published last week."

Meanwhile, the head of reinsurance company Swiss Re has said the insurance industry was caught off guard by the size of governments' reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic and the extent of the lockdowns imposed.

"The one thing none of us has assumed was... the higher weight on human life than we had thought," Christian Mumenthaler told the Financial Times. "The value of human life got massively higher. .. We hadn't foreseen that they would close down everything."

Swiss Re provides back-up cover for primary insurance companies. Mumenthaler said it would be "a long time" before the final figure of how much his company had to pay out would become clear, and that the whole industry's modelling systems would need to be reviewed as a result of what had happened during the pandemic.

He added that governments should think more about their contingency plans for any event such as the pandemic being repeated in the future.

"The only viable option in my view is for governments, who had to jump in anyway, to think about what mechanisms they want to have in future to be more effective and efficient in the next pandemic," he said.