Matt Hancock has told MPs that the Tier 3 restrictions imposed before thesecond national lockdown in England were not strong enough.
The Prime Ministerhas since unveiled beefed-up tiered restrictions which are due to come intoplace next month.
Mr Hancock told a joint session of the Health and SocialCare Committee and Science and Technology Committee: “The trigger thatpersuaded me that we needed to go into national lockdown, having beenessentially the architect of the tiered system and a big supporter of it, wasthat we saw case rates going up suddenly and quite sharply in almost everypart of England."