To laugh or to cry. It is difficult to know which response is more appropriate to the Government’s attempt to quantify the impact of lockdown, published last night with the title “Analysis of the health, economic and social effects of COVID-19 and the approach to tiering“.

If you wanted a chuckle, then imagine you had the job of the unfortunate civil servant who had been given the job of cobbling together this strange hotch-potch of information. The document is clearly a rushed job, published with the political aim of persuading the growing number of Conservative MPs who are sceptical about the need for tighter restrictions that the