Breaking: MPs vote lockdown into law from midnight tonight
England will enter a month-long lockdown from midnight tonight, after MPs approved the new shutdown.
MPs supported the fresh restrictions by 516 votes to 38 in a House of Commons motion this afternoon.
It means pubs, bars, restaurants and non-essential shops will shut from midnight until 2 December.
All people in England will be told to stay at home, unless they are attending school, college, university, essential work or to shop for food.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson assured MPs he would do his best for retailers to reopen before the essential Christmas trading period, after describing the second national lockdown as a “nightmare” for business.
Johnson warned the country could suffer deaths “on a grievous scale” without fresh action, with hospitals set for “extraordinary trouble” next month.
It comes after the UK reported a further 492 coronavirus-related deaths in the past 24 hours, and 25,177 confirmed new infections.
But the volte face comes less than a week after foreign secretary Dominic Raab said it would be “desperately unfair” to impose blanket measures when infection rates are so different across the country.
Several Tory MPs rebelled on the vote this afternoon, warning that the fresh lockdown measures would restrict personal liberties and plunge businesses into uncertainty.
Sir Graham Brady, chair of the influential 1922 committee of Conservative backbenchers, told MPs he would vote against the lockdown “with greater conviction” than any other vote cast in his 23 years in the Commons.
“The thing that troubles me the most is that the government is reaching too far into the private and family lives of our constituents,” he said.
“I think there is an, unintended perhaps. arrogance in assuming the government has the right to do so,” he added.
Former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith echo Brady’s comments, telling MPs the lockdown was “not necessary now”.
This is a breaking news story. More to follow