FOUR MPs from the Daily Echo area were part of a large Tory rebellion against extending lockdown restrictions by up to four weeks.

South Dorset MP Richard Drax, Poole MP Robert Syms, Christchurch MP Chris Chope and New Forest West MP Desmond Swayne all voted against the Government yesterday.

West Dorset MP Chris Loader also voted with the Conservative rebels, as did six Labour MPs.

In the end the lockdown restrictions were extended, backed by a Commons vote of 461 to 60.

It means the regulations can stay in place until July 19.

However, during the debate Mr Drax said: “What on earth is happening to our country? Muzzled, acquiescent and fearful.

Bournemouth Echo:

“Having fought and defeated one project fear, I never thought I’d experience another. Sadly, unlike the first, the polls suggest the majority of the population has succumbed to the second.

“Armed with this information, the decision-makers feel they can creep out with their shovels and move the goalposts at will.

“Personally, I’m not surprised the nation has been beaten into submission when day after day, hour after hour, we’re deluged with dire warnings of doom and gloom by Government advisers of one kind or another.”

Meanwhile, Mr Syms told MPs “we have won the battle” against Covid-19 after he highlighted hospital admission rates in his area.

Bournemouth Echo:

On the delay to lift restrictions, he added: “My view is that most of the senior ministers who took this decision need a damn good holiday because if you look at the data, if you look at what’s happening in the country, the restrictions are totally out of kilter with the sense of the problem.

“Let me take the south west of England, there’s 5.6 million people, there are 23 people in hospital, there are two in ICU. In Dorset where there’s nearly a million people, we have one person in hospital.

“Yet hundreds of couples that want to get married, businesses that want to be viable, people that want to get their lives back in order, I just think the balance is wrong.”

Mr Swayne said: “The Government has set a disastrous precedent in terms of the future of liberty in these islands.”

Bournemouth Echo:

He added: “The Government does not trust the people that it governs.

"Now many members of Sage – Sage there’s a misnomer if ever there was one – but members of Sage have been out busily undermining public morale, one of them even sharing her dystopian vision that we must all remain masked and distanced in perpetuity, a shocking, horrible prospect.

“The fact is that once the consequences of this virus in terms of their financial and health impact have long been addressed, the moral impact will remain.”

Taking a swipe at the Prime Minister, he went on: “Now, I could understand it if we were a communist party, but this is the party that inherited the true wisdom of the Whig tradition.

“This is the party of Margaret Thatcher who said that liberty was indivisible, this is the party that only recently elected a leader that they believed, that we believed, was a libertarian, there is much on which we are going to have to reflect.”