On 31 October 2020, the Prime Minister announced tougher nationwide restrictions in England—the second lockdown.200 The UK public were once again told to “stay at 194 GOV.UK, SAGE 59, 24 September 2020 195 Oral evidence taken before the Science and Technology Committee on 3 November 2020, HC (2019–21) 136, Q1505 196 Oral evidence taken before the Science and Technology Committee on 3 November 2020, HC (2019–21) 136, Q1507 197 Professor Carl Heneghan (Director at Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine at University of Oxford); Professor Sunetra Gupta (Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at University of Oxford) (CLL0117)) 198 Q1154 199 For example, the changing advice on working from home, the ‘eat out to help out’ scheme and Q1093. 200 GOV.UK, ‘Prime Minister’s statement on coronavirus (COVID-19): 31 October 2020’, accessed 17 September 2021 Coronavirus: lessons learned to date 51 home”. However, unlike the first lockdown, schools remained open. The Prime Minister announced the second lockdown to the House of Commons on 2 November (having announced it to the nation on 31 October), where he imposed a clear time limit on the lockdown: Let me stress that these restrictions are time limited. After four weeks, on Wednesday 2 December, they will expire, and we intend to return to a tiered system on a local and regional basis, according to the latest data and trends.201 On 2 December 2020, the second lockdown ended, and England went back into the three- tier system. However, case numbers remained high (at 14,879 on 3 December 2020)202 and started rising again. As a result, on 19 December 2020, the Prime Minister added a tier 4 to the tiering system.203 This followed the discovery of the new UK variant (B.1.1.7) of covid-19, or the “Alpha” variant.