Let me ask you a question. What is the cost of a lockdown? What is the cost of a lockdown?

We've heard about the benefits. We've heard about the lives that we are saving, the cases that are not being transmitted.

But what is the real cost? Well, there's a study out today from the Legatum Institute that shows us just one aspect of those costs.

And it's this.

An additional 700,000 people in the UK have now gone below the poverty line because of COVID.

120,000 of those people are children. Now 15 million people in the UK are below the

poverty line. That's 22% of the population, but it gets worse in London, where 28% of our citizens,

two and a half million Londoners are currently living below the poverty line and a chunk of those people are

there because of this lockdown effort and its disproportionate response to the virus. But it gets

even worse. At certain boroughs in this city, for example, Tower Hamlets, six in ten children

are in poverty, six and 10 children are in poverty.

Six and 10 children.

And yet what did our current mayor of London do?

He said all boroughs go as one into lockdown.

He said all 32 boroughs when only half

were actually hitting the metrics that qualified

as lockdown.

This is a month ago.

He said we all go as one,

shutting the economy down

and pulling more families and more children into poverty.

This is only one of the many, many, many costs

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