NEW Forest West MP Sir Desmond Swayne claimed the Government's chief medical officer and chief scientific adviser committed a "sacking offence" last week.

Professor Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance gave a presentation in which they warned how 200 or more people in the UK could die each day by mid-November, if the current rate of coronavirus infection was not halted.

Former minister Sir Desmond, who has been outspoken against some of the government's handling of the pandemic, was part of a Tory backlash to further restrictions during a lengthy Covid-19 debate in the House of Commons on Monday.

Sir Desmond questioned if Prime Minister Boris Johnson had been “abducted by Dr Strangelove and reprogrammed by the Sage over to the dark side”, a reference to the 1964 comedy centred on Cold War fears of a nuclear war.

Speaking in the Commons, he said: “Less than a year ago, I celebrated what I thought was the election of a sceptical and liberal-conservative administration.

“And now I am left wondering if the Prime Minister hasn’t been abducted by Dr Strangelove and reprogrammed by the Sage over to the dark side.

“The purpose of politicians is to impose a measure of proportion, a sense of proportion on science, and not to be enthralled to it.

“Now I will make myself very unpopular, but I believe that the appearance of the chiefs (chief medical officer Prof Chris Whitty and chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance) last week should have been a sacking offence.

“When they presented that graph, with the caveat that it wasn’t a prediction, but nevertheless it was clear that they presented it as a plausible scenario, with its 50,000 cases per day by mid-October based on the doubling of infections by the week.

“Not once, not on one day since March have there been infections on that day that were double that of the day of the week proceeding. Not once. Where did this doubling come from? What was their purpose in presenting such a graph?

“It was the purpose of the Fat Boy in Pickwick Papers, ‘I wants to make yer flesh creep’. It was project fear, it was an attempt to terrify the British people, as if they haven’t been terrified enough.”

Sir Desmond said he believed the Government’s policy has been “disproportionate”, adding: “By decree, it has interfered in our private lives, and our family lives, telling us who we may meet, when we may meet them and what we must wear when we meet them.

“We have the cruelty, the cruelty, of elderly people in care homes, disorientated, being unable to see the faces of their loved ones and to receive a hug.”