As ministers ponder new restrictions, Cabinet ministers are being guided by modelling from Sage which suggests the NHS could come under intense pressure. But the debate has exposed a hole in the heart of policymaking – little information of lockdown’s economic consequences has been presented, raising the risk of imbalanced decision making.

Ministers opted to shun catastrophic but evidence-light predictions of 3,000 hospitalisations a day from Sage, in what one senior economist called a “seminal” moment in the pandemic saga. 

Ministers are considering three options for further action after Christmas if required: a light touch call for families to limit social contacts, tougher curbs on household mixing and an 8pm curfew on hospitality, or a drastic third option of a return to full lockdown. 

But, despite the access of chief medical officer Chris Whitty, the Cabinet have not heard formal presentations on the economic and wider societal impact of any further restrictions – running the risk of yet more unbalanced decision-making.

The situation has so frustrated LSE academic Paul Dolan that he wants to set up a new “Wellbeing Commission” to embed formally longer-term factors in the decision-making process, such as the impact on jobs and children’s education.

Professor Dolan, author of Happiness by Design, says: “It’s 21 months into this pandemic, and we’re still not doing anything to feed into the decision-making process anything that models any consequences other than virus transmission. That is an absolutely broken policy process. 

“The second thing is that all of the incentives are in the system for Sage to overestimate the impact, like the worst case scenario with the virus transmission, because they only have to underestimate it once for them to be called out for it. They can keep overestimating it time and time and time again, and not be held to account.”

But in a population with vaccine rates above 80pc and booster rates of more than 50pc, the words of Steve Barclay, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, represented a welcome change of tone from politicians once wary of going against the scientists. “We should also be conscious that taking further restrictions comes with a very significant economic cost,” he told BBC Breakfast. The policy debate is no longer one-sided.

Forecasting the economic effect of further restrictions, let alone the longer-term impact, is hardly an exact science. But, according to Capital Economics, ministers considering a potential return to lockdown should weigh up a potential hit to the economy of around 2.5pc of GDP – equivalent to more than £50bn in lost output. 

Economist Bethany Beckett stresses that as businesses and households have adapted to lockdowns, the economic damage has receded each time, compared with April 2020’s staggering 25pc drop in output. In the third lockdown, the peak to trough fall in January from December was 2.5pc.