The SNP’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford has called for Boris Johnson to close the borders to “all but essential travel”.

Mr Blackford told MPs: “On travel, is the prime minister prepared to learn from his government’s past mistakes?

“Will he consider closing the UK border to all but essential travel to prevent new strains of the virus spreading?”

Boris Johnson replied: “As I said just now, we will make sure that we protect our borders from the readmission of the virus and he has seen what we did already in the case of the South African strain.

“And we’ll bring forward further measures to stop the readmission of the virus.”

This is the moment Mr Johnson confirmed the end of England’s third lockdown may be delayed beyond mid-February:

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said that his party will support the new restrictions and urged people to comply with them.

He told MPs: “The situation we face is clearly very serious, perhaps the darkest moment of the pandemic.

“The virus is out of control, over a million people in England now have Covid, the number of hospital admissions is rising, tragically so are the numbers of people dying.

“And it’s only the early days of January and the NHS is under huge strain. In those circumstances, tougher restrictions are necessary.

“We will support them, we will vote for them and urge everybody to comply with the new rules – stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives.”

Boris Johnson has confirmed the end of lockdown may be delayed beyond mid-February, political editor Andrew Woodcock reports.

The government will use “every available second” to place an “invisible shield” around elderly and vulnerable people via the Covid-19 vaccine, Boris Johnson has said.

In a statement to the Commons, the prime minister said: “There’s a fundamental difference between the regulations before the House today and the position we faced at any previous stage, because we now have the vaccines that are our means of escape.

“And we will use every available second of the lockdown to place this invisible shield around the elderly and the vulnerable.”

He said there was “no choice” but to put England back into a nationwide lockdown: “The tiers, that the House agreed last month, was working with the old variant, but alas this mutation – spreading with frightening ease and speed in spite of the sterling work of the British public – this mutation has led to more cases than we’ve seen ever before.

“Numbers that alas cannot be explained away by the meteoric rise in testing. When the ONS reports that more than 2 per cent of the population is now infected and when the number of patients in hospitals in England is now 40 per cent higher than the first peak in April it is inescapable that the facts are changing and we must change our response.

“And so we have no choice but to return to a national lockdown in England with similar measures being adopted by the devolved administrations, so we can control this new variant until we can take the most likely victims out of its path with vaccines.”

People in the UK should be wary of fraudulent messages offering them access to coronavirus vaccinations, trading standards authorities have warned.

The Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI) said that text messages had been sent out including links to fake NHS websites that asked recipients for bank details, supposedly for verification purposes.

Such messages were first reported at the end of December on the Western Isles of Scotland, but the CTSI says they are “by no means limited to the region”.

Katherine Hart, lead officer at CTSI, said: “The vaccine brings great hope for an end to the pandemic and lockdowns, but some only wish to create even further misery by defrauding others.

“The NHS will never ask you for banking details, passwords, or pin numbers and these should serve as instant red flags.”

Scientists have warned that the rising trend in Covid cases, hospitalisations and deaths could continue for three more weeks, with the UK yet to reach the peak of the current second wave, Samuel Lovett reports.

England could emerge from the lockdown in mid-February, according to Graham Medley, professor of infectious disease modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and a member of Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage).

Speaking in a personal capacity, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think it’s possible, I mean that’s obviously a government decision what they decided to do at what point.

“But it really depends upon what happens over the next five weeks in terms of the infection rates, it’s much like in March and April.

“We know more now but nonetheless we’re still looking at the the epidemic increasing and looking for that peak and hoping it happens soon.”

Asked about Professor Chris Whitty’s comments that restrictions may be needed next winter, he said: “We’re in for a long haul, we still (have) a long way to go in this epidemic.

“Vaccination is a way out, but I think he’s right to raise that possibility that there could be – next winter or even the winter after – the possibility that we will see a resurgence of Covid to such an extent that government again has to take measures to prevent another large outbreak.

“But let’s get there. We’re very hopeful now that this virus is seasonal so that it will reduce once the spring and summer comes, and then that gives us an additional chance to be able to prepare and in particular to get vaccination done for everybody.”

MPs have been recalled to parliament to vote on England’s third national lockdown measures, with Boris Johnson updating MPs on the new controls. 

Chiara Giordano looks at when parliament will debate and then vote on the measures:

Education Select Committee chair Robert Halfon described the situation with schools as “a mess”.

The Conservative MP told Sky News: “Clearly it has been a mess but we are where we are.

“But I think now we have to move on and make sure we have an exam system that is a level playing field for students and fair to the disadvantaged.

“We know that in the last lockdown millions of students did hardly any learning at all, despite the individual efforts of many teachers and many schools.

“We also know that despite hundreds of thousands of laptops going to students from the government there are still hundreds of thousands of students on the wrong side of the digital divide.”

Mr Halfon said “there must be a level playing field” when it comes to this year’s exams.

He said that teacher-assessed grades “often discriminate against disadvantaged pupils” and called for “independent assessors” to provide “a check and a balance to those teacher-assessed grades”.

“There needs to be a proper and fair appeals system as well.”