UK Covid LIVE: Boris and Starmer in PMQs clash over Freedom Day delay amid fears over Pfizer jab shortage - Evening Standard

At a stormy PMQs, the Labour leader said the Prime Minister's “indecision” at the borders had “blown it" as far as sticking to the original June 21 reopening plan - to which Mr Johnson shouted "rubbish".

Just 1.2 million first doses were dispensed in the last week, compared with more than three million a week near the start of the programme.

Speaking in the Commons, he said: “When the Prime Minister refers to a terminus I fear he doesn’t mean the end, I fear he’s thinking more of a bus terminus where we end one journey to start another and there will be another vehicle to impose another lockdown extension.”.

Conservative Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) said that young people “need to see a return” to normality.

He said: “I spoke to one of the very senior NHS leads who has university-aged children and he said to me – and I wrote it down – too many of us making decisions have forgotten what it feels like to be a 20-year-old or how miserable it is to be a 20-year-old right now.

He said: “I will not be supporting the Government this evening, but it will not be with a heavy heart, it will be because I’ve a real conviction that what is being done and the approach that the Government has made on this issue is wrong.

He said in the Commons: “I also want to tell the House about the results of our consultation on vaccination as a condition of deployment in care homes.

Conservative former minister Mark Harper, who chairs the lockdown-sceptic Covid Recovery Group, said he doubted 100 per cent of the people in the top nine priority groups will have received two doses of the vaccine by July 19, before noting: “My worry, and the worry of others, is we’re going to get to this point in four weeks’ time and we’re just going to be back here all over again extending the restrictions.”.

“In fact, as of midnight last night, there are now 1.2 million people over 50 and 4.4 million over-40s who have had that first jab but not the second, and we seek to get a second jab into a majority of these – not all – by July 19.

NHS England data shows a total of 7,937,103 jabs were given to people in London between December 8 and June 15, including 4,822,457 first doses and 3,114,646 second doses.

This compares with 6,548,817 first doses and 5,010,974 second doses given to people in the Midlands, a total of 11,559,791.