UK coronavirus: Whitty says aim of lockdown is to reduce R enough to move on after 2 December – as it happened

Chris Whitty says he expects lockdown will bring R below 1 and measures could be eased after 2 December. This liveblog is closed - for updates, follow the global liveblog

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6.14pm GMT

The decision as to whether to lift restrictions on December 2 is rightly a decision for ministers and parliament.

I think that the aim of this is to get the rates down far enough that it's a realistic possibility to move into a different state of state of play at that point in time.

I think that the prime minister would probably want us to look at whether there should be variations on exactly the same tiering system as at the moment, rather than just assuming we would just revert to an absolutely identical one.

I think there's a lot to learn. And in fact, the next two or three weeks we will start to see the effects of the tiering in an even more granular way than we've got to date and I think we should wait until we got that before we start to decide how best to use that in future.

More good news as the Zoe CSS app survey continues to show a plateauing and slight fall in new cases in England Wales and Scotland with an R of 1.0 - cases still increasing in the south from a lower base. Use the app to stay ahead ! pic.twitter.com/KITxK6NopG

5.51pm GMT

A Foreign Office minister was accused of burying his head in the sand by claiming no connection existed between the 400m debt owed by the UK to Iranian, and the inability of the UK to secure the release of the British Iranian dual national Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe.

The minister, James Cleverly, told MPs today the two issues were unrelated.

We recognise the debt is due. We are working to resolve this.

This is a 40-year-old debt and we are exploring options to bring this to a conclusion. It is not possible for me to comment either further or in more detail on this.