text: “There’s a habit, especially for politicians, to cherry-pick numbers because they need to justify decisions.
  “Sometimes even if the decision could make sense or could be informed by some information they give a number just as a statistic to silence opposition.”
  A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “This scientific evidence was reviewed and approved by SAGE, as well as modelling groups such as The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, who have independently generated similar results.