WE’VE seen some extraordinary achievements from our NHS, our scientists and government this year, nationally and locally.

With the help of the Armed Forces, new Nightingale hospitals were built in days and our ability to test for Covid-19 has gone from 2,000 to 500,000 tests a day. Universal credit has survived the toughest of stress tests and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs set up a furlough scheme from scratch in a matter of weeks.

Despite these successes, we are living through periods of national restrictions that require great businesses to close and great talents to waste unproductively at home worrying about their finances; not to mention all the health consequences people are suffering as a result of restrictions.

We’ve burnt through borrowed cash at a rate unknown in our history and we all know we are living in a completely unsustainable economic position.

We’ve also sacrificed the freedoms we’ve come to take for granted in a modern, liberal democracy, including the freedom to worship with others.

I was reluctantly able to support a time-limited period of national restrictions, but I can’t accept that lockdowns and fear of restrictions make a strategy. I want to be able to influence my Government to adopt an approach that is enduring and based on the very best critical thinking from around the world. That’s why I’m on the steering committee of the Coronavirus Recovery Group of MPs. Its purpose is to ensure we leave the current restrictions on time and develop an enduring strategy for living with this new virus that protects our health, the economy, education and society.

Our group believes that publishing as much data as possible and allowing a wider range of experts to use it will lead to new insights. To give an example, let’s have clear, transparent debate between the public health benefits of stopping people playing golf against the public health costs of not allowing people to exercise, as well as factoring in the economic costs of shutting this pursuit down.

We’ve done lots of amazing things in the UK this year. But we can’t carry on as we are. Let’s find an enduring way to live with Covid-19 until a vaccine becomes a solution for us all.