[2][3] Established on 10 November 2020, the group's aim is to challenge the use of blanket lockdown measures, and argue for a different approach to dealing with the pandemic.
[4][5] The chief demand of the CRG on 10 November was that "ministers undertake and publish a full cost-benefit analysis of restrictions on a regional basis looking at the economic and health costs of a lockdown; "MPs must be in a position to assess the relative health implications on both sides of the argument of repeated restrictions, with a view to removing them immediately if it cannot be proved that they are saving more lives than they cost.
"[1] Labour MPs were expected to abstain,[1] and the Daily Telegraph published an editorial in which the economic forecast demanded by the CRG was described as a "disappointing dossier", and a "thin piece of analysis", which contained "fantasy counterfactual" and "questionable assumptions".
"Crucially, it fails to address the relative economic impact of being placed in different tiers... Before [the restrictions] are enacted, the public is entitled to a more honest assessment of the consequences than ministers have deigned to give them thus far.
[10] The CRG wrote a letter to the Prime Minister in February 2021, backed by 63 MPs, calling for the lifting of all lockdown restrictions by the end of April, when all adults over 50 or with underlying health conditions were projected to have been vaccinated.