Sir Lindsay Hoyle: Christmas is a ‘major challenge’ for the UK

• Video report by Hannah Miller

Speaker Lindsay Hoyle says families need to be able to spend time together by Christmas, as he hopes lockdown will reduce infections enough for restrictions to be eased.

In an interview with Granada Reports to mark one year in the role, the Chorley MP describes Christmas as ‘a major challenge’, saying he would ‘sooner take some pain now for the gain that we should see at Christmas.’

He said: "I recognise this has a major impact on businesses - whether its the shops, the gyms, all these things that I want to see open.

"What I do hope is that this four weeks we get on top of the R number, get on top of this pandemic and hopefully we can at least have a Christmas that resembles something like Christmas should.

"We do need the shops back open, we do need people to be able to meet, we need families to be able to get together. Christmas is a major challenge, and I’d sooner take some pain now for the gain that we should see at Christmas."

ITV News were also given access to previously hidden cloisters in the centre of Parliament - as the Speaker met with those restoring the stonework.

The two-story Cloisters to St Stephen’s Chapel were created around 1520 for King Henry VIII after his accession to the throne. They were used by canons and vicors as they processed to sing mass for the king and his realm, but were later used as kitchens and servants’ quarters.

In 1794, they featured at the heart of the first ever Speaker’s House in Westminster, right next to the old House of Commons. 

Much of the upper story was damaged in a fire in 1834, causing the Speaker to live offsite until a new Speaker’s House was built, which remains to this day.

Following their restoration, the Cloisters became a cloakroom for MPs. But they were damaged by bombs in December 1940 and had to be demolished.

By the late 1960s the Cloisters had been rebuilt and transformed into offices for MPs. But the cold, damp and lack of privacy caused MPs constantly to complain, with one politician infamously naming the area the ‘Gothic slum’.

But now, after a year-old project, a crumbling panel of the 500-year-old Cloisters has been restored by a team of stonemasons.

The Speaker Lindsay Hoyle branded the work "fantastic", joking that the stonework would look great on a fireplace!

"It would be wonderful if we could bring the rest of the court up to this standard", he said.