How MPs will be spending Christmas this year

‘I’m just looking forward to some time with them,’ Clive Lewis says about scaled-back celebrations with family

MPs have spoken about what their Christmas is looking like this year (UK Parliament)

With just a few days to go until Christmas Day, many people across the nation are preparing to celebrate very differently this year.  

While the Christmas relaxations have been restricted to just one day across the UK, millions in London and surrounding counties have been banned from mixing with people from other households – with no exception on 25 December.

MPs have told The Independent about their plans for a quieter Christmas than usual, amid the coronavirus pandemic and festive restrictions. 

“I’m just spending it with my wife and daughter,” Labour’s Clive Lewis tells The Independent. “And that’s it."

For Labour MP Clive Lewis, he would usually spend it with extended family – but is planning on spending it in London this year, with his immediate family. 

“I’m just looking forward to some time with them," he says.

Fellow Labour MP Chris Bryant tells The Independent this Christmas will also be a scaled-down affair for him too. “It is just the three of us. Me, my other half and my mother-in-law," he says.

He said he would usually celebrate with around 14 people from his family and his husband’s. 

“It’s a shame, but there it is," the Rhondda MP says, adding: “I think we are postponing Christmas to Easter."

Meanwhile over in Orkney, MP Alistair Carmichael says this Christmas will also be just three of them: himself, his wife and youngest son.

“Normally, we would have the rest of the family with us, like my eldest son, who is a postgraduate student in Stirling," the Lib Dem MP tells The Independent.  “You would probably expect him to come home in the normal course of things. But he is staying put where he is.”

Mr Carmichael adds: “Both my parents are in their 80s. They would occasionally make the journey north or we would go south. But that is not going to happen this year.”

The Orkney and Shetland MP says his family had decided on a quieter Christmas than usual to avoid the travelling, before the period of relaxed festive rules was slashed to one day – which logistically would have put a stop to travel to the island where he lives anyway. 

For most of England, Christmas easing has been severely curtailed, with households allowed to gather for just one day – Christmas Day itself – rather than the five days previously planned, with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland also restricting Christmas "bubbles" to a single day.

Meanwhile, nearly 18 million people across London and eastern and southeast England have been told they cannot meet up with other households at all, as they were placed into tougher tier 4 rules over the weekend.

After the changes for England were announced last week, Tory MP Dehenna Davison tweeted: “I know how difficult this is for people. Like many others, I now face Christmas alone.” 

She said: “It will be tough. But, as with everything else Covid has thrown at us, we will overcome.”

Even before he announced the tougher rules in England, Boris Johnson had urged the public to have a merry but “little” Christmas. 

For Tory MP Sir Roger Gale, he says his wife and himself “will be minding the shop as usual throughout Christmas – as we have done for 37 years". 

“No violins!” the MP for North Thanet tells The Independent. “We also have a good Christmas lunch – we are blessed to live in a family ‘bubble’ – and beautiful dogs to walk.”

Additional reporting by Press Association