Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove said it was “regrettable” that ministers had to order a delay of up to a month to the final phase of the road map.
Asked if restrictions would ease on July 19 or whether there could be another delay, Mr Gove told Sky News: “That will be the terminus date.
“What we said is that we won’t lift those restrictions before June 21, in the road map it says not before, and the whole point about the road map was to build in an element of flexibility and caution.
“It is regrettable that we do have this pause before moving to Step 4, but what we want to do is to make sure that when we do make that move, that we don’t go back.
“Because the worst thing for business, worst thing for any of us, would be to open up again and then to very quickly find that we have to reimpose restrictions.”
Mr Gove said that something “unprecedented and remarkable” would have to happen for the July 19 date to be extended further.
He said: “It would require an unprecedented and remarkable alteration in the progress of the disease.”
Mr Gove said ministers cannot make decisions with “perfect knowledge” when asked whether he wished more had been done in Government to stop the spread of the Delta variant at the border.
He told Times Radio: “We can always look back and wish that we’d done things differently but we operated on the basis of facts that we had at the time, and India was placed on the red list before the Delta variant was a variant under investigation, or a variant of concern.
“And again, you know, the decisions that ministers, that doctors, that scientists have to take can never be made with perfect knowledge.
“Hindsight, 2020 vision gives all of us an opportunity to look back and to say ‘if only’, but we’ve got to make the decision at the time, on the basis of the evidence that we have.”
