Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said Britain cannot continue to be “prisoners of this crisis” as he outlined plans to boost Britain's economy, devastated by the coronavirus lockdown.

He said while people were rightly still nervous about further outbreaks of the virus, the government had to spell out the way ahead.

“If the Covid crisis has taught us one thing, it's that this country needs to be ready for what may be coming, and we need to be able to move with levels of energy and speed that we have not needed for generations,” he said in a speech in central England.