look ahead with confidence. but, and this is the difficult part, in areas where the cases are relatively high or rising, ourjudgment is that a slight slowing down off the easing of restrictions to allow time for more people to be fully vaccinated will help to protect the progress overall, leading me to decisions that we are setting out today. it's important to recognise that the picture across the country is not uniform and so our decisions are not uniform and so our decisions are not uniform either. that is the benefit of the levels system. we don't need to apply a one size fits all approach with the same levels of restrictions in areas with low or more contained case numbers as we do in areas with high or rising numbers. howevera in areas with high or rising numbers. however a variable system also has its downsides. it is more complex, it is impossible to remove every anomaly, and it is difficult to remove the sense of inequity.