Gromit 13.32, if that is the best available from the UK government then it is pretty poor. I asked advice on AB quite some time (weeks ?) ago for finding something as informative as I am able to follow at other countries' sites but it did not then exist so I stopped looking beyond worldometers - things have not really improved.
Other countries provide numbers and breakdowns into (totals) of deaths by age and gender, figures for national regions, numbers in ICU, numbers on a ventilator, numbers in isolation/quarantine, recovered totals, how many cases from abroad and which foreign countries infection has come from, how many cases diagnosed within quarantine and how many outside it, and in at least one case actually case totals literally municipality by municipality - the list goes on and on as to what is available and these are updated daily.
I guess the UK just isn't up to that sort of reporting (inability) and/or too secretive to want to.
To respond to the original post: I am almost totally disinterested in what politicians want to say about all of this, the facts speak for themselves (so long as they are available). I would prefer the health service professionals, police and other public officials to set the policy by recommendation (requiring government authorisation due to limitation of powers). I would expect the country to have been prepared with a plan created by the professionals and for the politicians largely to stay out of their way and not turn the efforts into a political issue. The best way to keep the public informed is to give them access to the information, beyond which announcements and clarification of them through questions and answers is all that is needed (nil politician airtime if at all possible). Sadly, some level of repetition of the recommendations/rules is almost certainly essential.