Covid-19

Luke Evans Excerpts

Tuesday 25th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

We are working closely with the Welsh Government to enable the integration of Welsh citizens’ data with the NHS app, NHS.uk, for the purpose of covid status certification, including undertaking the required scoping and impact assessment that will enable us to set out a detailed timeline for the delivery of that integration.

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con) [V]]

The people of Bosworth are a pragmatic bunch, as are the people of Leicestershire. Leicestershire surrounds Leicester. What advice does the Minister give to those people who are in Leicestershire who send their kids to school in Leicester, who work in Leicester, and who are thinking of having bank holiday time with family in Leicester?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I thank my hon. Friend—[Interruption.] I hear the right hon. Member for Leicester South saying “Good question.” He is absolutely right. We have to exercise caution and common sense, as I described earlier, around visiting. People absolutely can visit family and friends at half-term if they follow social distancing guidelines. I think people absolutely will exercise that personal responsibility and common sense when they go about their family time or school time.

Covid-19 Update

Luke Evans Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

We are of course worried about the impact of long covid, and the evidence is growing about the different impacts. The clinical advice is that there are a number of different syndromes that are, together, badged as long covid. For some people it has an impact, as the hon. Member says, on lung scarring; for some people the impact is more neurological. So we have to make sure that the services, the response and, indeed, the research are targeted at the different types of long covid. I am very happy to arrange a discussion between him and our clinical leaders on long covid, because it is a very important topic.

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con) [V]]

The Health Secretary may be forgiven, as he is one of the busiest people in the country at the moment, if he missed Tielemans’s strike from 30 yards and the VAR decision late on in the game, but 21,000 fans saw it live, and many of them were my constituents who were there to celebrate Leicester City winning the cup. Wembley of course holds 90,000 people and it was a test event, so when will we find out the results of the test event and the outcome for things such as the Euros in the future?

[Matt Hancock]

We will find out the results in the next few weeks. Of course, the right hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) may have been so cheerful in his opening remarks because he was there, and he saw Leicester triumph. I watched it, and I just thought how brilliant it was to see a live crowd again. It was not full— that is true—and no doubt it could have been filled, but it was not full because we are taking it carefully. I am working with my right hon Friend the Culture Secretary and the Minister for Sport—the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston) —who I know found it extremely enjoyable to be able to go to a sports event as the Minister for Sport, which he has missed. We will assess the data that come out of it. Everybody who went is part of a testing regime. We will look at the results, as we will look at the results of the other pilots, such as the Brits and the snooker at the Crucible, and then make an assessment.

Health and Social Care Update

Luke Evans Excerpts

Thursday 18th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con) [V]]

The Secretary of State will know from his appearances before the Health and Social Care Committee that we are concerned about how the backlog is dealt with, so it is great that he is taking such a proactive stance to deal with it. He set out in his statement just how big the backlog for elective surgeries is going to be. The question from Bosworth is: how long does he estimate it will take to clear the elective-surgeries backlog that has built up?

[Matt Hancock]

I am currently working with the NHS to answer that question, which is a characteristically acute one from my hon. Friend. We are not yet able to answer it simply because the pace at which we can return activity to full, normal levels is not yet clear because the main barrier to that recovery is a combination of infection, prevention and control and the need for staff to get some R and R. We will know more in the coming weeks and months.

Covid-19 Update

Luke Evans Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The hon. Lady would get a better hearing if she started on this subject by congratulating AstraZeneca, the British player in this vaccine race, on the fact that it is rolling out its jab with no profit at all. It is doing that in order to be able to vaccinate as many people around the world as fast as possible, at an affordable cost. That should be our starting point. There would be no vaccines if it was not for the global pharmaceutical industry. I pay tribute to all those working in the pharmaceutical sector. There is no way that we would have these jabs were a policy followed that disparaged the pharmaceutical sector in the way she proposes or in the way the Labour manifesto proposed at last election. Instead, we should come together to support industry, scientists, the NHS and Government. It is a massive team effort.

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con) [V]]

For phase 2, will the Health Secretary commit to having mental health workers at national vaccine sites?

[Matt Hancock]

I will absolutely look into the suggestion that my hon. Friend makes, which is all about making sure that we reach out to people at a moment when everybody, or almost everybody, is going through a process together—and I hope it is everybody. It is very interesting proposal, which I will take away and hopefully speak to my hon. Friend about in the days to come.

Covid-19 Vaccine Update

Luke Evans Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

We are absolutely looking to make sure that unpaid carers are on the priority list.

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con) [V]]

Lockdown has affected the mental wellbeing of almost everyone in this country. The vaccine programme will mean that the NHS comes into contact with almost every adult in the country. With that in mind, will the Minister consider having a mental health worker at all the national vaccine centres, to provide opportunistic mental health interventions should people need it?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s excellent, thoughtful suggestion. I will certainly take that away and discuss it with the Minister responsible in the Department.

Public Health

Luke Evans Excerpts

Wednesday 30th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

Today is a bittersweet end to the year. The news is sweet nationally, as we hear of another new vaccine coming online in the fight against the coronavirus, and because we have got the Brexit deal done. That is hugely important to my constituents, the majority of whom voted for Brexit, but it also gives us the chance to pull remain and leave together to look forward, I hope, to an outward future for 2021. However, the news is bitter locally, because my constituency and the entire region in which I live are moving into tier 4. With that comes all the heartache, anxiety, stress, morbidity and mortality that go with increasing rates of covid.

I accept that decision, and I think it is the right thing. I have had contact with the hospitals that serve my area and the clinical commissioning group in Leicestershire. Some 30% of my patients go across towards the George Eliot, and both the health organisations there have talked about the pressure on the NHS—not only the numbers of covid patients coming in, but the pressure on non-covid services and the impact of covid on staffing, with the real threat posed by absences. Those things combined make for a really difficult issue.

On top of that, our rates are steadily increasing, although in my patch, in particular, we are lower than the national average. That all comes on top of the new strains that we have heard about in the last few weeks. I believe the Government were right to take the decisions that they took, and to change when the information changes. That is why I am pleased to welcome the Government’s dropping of the 14 days of isolation to 10 days. As the science changes and as we know more, we should change our approach and do something different.

That leads me on to my asks for the Government, and they are threefold. First, I have previously welcomed the Government’s approach of structuring their focus and putting the NHS first, followed by education, businesses, health and leisure activities, and then the hospitality industry. However, as we have ratcheted back up with the new tiers, we clearly still have the fundamental problems of providing support for things such as the travel industry, the pubs, the restaurants, the events industry and the wedding industry. Those problems are not going away. Fortunately, with the advent of a vaccine, the period is time-limited, so I urge the Government to consider putting in further support for those businesses to try to get them through.

My second ask is about the vaccine roll-out. As I said, I really welcome the fact that the Oxford vaccine has now come on line and will be going live from 4 January, with more than 500,000 vaccinations going out in the first week. It is also really good news that Ministers are reassuring us that the infrastructure is there and that as the supply becomes greater so too will the delivery, getting the fight against this virus under way. However, I am concerned about, and would like the Government to address, what happens when 10% or 20% of the population are vaccinated. For me, there is a real issue. As the public start to see people getting vaccinated, the way they behave may well change and in turn create a vicious spiral, where we elongate the period under covid and the need for further tiered restrictions because people feel that it is safe to go out. A strong message must come from the Government to make sure that people adhere to the restrictions and to give us an idea of what the saturation point for covid will look like. As the science changes, so should the advice.

Finally, in my last minute, I would like to raise something that I raised in the summer. Given that the end of the covid debacle is hopefully in sight, be it in the spring or the summer, I would like to push again for a Department of virus legacy—a time-limited Department to look at all the changes that have taken place during the covid pandemic. After all, covid has hit every aspect of our working lives and, indeed, our social lives—sometimes for good, and sometimes for bad. It is really important for the future to understand the lessons learned and to capitalise on the changes in my sphere of medicine, for example, where we now have telemedicine, better communications, a huge diagnostic network and a much improved vaccine programme, which will cover the entire nation. All those things should be looked at and capitalised on to make sure we have something that will stand the test of time if we ever face another virus.

Covid-19

Luke Evans Excerpts

Monday 14th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

Thanks, hope, change—three positive words that it is lovely to use in this debate. I want to put on record my thanks to all the scientists, researchers, staff, communications guys and the Government for getting it right last week and getting a vaccine out there. It really is the game changer and the hope that we have been looking for. As has been said many times in this House, the roll-out will be slow and steady, and things are not over yet—not for this month, for next month or for the months to come—but there is light at the end of the tunnel, and we have the opportunity to start to get things back to normal and see the change that we want. I welcome the news of the vaccine, and more in the pipeline, because it is what everyone has been hoping for.

I welcome, too, the fact that the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, and Ministers, listened carefully when Leicestershire MPs said that we wanted to be decoupled from Leicester. That was not because of some form of covid nimbyism, but simply because we have had lived experience throughout the entire summer of what our people do, how they react and what goes on. I hope that Leicester gets as much support as possible to fight the virus, bring the numbers down and make a difference. With that in mind, if we are being led by the evidence, I would like to see a push for a borough-based model, based on our lived experience in Hinckley and Bosworth. As my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Jacob Young) rightly pointed out, if our constituents are following the rules and making the difference but the evidence is changing, so should the tier system. All we ask is to be given the power to do that. When the data comes through, I hope that will be the case.

A lot has changed during the pandemic. We talk about lockdowns now, but if we think back to what happened in March, we can see that the recent lockdowns and the tier system are completely different. The Government have rightly changed and focused their emphasis. They focused on the NHS, and on making sure it was not overwhelmed. More importantly, we were able to continue non-covid procedures, investigations and treatments. The Government then focused on education, and on getting kids back to school so that they did not fall behind. That, in turn, has allowed people to get to work, which was the third focus: opening non-essential retail and businesses. On the next level, leisure activities, the gym, welfare, getting out to see people and looking after ourselves mentally and physically have been prioritised. Those are all levers that we can pull but, alas, that means that socialising and hospitality come last.

Given that there is light at the end of the tunnel, however, change can happen. I would like to see support for the hospitality sector—for pubs and restaurants—in the short term to help them to get through, but let us not forget the other industries that will take the longest to come out of this: events, conferences, the wedding industry and, of course, travel. I welcome the fact that the Government are making strides wherever they can and using the taskforce to help, and that is good news for those industries. We can now see where we want to go in April, May and June. We have the potential to lay out a plan, albeit in draft, so that we can say to these businesses, “This is what you can start to work towards.” As someone who got married last year, I know that trying to plan a wedding in a few weeks is not something that my wife would have wanted to do.

One thing that struck me when I was driving around from Newbold Verdon to Hinckley was how much life is starting to return to normal. It must be so hard for a pub or restaurant owner to see people going about their normal day-to-day working lives, but to be unable to make that change. We should keep that in our minds going forward to try to balance protecting the NHS and protecting livelihoods.

As we come to Christmas, and this is likely to be the last chance—I hope—to speak from the Government Benches before the new year, our minds are focused on that new year and the hope that is coming. Although I urge policy change, some things need to stay the same: caring for each other at Christmas. It is going to be particularly difficult for those who are choosing to isolate—lonely people. So we should pick up the phone, get on that Zoom or Teams call, and speak to neighbours, friends and families. Of course, the piece of Government advice that should never be lost and should stay the same until we have all had the vaccine is: hands, face, space, get a test.

Childhood Cancers: Research

Luke Evans Excerpts

Monday 7th December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

We can choose to be affected by the world or we can choose to affect the world. My constituent Isla chose the latter. In August 2017, seven-year-old Isla Tansey woke up unable to walk. After many horrible treatments, surgery and radiotherapy, in January 2018 she was diagnosed with DIPG. Isla’s mother described the terminal illness as the most traumatic and heartbreaking experience for a family ever to go through. Sadly, Isla passed away in July 2018, but not before inspiring thousands around the world with her positivity and creativity through her hobby: painting stones and pebbles.

Isla asked others to join in by painting their own stones, with any design, but she asked them to include the hashtag #islastones and the words “photo, post, re-hide”, and then to send a picture to a dedicated Facebook page for her to see. They were subsequently to leave the stones somewhere hidden, so that when they were found they could spread a little of the joy that Isla’s idea had given them—a little reminder of Isla’s joy. Isla’s mother, Katherine, hoped that a child might one day find one of the stones, learn about Isla’s story and become a researcher in childhood cancer.

Thousands of people took part in more than 149 countries. Although Isla could no longer walk, she loved to see where all the stones ended up and where they would travel to next. Places included the Taj Mahal, New Zealand, Disneyland and America, with a very special stone in Antarctica. Through the stones and the lovely people who made them, hid them and posted their photos, Isla travelled the world.

The hashtag #islastones grew to a Facebook presence with more than 75,000 members from all around the world. In 2019, a year on from Isla’s passing, at the Celebration of Smiles event in Hinckley in my constituency, a world record was set for the largest display of painted stones, with 8,542 stones—all in remembrance of Isla.

To continue her legacy, Isla’s parents, Simon and Katherine Tansey, set up the Islastones Foundation for raising smiles and helping to fight childhood cancer: a reminder of the fun and happiness that Isla brought to so many people’s lives. Isla is now permanently memorialised at Argents Mead in Hinckley, where her legacy of smiles and positivity will live on for ever.

Why does this matter? We have heard the stats in the debate, but these are the real stories behind the cases. Some 650 people in my constituency signed this petition to ask for transparency in the funding, for improvement in treatment options and for pulling together the clinical pathways that people who suffer in this situation have to go through. They ask for real understanding, for listening and for something to change. I am reminded of the quote:

“Your life is your message to the world. Make sure it’s inspiring.”

Isla’s message was truly that, and I hope the Government’s message on DIPG will be the same.

Covid-19

Luke Evans Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, as we have discussed many times, that is happening—absolutely—and it is the link between the national and the local that is the solution here. I will come on to testing in more detail later because I have some new things to say about it. In the meantime, the other thing we need to do, of course, is make sure that for this second peak—the second wave—we do all we can to support those institutions that are helping us through it, and first among those is, of course, the NHS.

The NHS is better prepared for this second wave, and I want to thank the NHS and everybody who works in it for their efforts over the past few months to ensure that we are better prepared. We know infinitely more things about coronavirus now than we knew as the first wave hit. Our Nightingale hospitals, for instance, stand ready and are being restarted in the parts of the country that need them. The independent sector has stepped up to the mark to help us work through the backlog of the vital elective operations and to help keep going with elective operations, even through this second peak. We have hired more staff, with 13,700 more nurses and 7,800 more doctors. We have provided £3 billion of extra funding across health and social care. Personal protective equipment is widely and freely available, and infection control procedures have been significantly strengthened, based on better understanding of transmission of the virus, including aerosol as well as droplet and fomite transmission.

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

I am glad to hear that preparations are under way. I have had several emails from constituents in Bosworth who are worried about their routine operations; their follow-up might be lost. They remember what happened in the last lockdown, when they were not able to get that follow-up. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that all NHS appointments will be going ahead as best they can?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, absolutely, and my hon. Friend makes a critical point. If in Bosworth someone is waiting for an operation on the NHS, they are more likely to get it if we keep the virus suppressed—in fact, if we keep it down, they will get that operation and we will get it done. Unfortunately, in the parts of the country where things have got too high, non-urgent, non-cancer elective operations have had to be cancelled. That demonstrates that, both for covid and non-covid health reasons, it is better to keep the virus suppressed.

I was halfway through my long list of the things that the NHS has been doing to prepare over the summer. At the moment, we are delivering 159 A&E upgrades; as far as I know, that is the biggest number of concurrent upgrades to emergency care in the NHS’s history. We have radically expanded telemedicine in primary and outpatient care. We are introducing 111 First, with an expanded 111 service to help people get the care that they need.

The NHS has learned how to treat covid patients better too, of course: not just by discovering treatments such as dexamethasone, in which the NHS played a critical part, but by improving clinical techniques—earlier oxygenation and later ventilation, for instance. As a result, our rate of hospital-acquired infection is down and the number of people who survive covid in hospital is up. We have been able to set an explicit goal that all cancer treatment should continue throughout this second wave, which speaks precisely to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Dr Evans) made.

But even with this expanded NHS and with the better treatments, the extra investment and the brilliance of the whole NHS team, who have done and learned so much about the virus and worked so hard to prepare—even with all that—and even if the NHS were twice as big as it is now, it could not cope, and no health service could, if the virus continued to grow as it is now. We must control the virus, to protect the NHS and ensure that it is always there, to treat patients with covid and patients with all other conditions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

This debate serves as a good place to set the scene for 48 hours’ time. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) that a large number of people will want to speak in that debate and consideration should be given to increasing its length.

In 48 hours’ time, we will be looking at measures to protect the NHS—to stop it being overburdened, to protect the workforce, to protect the most vulnerable, and to try to help get through non-covid and covid problems. In 48 hours’ time, we will be voting on the economic impact, trying to mitigate the measures we are putting in place, trying to maintain businesses and to support jobs, trying to create covid-secure measures, and discussing the impact on the finances of this country for our children and our children’s children. In 48 hours’ time, there will be a vote, and every Member will have to consider the impact of what that means.

I want to spend the few minutes I have talking about the pragmatic side before we get to the debate on Wednesday, which I hope to speak in. I think it was Lincoln who said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.” That is what I want the Government to do in the next 48 hours. The one benefit we have is that we have learned from last time’s lockdown. We know what it looked like. People know what it looked like. This House knows what it looked like. Therefore, we can use these 48 hours to pull the guidance together to deal with the concerns, iron out the anomalies—for example, on garden centres—and explain the differences: that schools are now open, that we now have bubbles, and that people now understand that they should get a test. This is something we have control over as the Government—the communication of how we put that message out. We have 48 hours to get that right.

The concerns from Bosworth in my email inbox today are many and varied, from non-covid work, health work and mental health, to golf and fishing, to the ability to take away beer or go to the gym and faith meetings. The Minister and the Secretary of State were kind enough to be at my meeting on Sunday to hear these questions from many MPs. Indeed, we have heard them raised yet again tonight. The civil service is looking at how to put this all in place. I urge the Government to hear those messages, to learn from what we have seen before, and, even better, to put it all together in a document that compares what we had before with what we are having in future so that everyone, from MPs in this House to the general public, can see what has changed and what stays the same. We have 48 hours to sharpen the guidance ready for Wednesday. I hope that on Wednesday, in doing that, we can cut down covid.

Covid-19

Luke Evans Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

It is a brilliant idea—so brilliant that the NHS has spent the summer working on that concept. We cannot do it as perfectly as my hon. Friend suggests, and the reason is the practicalities of the treatment of covid—for instance, if someone has covid and something else, they need a normal intensive care unit. But the Nightingale hospitals are there—in fact today, sadly, the Nightingale hospital in Manchester is reopening. For all the rest of the hospitals, we are making sure that different parts of the hospital are deemed either blue or green—essentially covid-free or at risk of covid. Some of the different buildings are covid-free or non-covid, or, in some cases, whole hospitals are covid green sites and people cannot go to them unless they have tested negative. That means we can have a high degree of confidence because, for instance, if we are treating cancer patients, we want to ensure that there is not any covid in there.

We need these long-term solutions and, like other liberal democracies around the world, we are wrestling with this question—as we have wrestled with it in the last few minutes—of how to keep people safe from the virus while protecting other important things in life: our liberties, our livelihoods and the things that we love. That is what leads us to the strategy of suppressing the virus and supporting the economy, education and the NHS. The NHS needs to be supported to do all the other things that it needs to do until a vaccine is available.

I reject the false choice that says we must pick a side and choose between a healthy economy and a healthy nation, because the two are intrinsically linked. If, God forbid, we were to let the virus unleash its full force, the damage to not just the NHS and the hundreds of thousands of lives, but our livelihoods would be catastrophic. We can only get our economy and our society going gangbusters again if we drive this virus down, so that people have the confidence that they need to live their lives to the full—and drive it down we must.

This is a deadly virus, and, yes, it reserves its biggest impact for the oldest in society, which means the rise in the number of cases among the over-60s gives me a lot of cause for concern. We also just heard compellingly from the Minister for Equalities about the impact on people from ethnic minority backgrounds, but the impact is not confined to these groups. The virus can affect anyone of any age and any background, and we have already seen worrying numbers of young, fit, healthy people suffering debilitating symptoms months after contracting covid. Yesterday, a study by King’s College London showed that one in 20 people with coronavirus is likely to have virus symptoms, such as fatigue, breathlessness, muscle pain and neurological problems, for eight weeks or more. Yesterday, I visited the cutting-edge long covid clinic at University College London hospital. I have met people in their 20s and 30s unable to work, sapped of all their energy, living with the long-term effects of a virus that has completely changed their lives. Therefore, to anyone of any age, catching covid can be very grave indeed. Long covid underpins, again, our strategy for suppressing the virus until a vaccine arrives.

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

When my right hon. Friend came to the Health and Social Care Committee a few weeks ago, he talked about long covid and the fact that clinics were being set up to deal with it. Will he give the House an update on where that has got to?

[Matt Hancock]

These clinics are being set up—the London clinic is now open—but we need to see them right across the country. The NHS now has a programme of rolling out clinics to be able to support people and, of course to communicate with GPs. That is important because primary care is often where people arrive with long covid, because there appears to be no correlation between the seriousness of someone’s initial illness and how long they can have these debilitating consequences. In some cases, people have no symptoms of the coronavirus initially, but then find that they have months and months of fatigue, a brain fog and muscle pain, and they do not know where it came from until they are diagnosed with long covid. It is a very serious complication.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in the general covid update debate. Last time I spoke, I welcomed the tiered approach the Government had put in place to deal with the covid virus, and today I am pleased to welcome the support the Government have put in place as a further measure that is more nuanced and more targeted to help those in most need. I have been asking questions today about road maps and plans for the future. If we start with the economic side, these questions are key. I met representatives of the Hinkley business improvement district last night, and one of the biggest questions they had was about what would happen if we moved from tier 1 to tier 2. I was pleased to be able to tell them that the Treasury and the Chancellor were listening. That message was heard, and new support was put in place. That security will be greatly welcomed in Bosworth and up and down the country.

The other thing that businesses need is some form of certainty and a road map of where they are going. We are lucky in this House to have a learned Friend in my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), who is no longer in his place. He has highlighted areas about which I also have concerns after meeting constituents and businesses last Friday.

The wedding industry, the events and conference industry and the travel industry are all going to face difficulties because of the very nature of their business: the people business. The virus thrives on people’s interactions, and those industries feel as though they are now zombie businesses, because they are not officially closed, but they cannot open fully because there is no trade for them. I think it is reasonable to argue that, because of that, they need some certainty over what the future may hold for them, with a roadmap of how to get there and what the support might look like after we have made choices in the hospitality sector.

Equally, there are non-fiscal measures we can take. We can relook at the levers that we may be able to pull to allow a change of use or the extension of licensing, so that businesses like those in the wedding sector can use their facilities in a different way. After all, they are keen to be open and keen to innovate. The Government need to give them the chance to do so.

I was also pleased to hear today about a further roadmap relating to health. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago to the Health Secretary and to the House the importance of knowing where we are going and how we can innovate to get our way out. It is fantastic news that laminar flow testing is being rolled out, because until we have a vaccine, this is the way to enable people to take responsibility of their own testing in organisations and hopefully even in their personal situation. When people go to school, when they go to the hospital or when they come to Westminster, they will be able to test themselves, find that they are negative and carry on with their daily life. Of course, if they are positive, they will be followed up and isolated in the correct way. It is really important and will be a stalwart step until we get the vaccine.

In the Health Committee, I was pleased to hear from Professor Edmunds that SAGE feels that a vaccine is coming. That is important to factor in when we think about what lockdown measures to take, because there is a big difference between waiting for months and waiting for years. That comes with a word of caution. From the very start, Chris Whitty—both in private and public announcements—said that there are a range of measures that are easy to take and that all have a different weighted impact. If we are getting a vaccine and improved testing, we cannot lose sight of the simple basics that must be in place: hands, face, space. Without doing those things, it will be very hard to control the virus, even with the testing and when we start to roll out a mass vaccination. I am therefore keen that the Government are clear in articulating, and continue to push, the message of hands, face, space, because the virus has opened Pandora’s box, and what we really need to see is the guarded hope left.