Covid-19 Update

William Wragg Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The most important difference between now and then is, of course, that the vast majority of those who are vulnerable to ending up in hospital or dying of covid have had two vaccines. The vaccination uptake rates have been spectacularly high and the uptake rate of the second vaccine has also been incredibly high. That means that the protection afforded to those who have chosen to take up the vaccine is very high. The latest estimates show that having two jabs and waiting a fortnight or so after the second jab leads to around a 97% reduction in mortality. Of course, we will continue to drive and to open up access in order to find the final few per cent. of people, but the lesson of the last few days is that people who have not taken up the opportunity to be vaccinated should do so, because it is those people who have sadly ended up in hospital, and we do not want that.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

The Health Secretary can be proud of his role in the vaccination programme, and I welcome the further reduction in the age of eligibility. It may surprise my right hon. Friend, and indeed the House, that despite my appearance and general manner, there are still a few years yet to go, but I will be there, seized of the importance of taking up my vaccine. May I urge him to favour a surge in vaccination, rather than to flirt even momentarily with the idea of imposing local restrictions, which are not helpful and create a great deal of resentment?

[Matt Hancock]

I am glad to say that we will get to my hon. Friend before the end of July, no matter how young he is. I am pretty sure he is an adult in both actuality and attitude—crikey, I am getting myself into more trouble than I anticipated.

I understand my hon. Friend’s broader point, which is a call against local lockdowns, and we have had differences of view on that in the past. It is not where we want to go, though of course we do not rule it out. We have seen our approach work—it worked in south London —and we have this huge testing capacity, which we did not have in the autumn, of hundreds of thousands of tests a day. That capacity is expanding, as the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) articulated. We also have millions of lateral flow tests, which are simple and easy to use, and people get the result fast. With surge testing plus the vaccine, we have many more tools in our armoury than we did before.

Coronavirus

William Wragg Excerpts

Thursday 25th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I am not quite sure what point the hon. Member is making, but this is what I was going on to say. The critical point where I ended the exchange with my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) is that we must restore the freedoms that we all cherish, but in a way that does not put the NHS at risk. Throughout the crisis, we have successfully protected the NHS, and I am delighted to be able to inform the House that there are now record numbers of NHS doctors and NHS nurses in England. New data published this morning show that there are over 300,000 nurses in the NHS in England for the first time in its history. So we have protected our NHS and we are delivering our commitments to it. Nobody wants to have to reimpose measures, as we have sadly seen elsewhere in Europe only this week, so we must follow this cautious and, we hope, irreversible road map.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend mentions data on occurrences within the NHS. Does the NHS have data to suggest how many people have, sadly, died from covid in NHS hospitals three weeks after receiving their first dose of a covid vaccine?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, the data on the impact of the vaccine—including side effects from the vaccine and the rare occasions when, sadly, people die after having had the vaccine—are published by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. If there are any data in this area that are not published but my hon. Friend would like to be published, he can write to me and I would be very happy to look into publishing them. Essentially, we take an attitude of being as transparent as possible, because there are side effects to the vaccine as there are to all pharmaceutical drugs and we want to be completely open and transparent about those side effects—essentially to reassure people that the risks are extremely low.

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[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

What an extraordinary thing! This evening, I imagine I will find myself in the Lobby with the right hon. Gentleman who spoke before me, although he will do it by proxy, I presume, and, perhaps more concerningly from my perspective, with the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey), who is to follow me.

It is an eccentric thing, I suppose, to talk in this House about beliefs and fundamental rights, but if we cannot talk about such esoteric things in the House of Commons, what on earth can we talk about, except that we have been reduced to the Facebook Commons, with clips and YouTube, in recent times?

My right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley) was spot on in her characterisation of the Napoleonic code under which we now live. Further, she was correct to suggest that UK law tends to say what it is unlawful to do. Indeed, rights and freedoms are not in the ownership of the state, but are innate.

The hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) brought to our attention the matter of protest in Manchester, which was an extraordinary situation to have arisen because of poorly drafted law that this House, not in its wisdom, decided to pass. Indeed, I liked his aside about data, not dates. Hope springs eternal.

Yesterday at the Liaison Committee, a stir was created—it could have been deliberate—when the Prime Minister floated the idea of covid vaccine certification to visit the pub. Of course we should encourage the take-up of the covid vaccine. What a miraculous achievement and what great foresight the Government had on that particular aspect. Indeed, in the recess next week, I shall be volunteering as a car park marshal—such is the level of my competence on these matters—at one of my local covid vaccine centres.

I cannot help but think we have a back of fag packet-esque approach to this whole question of covid vaccine certification. If I may be so bold, I suggest that as the Conservative party, we might actually think about what we believe in as a party, and not let ourselves be carried away by a utilitarian urge that seems to have swept across the Treasury Bench, leaving very few standing.

I will leave the matter there, but on the matter of the Procedure Committee, on which it is an honour for me to serve as a member under the very able chairpersonship of my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands, we did indeed produce a report that was subject to, I think, 14 separate votes. I had the temerity to table amendments to that particular report. All I would say in ending is that in paragraph 26, we said:

“We recommend that the House reverts to all aspects of its pre-pandemic practice and procedure.”

Let us hope the same can be said for our freedoms as citizens, too.

Covid Contracts: Judicial Review

William Wragg Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. He will appreciate that some of the contracts which some colleagues have alluded to remain subject to separate litigation before the courts, including some by the Good Law Project, which I will refer to as the GLP as I suspect it may come up a number of times and it might save a few minutes in my answers. I hope he will understand that I will avoid straying into something that may still be before the courts, because I do not want to show any disrespect for the legal process. He talked about the number published and where we have got to now. That will be some of the information put before the judge on Friday as per his request, but for the latest figures that are in the public domain, which were covered in the judgment and indeed more broadly, I think 100% of the contract award notices have been published, and we are up to 99% under regulation 108 on the latest figures I have. As the judge said, the overall picture does show the Secretary of State

“moving close to complete compliance.”

In respect of the right hon. Gentleman’s broader point, I would expect that Ministers in my Department—which is why I am here—as well as Ministers in the Cabinet Office, will have followed the process very closely.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

I welcome my hon. Friend to the Dispatch Box. I hope that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was not too indisposed cooking up plans for the domestic covid passports that he had previously ruled out to attend the House today. Most fair-minded people will look at this situation in the round and perhaps give the Government the benefit of the doubt, because the judgment found against the allegation of a secret deprioritisation policy to deliberately breach procurement rules.

Further to the question from the Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), can my hon. Friend the Minister give greater detail of the extent of the increase in domestic production of PPE in this country so that we have security of supply?

[Edward Argar]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I believe that officials did do the right thing in prioritising getting the PPE that we needed for our frontline, and he is also right to highlight an aspect of Justice Chamberlain’s judgment, which found there was no policy of deprioritising the publication of contract notices and data. On his final point, I said to the Father of the House that we have moved from 1% domestically produced PPE to 70% now. To put that in context, we have supplied 8.6 billion items, and we have more than 30 billion on order or being supplied at present. I suspect that as my hon. Friend is a former teacher, albeit a history teacher, his mental arithmetic is probably more rapid than mine in calculating that proportion as an absolute number, but I hope it illustrates to him just how much we have moved in the past year to utilise the fantastic resource we have in manufacturing in this country.

Covid-19

William Wragg Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey)—or “Beeconsfield”, if we were to pronounce it in the way of Benjamin Disraeli. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker) for yet another very well-spoken contribution to the debate. He may not know it because he avoids such things, but he is a social media hit, particularly with younger people, which proves to me that he is not an extremist, but is in fact a humanitarian who has spoken a great deal of sense throughout this pandemic, at times when sense has been in short supply, particularly in this House.

We have a superb vaccination programme but we cannot rest on our laurels. We must up the pace still further. Supply is the issue, not the capacity to get the jab into people’s arms. I was somewhat perturbed by an off-the-record briefing from somebody in the Department of Health and Social Care this afternoon that “we cannot vaccinate our way out of this”. If that is the view of somebody in the Department, I would ask, “What on earth is the point of the vaccination programme?” but I hope that they have been sufficiently corrected by the Ministers in that Department.

The Prime Minister quite rightly, earlier on and through various media briefings over the weekend—or leaks, as they have come to be known—said that we will be driven in our progress out of lockdown by data and not dates, yet it is somewhat ironic to find that in this generally well-crafted document, dates are there in abundance and that we instead have four tests. The four tests amount to sitting an exam while knowing some of the marking criteria but certainly not knowing what the grade thresholds are in order to judge success at that exam.

For example, test one is:

“The vaccine deployment programme continues successfully.”

What does that mean? What date does that require people in different demographics to be vaccinated by, and so on? Test two is:

“Evidence shows vaccines are sufficiently effective in reducing hospitalisations and deaths in those vaccinated.”

What are the figures placed on hospitalisations and deaths to justify the further easing of lockdown measures? Test three is:

“Infection rates do not…surge in hospitalisations which would put unsustainable pressure on the NHS.”

What are those measurable pressures?

So yes, I agree entirely with the thrust of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, but in order to be able to judge whether we are moving at the right speed so that we can follow the data and not the dates, we need to know what it is being judged against.

Covid-19 Update

William Wragg Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

We announced in the spending review significant extra funding to tackle the backlog. I am very proud of cancer services throughout the country, which have kept up the work during this second wave in a quite remarkable way, owing to tenacity, working together, flexibility and, of course, very strong infection prevention and control.

Last week I was at the Royal Marsden Hospital, where they are doing 100% of their normal-time operations. That is not true everywhere—the Royal Marsden has the advantage of being, in essence, a cancer-only site, which makes things easier. The thrust of the hon. Lady’s question is right—we absolutely must catch up on the cancer backlog—but I am optimistic because people have worked so hard in oncology to keep cancer services going. As the number of covid patients comes down, so we must ensure that the backlog is worked through.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

I pay tribute to everybody in Stockport who is part of the massive vaccination effort that is going so well, as it is throughout the rest of country. The original purpose of lockdown was to reduce hospitalisations and keep hospitals from falling over; if that is achieved through a vaccination programme, is it now the Government’s intention to use the level of virus in circulation—the number of cases in the population—to determine when to ease lockdown?

[Matt Hancock]

No. The Prime Minister has set out the four conditions that need to be met and will be saying more about that on 22 February.

Covid-19

William Wragg Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his intervention. With the new variant identified before Christmas, we are seeing hospital admission rates and demand for hospital services rising across our country. That is why it was absolutely right that we instituted the measures that we did, which have seen what it is effectively called a national lockdown at this time. The Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Health have been clear that they hope, and would expect, that as we get the infection under control and ease the pressure on the NHS, when it is safe to do so we will be able to look to returning to that tiering system. Exactly as my right hon. Friend says, one of the five key factors in whether an area went up or down among the tiers was local hospital capacity—and I emphasise the “local” in that context—but, sadly, we are not in that place as we stand here and debate this matter today.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is being very generous with his time. Could he perhaps say more about what percentage of those vaccinated in the vulnerable categories will count towards such a consideration?

[Edward Argar]

If my hon. Friend will show a little forbearance as I make a little progress, I will come to vaccinations and the vulnerable in a moment. I will seek to address his point then; if I do not, I am sure that he will prompt me.

I think every Member of this House fully appreciates and understands the huge burden that these restrictions now place on people today and every day: on pupils, on parents, on businesses, on individuals and on families. The Secretary of State for Education has set out our plan to support people in education settings, including with the provision of new equipment for remote learning. For businesses such as those in retail, hospitality and leisure that have been forced to close their doors once again, we are providing an additional £4.6 billion of support. There will be not a single Member in this House who has not received correspondence and pleas from their constituents who run businesses, be it in hospitality or the self-employed—a whole range of people. Members on both sides of the House will be working flat out to seek to assist them. I do appreciate the pressures that they are under. Of course, that support comes on top of our unprecedented £280 billion plan for jobs, including the extension of the furlough scheme until April.

Let me turn to vaccines. We know that in the long run the best way to help everyone in this country is to suppress the virus and to vaccinate people against it. The NHS is committed to offering, by 15 February, a vaccination to everyone in the top four priority groups, who currently account for more than four out of every five—roughly 88%—covid fatalities. The groups include older care home residents and staff, everyone over 70, all frontline NHS and care staff, and all those who are clinically extremely vulnerable. In working towards that target, there are already more than 1,000 vaccination centres throughout the country, including more than 200 hospital sites, which will increase to 270, and some 775 GP-led sites. Of course, pharmacies are already working with GPs to deliver the vaccine in many areas of the country. As vaccine supply increases, community pharmacies will continue to play an essential role.

Before my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) prompts me, let me turn briefly to the question he asked. The Prime Minister and ministerial colleagues will take into consideration a number of factors when looking at the right time—the safe time, based on the scientific and clinical advice—to ease the current restrictions and to move to a tiered system. One factor that I know will weigh with them and play a part in that decision will be the extent to which vaccination has significantly reduced the risk of death in those groups most likely to be affected by the virus. It would, though, be premature—indeed, it would go well beyond my pay grade—for me to set out the detail of what precise considerations the Prime Minister will be looking at as we reach that point, hopefully in a few months’ time.

This week has seen the announcement of the opening of seven mass vaccination hubs in places such as sports stadiums and exhibition centres, and yesterday we launched our full vaccine deployment plan, which includes measures that we will take, together with local authorities, to maximise take-up among harder-to-reach communities, and our new national booking service, which will make it easier to book and access appointments. In that context, I should pay tribute to one of the great strengths of this country, which is the willingness of the people of this country to step up, pull together and volunteer to assist in times of great need for this country. We are seeing that happening now. In that context, I also pay tribute to The Sun’s “Jabs Army” campaign, through which The Sun is doing its bit to encourage people to sign up and to volunteer—I believe it has got more than 30,000 people to sign up. All this is a reflection of the innate strength of community in this country: when something needs to be done, the people of this country step up and do their bit.

Another part of the plan is our new vaccinations dashboard, which gives daily updates on our progress in the biggest vaccination effort in British history.

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[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

The Minister ordinarily has a rather pessimistic speech inflicted on her when I rise in the House, but today I want to strike a different tone, because the whole country can now see that we have a moment of opportunity, a moment of hope and a route out of these persistent lockdowns. I can report that in Stockport, my home town and the borough of my constituency, all the over-80s and care home residents will have received at least their first jab by this Friday. I am grateful that Stockport has honoured the commitment that was given to those who received their first jab that they would receive their second one. I know that there is considerable public debate about that, but that was quite helpful in allaying some of their concerns. Good progress is indeed being made with the roll-out of vaccination. I pay particular tribute to those at Stepping Hill Hospital and the many GP practices across my constituency. Indeed, in Greater Manchester, that has recently been augmented by the vaccine centre at the tennis centre. I particularly mention on this one occasion my mum, who has come out of retirement to help with vaccines at that centre.

May I briefly ask the Minister about matters around data, particularly the need to update and clarify explanatory notes on the dashboard for vaccination statistics? It would be helpful to have a breakdown of data on those who have been vaccinated according to the nine priority groups of vulnerable people, with running percentages on progress made. Indeed, we could provide local breakdowns of data, perhaps to inculcate a sense of civic pride if not competition, and the need to make further progress. Most seriously, that could highlight problem areas so that extra focus can be given and extra resource made available.

I echo calls not for a timetable of how we can ease lockdown but, rather, milestones—the course of the virus does not follow a timetable. At least having measurable progress, with milestones reached, would allow people to stick with the impositions of lockdown, allow businesses to plan, and keep the Government’s feet to the fire, showing that their singular focus is on the roll-out of the vaccine. I hope that those words of encouragement will meet with the approval of my hon. Friend the Minister.

Public Health

William Wragg Excerpts

Wednesday 30th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

Before I say anything else, I want to say thank you to all our health and social care workers who have been working day and night through Christmas, Boxing day and the bank holiday. I know that every single one of them is feeling the strain and that they are not just tired but exhausted, having gone not just the extra mile but miles and miles of extra miles. I would also like to thank everyone across the country who has forgone the joy of sharing Christmas with family or friends. We have all missed those precious moments, and I know that this has been particularly painful for those facing what may be the last chance to spend Christmas with a loved one nearing the end of their life. That is why I say thank you to them from the bottom of my heart for what they have done, not so much for their own sake but to protect others.

I would like to take a moment to celebrate the good news of the authorisation of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for use. Although the development of vaccines is an international collaboration, we should recognise the contribution of the British life sciences sector, which offers the UK a way out of this disease and will make a huge impact on the global response.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

Could my hon. Friend confirm the numbers of the AstraZeneca vaccine that are ready to be administered?

Covid-19 Update

William Wragg Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The Secretary of State for Education will be setting out these plans. We need to get them out as soon as possible so that people have the last couple of days of term to work on them, and he will be doing that. Testing in schools is incredibly important, and it is going to become more important as we roll it out more broadly. I am really glad to hear some of the statements from the teaching unions about how enthusiastic they are for testing, especially in secondary schools. I am sure that the Education Secretary will want to work with the hon. Gentleman and others right across the country to roll out this programme as effectively as possible and to make sure that we have high-quality testing in schools, so that we can keep kids in education as much as possible and get the infection rate down by finding the positive cases and having them isolate.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

It being Christmas, and given the circumstances that we are in, covid-compliant carol singers in Stockport have been heard singing the words of that well-known epidemiologist Mariah Carey, “All I want for Christmas is tier 2”, but sadly their entreating that outcome has not been successful at all. Can my right hon. Friend explain, further to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady), precisely what more residents in Stockport need to do in order to regain some relative freedom?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes. We have to keep getting the case rate down. In Stockport it is still over 100. There is further to go. Right across Greater Manchester and the surrounding areas, I would urge people to do as they have been doing, because the case rates have come down really quite significantly. Right across Greater Manchester and in Stockport, people have been doing the right thing, but the pressures on the NHS remain, partly from people who are in hospital with covid from when the rates were really high. I hope that we can make the move as soon as possible, and in the meantime I hope that everybody has a happy, safe and careful Christmas in Stockport.

Covid-19 Update

William Wragg Excerpts

Monday 14th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I got the gist of it, Madam Deputy Speaker. My hon. Friend is right to express the concerns about the hospitality industry. This will be a significant blow to the hospitality industry, and we only take this action because it is absolutely necessary, because of the rates of increase of this virus right across London, and especially in Kent. Therefore it is necessary, and the best thing we can do is all work together to try to get London out of tier 3.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I do beg the hon. Gentleman’s pardon and apologise for confusing the Secretary of State. We are actually going to Calder Valley and Craig Whittaker.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker]

And now I call William Wragg.

[Mr Wragg]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for that warm welcome.

Further to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin), the approach of Essex and Hertfordshire shows that district authorities can be dealt with separately between tiers. With that tantalising prospect, will my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State commit to looking closely at the very encouraging data from Stockport, and indeed other boroughs of Greater Manchester, in reviewing those tiers this Thursday?

Covid-19 Vaccine Roll-out

William Wragg Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I have a huge amount of sympathy with what the hon. Lady says, and we have looked into this. We are not proposing to extend the Christmas bubbles, but we hope that NHS trusts and employers across the NHS can look compassionately at exactly this situation for all those brilliant colleagues who are working so hard and have had such a tough year.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

I always enjoy my exchanges with my right hon. Friend, and this time I mean that when I say it, because this is incredibly welcome news, particularly given Stepping Hill Hospital’s role in the administration of the vaccine. I will certainly encourage all my constituents, when they receive the invitation, to have the vaccine, take it and dispel some of the more eccentric views that are circulating on the internet. Can my right hon. Friend tell me specifically when those with particular vulnerabilities, such as cancer patients, can expect the call for vaccination?

[Matt Hancock]

The plan is, according to clinical priority, to vaccinate those in care homes and their carers; NHS and social care staff, and the over-80s; then the over-75s; and then, at that point, we will turn to ensuring that all those who are on the clinically extremely vulnerable list get vaccinated along with the over-70-year-olds. That is the assessment of the JCVI, which looked into the relative risk that people face and found that age is the No. 1 risk factor.