Coronavirus

Aaron Bell Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

As ever, it is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker). On his interesting point about SAGE, we could do with full disclosure from the Government about all the facts that they have available to them on covid. In the Science and Technology Committee this morning, we were told that vaccinations have saved 14,000 lives. I have no doubt that that is an accurate figure, but there are many figures that have not been given. As we said the last time we debated this issue, only one side of the equation is given. Let me ask this question: how many lives have been lost in order to save capacity in the NHS? When it comes to looking at people untested and untreated for cancer, heart disease and other diseases, we will find that the figures are of a similar, if not greater, magnitude than the number of people who have died from covid.

We should have transparency and open declarations of what really happened with the 26,000 deaths in care homes, where untested people were sent from hospital. We should have disclosure about all those people who were triaged by age and who were not treated, and all those people in care homes who were not allowed into hospitals because they were not taking people from care homes. There is a great deal more information that we require in order to make a rational decision about whether the lockdown should continue. I agree with the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) that what we have here is the Government asking for emergency powers when there is no longer an emergency.

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way; we were in the Science and Technology Committee this morning. Does he share my disquiet at the fact that the vaccine effectiveness numbers that Public Health England has published—96% effectiveness against hospitalisation from two doses of Pfizer, and 92% from Oxford-AstraZeneca—are much higher than the numbers that have been plugged into the models used by Imperial and the London School of Hygiene and Medical to underpin the data that the Government are relying on?

[Graham Stringer]

I agree completely that those sorts of numbers—the real numbers, as opposed to model numbers—are the numbers that should have been plugged into that model. They would have given a different scenario. The hon. Gentleman makes my point: in order to come to rational decisions about what risks we should take as a country and what risks individuals should take, we should have all the information up to date and available. The Government have refused on a number of occasions to give out that information. They have run a campaign to scare people into accepting their decisions.

To go back to the comments of the hon. Member for Broxbourne, who was talking about elections to SAGE, at least the behavioural psychologists who advise the Government have made a public apology. They say that they have undermined their professional credibility by joining the campaign of fear. I wish that the Government would not only put out more information, but apologise for frightening people. They should not frighten the electorate, and they certainly should not frighten people in this Chamber into taking people’s liberties away.

One of the things that has annoyed me most in the last 15 months is when the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care say, “We instruct you”—meaning the population—“to do various things,” when there is nothing in the legislation that would give the Secretary of State or the Prime Minister the ability to instruct individuals. We live in a liberal democracy in which we pass laws that are enforced by the police, and then the courts make a decision if there is a prosecution, not one in which the Secretary of State acts like some kind of uniformed Minister of the Interior.

I will vote against the regulations today. We need a more direct debate on the issue and we need what Members have searched for—a straightforward comparison, with real statistics, of what risks everybody faces.

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[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

I have supported the Government throughout on coronavirus measures, but today we have come very close to the point, for me personally, at which the line has been breached. I have listened to some very persuasive speeches from colleagues who have come to that point today, such as my hon. Friends the Members for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) and for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates). I myself am sticking with the Government on this occasion for the reasons that my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) gave— the same reasons, in fact, that the Health Secretary gave me in the Lobby earlier—including the need to get those second jabs into people who are still at risk of hospitalisation.

However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) recently said, we must take the two-week review seriously, because there is evidence even today that we are starting to bend the curve of exponential growth and that the R rate is starting to fall on cases in England. We know there is a 10-day lag to hospitalisations, but we have also seen the hospitalisation percentage falling. It was 8% of cases turning into hospitalisations in the autumn, and it is down to 4% now. If that continues to drop, the case that the Government are making will get weaker and weaker.

I would like briefly to pay tribute to the Health Secretary not only for all his work on this and his assiduousness in coming to the House, but for helping me with a major public health issue in Newcastle-under-Lyme—a landfill—which he has been incredibly engaged with. I think the Health Secretary has done a fantastic job throughout this pandemic, and I welcome what he said today. He himself obviously has his reservations, but this is the right decision for the country at this time.

As I serve on the Procedure Committee with my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley)—its Chair, who spoke earlier—let me say very briefly that I will be supporting the other motion as well. As we have said in the Committee, I think it is absolutely fundamental that we align what we do in this House with what we are asked in the country to do.