Oral Answers to Questions

Afzal Khan Excerpts

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend very much for raising this important question and for championing research into motor neurone disease, and I thank him also for raising the excellent work of the My Name’5 Doddie Foundation. We have spent £54 million in the last five years towards this cause, and we are looking at ways significantly to boost the research that we are supporting.

[Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab) [V]]

A year into this crisis and more than 126,000 lives have been lost. Behind that staggering figure are millions grieving for their loved ones. In my family, we have lost an entire generation. I could not hold my mum’s hand as she lay dying, and I recently lost both my father and mother-in-law within just days of one another. Grieving families like mine want and deserve to understand what happened and whether anything could have been done to prevent this tragedy. Will the Prime Minister today commit to launching a full public inquiry into the handling of the pandemic as soon as current restrictions are lifted?

[The Prime Minister]

I want to say to the hon. Gentleman that I know that the whole House shares my sympathies and my sorrow for his loss, and we sympathise also with his entire family. I know that his experience is one, as he rightly said, that has been shared by far too many families up and down the country. That is why, as soon as it is right to do so, as soon as it would not be an irresponsible diversion of the energies of the key officials involved, we are of course committed to an inquiry, to learn the lessons, to make sure that something like this can never happen again.