Public Health

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

Thanks to the hard work and dedication of everyone who lives in my constituency, we have been able to bring down the number of cases by half in the past couple of weeks. Despite those huge decreases, Tory failures to take the right action as far back as March meant it was inevitable our area would end up in tier 3 when we exited the lockdown.

The number of cases in Stockton is now nearly double the national average, and we are a long way from where we need to be. In a covid briefing last week, a Health Minister, who was clearly trying to be honest and open, said it was unlikely that our area would be brought into tier 2, even after the two-week review. I do not know whether the Prime Minister’s view is on that, but he must know that these tier restrictions will be with us for a while longer.

A glance at my inbox this morning revealed a multitude of emails, including from people wanting to visit their granny in a care home and on the desperation of businesses crying out for clarity and proper financial support and the devastating impact on young hockey players’ mental health, who want their ice rink to reopen. There was an email from a family who run a small pub and who have been serving our community since 1981. They are worried they will not make it through the winter, even if we did enter tier 2, because they do not serve food. The Prime Minister’s £1,000 does not, as he claimed, recognise how hard they have been hit, particularly when the average weekly profit of a wet pub in a rural area is twice that figure, and more than five times that figure in an urban area.

What about the letter from the mother sick with worry for her daughter, who, when she became self-employed, set up a limited company on the advice of her accountant? She is now excluded from accessing support from the self-employment income support scheme. Hundreds of thousands of people in the same position have been demanding action since March, and still nothing. The gaps in support are stark, and many more have been pointed out in the House today. However, they have been pointed out to the Government for many months, yet they still refuse to take action to close those gaps.

Across the Tees valley, we have already lost 12,565 extra jobs since the start of the pandemic, and the Government’s failure to provide full and sustained financial support to businesses in tier 3 will surely mean that more good jobs in our community will be consigned to the scrapheap. Once again, this Tory Government have failed to put in sufficient protection and support for businesses. For every job that has been announced locally over the past three years, we have lost five in the past six months. We have to look to the hospitality sector in particular and the people who find themselves out of work and give them the support they need. The Government have failed my constituents at every turn in this pandemic, and sadly the handling of support for those in tier 3 is just another failure to add to our tally.