Coronavirus Response

Alexander Stafford Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

On the hon. Lady’s first point, of course it is a big team effort. She is quite right to raise the three areas that she raises, and that is exactly what we are delivering on: making sure that people have high-quality data; making sure that if we need to put in more resources, such as more testing, we do that; making sure that money goes to local directors of public health, which we have done; and making sure that we get high-quality links between the two. We are making progress exactly against how she sets it out.

If, in addition, the hon. Lady seeks a threshold—a figure—at which point a local lockdown is triggered, we are not going to do that. The reason we are not going to do that is that we have to take everything into account, including local circumstances. For instance, last week the number of cases in Herefordshire shot up—on some counts, it became one of the places with the most cases in the country—but we know that that was confined on one farm, so it was far better to tackle that one farm than to shut down the whole of Herefordshire. That is a clear example of why this simplistic call for a single threshold is not the right approach. The right approach is a scientific approach, using all the available data and people’s judgment.

[Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)]

The Secretary of State will know that many people in Rother Valley do not own cars and that public transport is often woeful, so will he support putting mobile testing units in Maltby and Dinnington so that everyone who needs a test can get a test?

[Matt Hancock]

I will look precisely at putting mobile testing units in Maltby and Dinnington and look, again, at the local data, along with the local authority, to see what we can do.