Covid Pandemic: Testing of Care Home Residents Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department of Health and Social Care
Alexander Stafford
Main Page: Alexander Stafford (Conservative - Rother Valley)Department Debates - View all Alexander Stafford's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
Covid Pandemic: Testing of Care Home Residents
Alexander Stafford Excerpts(1 year, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Helen Whately
The questions about the discharge policy have been interrogated on a number of occasions, including by Select Committees. The hon. Gentleman will well know that in general, and in the work that we are doing now on discharge, it is rarely good for somebody who is medically fit for discharge to continue to be in hospital beyond that time. So of course it is right that when people are medically fit, they should be discharged home. The guidance of how that was done was set out on a number of occasions during the pandemic, and that guidance was updated both as we learned more about the virus and as greater testing capacity became available.
Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)
I am very proud of this Conservative Government’s record during the pandemic: 400 million tests, a world-leading and world-beating vaccine programme, and £400 billion spent to keep jobs and people’s prospects going. Clearly, hard decisions were made, and hindsight is a wonderful thing, but we should not be reflecting with hindsight now; we should deal with the facts at hand. Does the Minister agree that this Government will continue to take measures, and that if—God forbid—there is another pandemic, we will not let party politicking get in the way of making decisions to protect lives, fund jobs and keep our country going?
Helen Whately
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to point out the extraordinary things that were done during the pandemic. I do not think that the Government should seek to take credit for that; so many people worked incredibly hard, whether in local authorities, social care or the NHS, or through their involvement in supply chains and the huge efforts to secure personal protective equipment when that was incredibly hard to get hold of across the world. I am glad that he draws attention to some of those things. He is absolutely right that, in the context of the public inquiry, we should reflect overall.