Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Bowie Excerpts

Tuesday 13th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jo Churchill]

We are already taking strong action in this area; we have already worked hard and are taking long covid seriously. We are listening to patients, taking a patient-first approach, working with the NHS and the wider scientific community, and engaging with the Royal College of General Practitioners to better understand the disease, which is physiological and neurological. It is different for different people, and therefore treatments need to be different for different people. We are working on ensuring that we have the best post-covid assessment care and the best pathways.

[Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)]

What steps he is taking to support covid-19 vaccine roll-out in Scotland.

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Matt Hancock)]

The covid-19 vaccination programme has been the biggest in the history of the United Kingdom. The UK Government have ensured that the excellent work done by the vaccines taskforce to procure vaccines for the whole country has been rolled out to protect people across the UK. To support the roll-out in Scotland, I recently announced an additional £660 million of UK Government funding for Scotland. That is of course on top of the £3.6 billion that Scotland is already receiving over the next financial year through the Barnett formula.

[Andrew Bowie]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his answer. Does he agree that this is proof of the irrefutable truth that we achieve much more together than we ever could apart and that we should be focusing on the vaccination roll-out and recovery—not a damaging and divisive second referendum on Scottish independence, which would be the case if the Scottish National party won the Scottish election on 6 May?

[Matt Hancock]

I entirely agree that the vaccination programme has clearly been a huge UK success story and that is because of the UK working together: the NHS across the whole UK; the military working in support across the UK; and, of course, the UK Government working with the devolved authorities and local councils. It is a big team effort. To split and separate out this team effort for no good reason would, in my view, be counterproductive to improving the lives of people across the whole country. We should be working together, not pursuing separation.