Andrew Griffith
Main Page: Andrew Griffith (Conservative - Arundel and South Downs)Department Debates - View all Andrew Griffith's debates with the HM Treasury
(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Anneliese Dodds
I will take one last intervention. I am aware that there are many who want to speak in this debate.
Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)
The hon. Lady makes important points about the difficulties faced by so many people in the economy. Will she explain how they will be helped by closing down the entire economy? It is the madhouse of fixing the windows or knocking the whole house down.
Anneliese Dodds
Unfortunately, the hon. Gentleman does not appear to be aware that the windows are already broken and that, in a quarter of this country, we see those businesses having been subject to additional restrictions. None of them has moved out of that, aside from in Luton, which appears, sadly, to be in a difficult situation again now.
We see the Government’s own expert advisers saying that they are likely to be forced into a position where additional restrictions have to be applied in the future, when they will be less effective, because by that point infection will have been spread further across this country. So the question is whether action is taken decisively when it can be most effective or whether we push this back, the costs increase, business confidence continues to erode, people continue to lose their jobs and businesses continue to go to the wall. That is the question this Government need to answer.
If we are to avoid the bleakest of winters, this Government have to get a grip. We need a national reset. For that to work, we need an economic package that acknowledges reality and gets ahead of the problems we face; a wage support scheme that works properly; a safety net worthy of the name; and financial support that goes hand in hand with the imposition of extra restrictions.
Rishi Sunak
The debate following this will address test and trace. It is worth bearing in mind that more than £12 billion has been invested in our test and trace capacity. Testing capacity has increased from simply 10,000 a day at the start of this crisis to close to 300,000 today, on its way up to half a million, and ours now ranks as one of the most comprehensive testing regimes anywhere in Europe.
Andrew Griffith
Does my right hon. Friend agree that, faced with a choice between a national blunt instrument that would wreak enormous economic damage, and something that is more finely calibrated region by region based on the science, there is no choice to make?
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is absolutely right: it is a blunt instrument. It would cause needless damage to parts of our country where virus rates are low.