Covid-19

Andrew Griffith Excerpts

Monday 28th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell). Most of what I wanted to say tonight has already been said. I would therefore like to give a voice to two important sectors in my constituency.

Arundel and South Downs has the enormous benefit of being one of the most beautiful constituencies in the south of England. As a result, I am pleased to say that we attract far more than our fair share of weddings, which my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Sara Britcliffe) mentioned. In catering for the 400,000 marriages that take place in the UK each year, we are lucky to punch well above our weight.

However, last week’s guidance has dealt an already struggling sector a weighty blow. On behalf of my constituents and businesses such as Cissbury Barns in Findon, where Etta and Geoff Wyatt run a wedding business, Mark McDavid’s Fitzleroi Barn near Pullborough or the wonderful Pangdean Old Barn in Pyecombe, run by Nicky Currie, I point out that they are all struggling with guidance that says that there can be a service with as many people as can be covid-safely accommodated, unless it includes wedding vows, or that a restaurant can have as many covers as is covid compliant, unless there happen to be a bride and groom among them, in which case the number is restricted to 15. On behalf of the broader wedding industry, which is a really important sector for my constituency and for the wider rural economy, I ask the Minister to see whether, over the coming dark months of winter, we can help breathe life into it and keep our wedding venues and the wedding supply chain ticking over so that they make it through until the spring. They are having a very difficult time.

Secondly, I also apply many of those comments to the events and exhibitions business. I have some wonderful businesses in that space. I met Martin Bennett at Positive Images, which is based in West Chiltington, just before this crisis hit, and I spoke to him again last week. He has had to make all of his staff redundant and he has now mothballed that business, with no potential respite in sight. The same is true of my constituents Lou Kiwanuka and Sara Macnae, who wrote to me about their business, the Shaper Group in Hurstpierpoint.

While commending the Minister for all of her and her colleagues’ efforts—it has been a Herculean task to get the country to where we are today—we ask that, as we go forward over the coming months and shift away from the moment of crisis to sustaining our economy, she will continue to look at what can be done over time to modify the guidance so that sectors such as weddings and events and exhibitions can continue to thrive.