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.

Covid-19 Update

Andrew Griffith Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2020 Commons Chamber

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

My right hon. Friend is a great supporter of the UK’s businesses and entrepreneurs. In his measures to tackle the virus, will he intercede with his public health colleagues to prioritise the businesses that generate economic growth so that when this is over we have an economy that is prosperous enough to cash the very generous cheques that we have written?

[Matt Hancock]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and speaks with great knowledge, experience and eloquence on this matter. We have to protect livelihoods as much as possible, in the same way that we are trying to protect education as much as possible. That does mean sometimes that we have to take measures on social contact that people would prefer not to see, but unfortunately the measures that the Prime Minister outlined yesterday, and which I set out in my statement, are, in my judgment, absolutely necessary both to keeping the virus under control and to protecting education and the economy as much as possible.

Testing of NHS and Social Care Staff

Andrew Griffith Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2020 Commons Chamber

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

I am delighted to see that the hon. Gentleman has improved his reading material. I congratulate him on securing the debate, and on his constructive tone. In that vein, in addition to the proposals that he is setting out, will he recognise that we are able to start unlocking the economy today because of the herculean efforts made in areas such as PPE, and the contribution made by the private healthcare sector, which has a valuable role to play as we move towards more of the elective care that we now need?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I know that the hon. Gentleman is always keen to support those on his Front Bench. Indeed, he was one of the few Tory Members who actually supported Mr Cummings, tweeting:

“Another media non-story when there are so many important ‘real’ stories of this crisis”.

The Government were slow in getting PPE to the frontline, slow in ramping up testing, slow in going into lockdown, slow in getting tracing going and slow in protecting care homes. I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman recognises my constructive tone, but it does not mean that I will not highlight the failing of this Government in their mishandling of many aspects of the pandemic.

I must now move on, having spent some time in this mutual love-in with the former Health Secretary. I do not want to damage his career any further, although he is probably not on the Prime Minister’s Christmas card list at the moment.

I hope that the Government will engage seriously with our suggestion of regular testing for all NHS staff, because we believe that is a crucial part of an effective test, trace and isolate strategy. The problem is that the testing and tracing is still not as effective as it should be. Of course, we recall that testing and tracing was abandoned on 12 March, and the Government have been playing catch-up ever since. At Health questions yesterday the Secretary of State could not even tell us how many people were being tested on a daily basis. I hope that the Minister will now get us that information.

Local authorities are still not receiving localised data, which is very serious. At Thursday’s press conference—the Prime Minister has now got rid of the press conferences—the Health Secretary casually announced, in response to a question, that Leicester is experiencing one of the highest spikes in the country. Nearly a week later, the local authority still does not have specific postcode data on where the people who have tested positive are. The Secretary of State announced that last Thursday, and today is Wednesday. We do not have that data because the data protection protocols have still not been agreed. This is shambolic. The Government cannot announce that there is an outbreak in a particular part of the country but then not provide the local authority with the data it needs to put in place the necessary measures.

--- Later in debate ---

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

I will be brief so that as many hon. Members as possible can speak. I congratulate the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) on securing this debate. It is good to debate this important subject.

I invite the Minister to join me in placing on record my thanks to the leadership team and all the staff at the Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust. Sadly, we have had more than 100 deaths in west Sussex, but every one of those people was in the wonderful care and hands of the first acute trust in the country to be rated outstanding by the Care Quality Commission twice in a row.

Collective achievements have individual heroes behind them. We are talking about testing, so I mention in particular the pathology lab at St Richard’s in Chichester. It has been working on swab tests since the start of the crisis, but it has now moved on to doing antibody tests as well. It has done 7,000 already and its capacity is now at 1,000 tests a day, which will be a valuable resource across west Sussex as we move into the next phase of the crisis.

Finally, I extend my thanks and recognition to all the hard-working staff in our care homes, of which we have a great many, for the wonderful job they have done. As we move forward from the acute phase, I am conscious that they will continue to bear that burden, so I thank them.

Coronavirus

Andrew Griffith Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

No. We have enhanced, under the leadership of Lord Deighton, the supplies of PPE across the whole United Kingdom. I work very closely with the SNP Government on this matter. We have made sure that PPE is now available, in large part, across the whole NHS and social care workforce, and for all those others who need it. Demand for PPE rose exponentially across the world in this crisis. It was difficult for a time—there is no point denying that—but we have made huge strides in ensuring that we now have long-term contracts in place. I am really glad that the supply and distribution of PPE is much wider.

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

I congratulate the Secretary of State on his science-led strategy, from which we are now reaping the dividends and which is genuinely saving lives. But the science also tells that as we reduce the propensity of the virus in the population, we can also reduce the social distancing that we applied. Businesses, residents and teachers across Arundel and South Downs are united in their appetite to move to 1 metre as quickly and as carefully as possible. Will he update us on that?

[Matt Hancock]

The answer is that we keep all of our non-pharmaceutical interventions—the social distancing measures—under review. The 2-metre rule is another social distancing measure in the same way that other parts of the lockdown have been. It is the sort of thing that, of course, we want to lift, but we need to do that in a way that is careful and safe. The scientists, along with the economists, are reviewing it, and we will take forward further measures on this when it is possible and safe to do so.

Public Health

Andrew Griffith Excerpts

Monday 4th May 2020 Commons Chamber

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

I am pleased to follow so many of my colleagues on the Government Benches in this important debate. I completely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) who emphasised the vital role of Parliament in overseeing the extraordinary measures that are being taken. Only we in Parliament can supply legal and democratic legitimacy to the difficult decisions that need to be made in this crisis. In that context, I regret several aspects of today’s debate.

First, I regret the fact that we are discussing only now, on 4 May, regulations to which our citizens have been subject since 26 March. I am afraid that, by some distance, the House could not be said to be debating them at the first possible opportunity. Secondly, I regret the fact that matters of such importance were not dealt with by primary legislation, given that the House was able to pass the Coronavirus Bill when it met before the Easter recess on 23 March. Thirdly, even today, only two hours have been given over to debating what the Minister acknowledged to be extraordinary measures of a kind never seen before in peacetime. I note that, for whatever reason, fewer than 3% of Members are participating in a debate on a subject of such magnitude, which may have consequences for the liberty of the individual for generations to come.

It was utterly foreseeable to anyone who has experienced an event much larger than the average parish fête that over-zealous police officers and public officials would jump into the ambiguous space between legislation and guidance. I exclude from my remarks, and indeed would like to praise Sussex police under the leadership of Police and Crime Commissioner Bourne and Chief Constable Giles York for avoiding many of the excesses we have seen elsewhere. However, there is a type of personality who, if given a high-vis jacket, a uniform or an official title, relishes dishing out prohibitions to their fellow citizens. Such a minority—we must be clear that that is what they are—are ignorant of and usually untroubled by the limits of the law unless they are specifically drilled into them in a way that time has not allowed to happen here.

I would like to propose to the Minister what I believe to be a reasonable notion. When the police or public authorities purport to issue guidance or spend taxpayers’ money on paid-for advertising, it should contain footnotes indicating the clear basis in law for that guidance. It was Hayek who wrote:

“Nothing distinguishes more clearly conditions in a free country from those in a country under arbitrary government than the observance in the former of the great principles known as the Rule of Law.”

In the UK, the rule of law was central to the great charter of freedoms, described by Lord Denning as

“the greatest constitutional document of all times”—

I agree.

Members may recall that the Earl of Arundel was one of the 25 barons tasked to hold the King to account, however uncomfortable a position that may have been. Today, as the Member of Parliament for Arundel and South Downs, I am pleased to support the Government and believe that they have done an exceptional job in difficult circumstances, but it is hard to argue that a touch more parliamentary scrutiny would not have exposed, and therefore narrowed sooner, the gaps between legislation and guidance.

Covid-19

Andrew Griffith Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I will. The hon. Member makes a very good point.

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

British businesses—large and small, including those in West Sussex—stand shoulder to shoulder with the Secretary of State on the excellent work that he is doing. May I commend the advanced manufacturing initiative for ventilators, but encourage him to go much further into other hard-pressed categories across our health and social care system?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, the response to this crisis has been extraordinary. Things are happening in this country that nobody would have wished, and things are happening faster than so many people anticipated, but people’s ability to respond—even to changes that nobody would have wanted to see—has so far been, in many cases, remarkable. Of course we talk about the NHS and social care, but so many businesses that are also under intense pressure and stress are looking to see what they can do to help.

Coronavirus

Andrew Griffith Excerpts

Monday 9th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

We constantly keep travel advice under review, and have made covid-19 a notifiable disease. Both those measures will help with the circumstances outlined by the hon. Gentleman.

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

On behalf of those who have already been affected in West Sussex, may I thank all those who have been working extremely long hours to deal with this crisis? Will the Secretary of State remind everyone involved that this is a marathon, not a sprint, and that pacing is incredibly important in dealing with any crisis? I urge him to use the innovation, capacity and capability of business as we move through this situation.

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, I agree with all of that. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Critically, as the scientists have advised us, getting the timing of the interventions right is crucial for getting the best possible response as a nation.