Covid-19

Antony Higginbotham Excerpts

Monday 28th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)]

Covid-19 has been really tough for people in Burnley and Padiham. It has rippled through our community and caused heartache and sacrifice, but it has also brought selflessness and a sense of community. It is particularly tough in Burnley and Padiham because we continue to have local restrictions and cases continue to increase. That means that households still cannot meet, grandparents cannot see grandchildren and parents cannot see children. I worry about the impact that that will have on the mental health of the children who went all that time without school and the families who were unable to grieve. I pay tribute to the outstanding work of my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell), whose campaign for 1,000 mental health first aiders is a model for us all to follow to ensure that when people need it, there is mental health support for them.

I fundamentally believe that the Government’s actions are right. We know that the virus can be fatal, and how it can be beaten; we therefore have a moral duty to act. We cannot allow it to roam through our communities unchecked, but the Government’s job is to find a way of acting as unobtrusively as possible, allowing people to live their lives as freely as possible. That does not mean that everything will go back to normal, but it needs to be as close to normal as we can get. I urge the Government to find a way to make progress to allow people to visit their family members in care homes, to allow fans back into football stadiums, to allow people to attend the weddings of their loved ones, and to get conferences up and running again. All those things are about personal relationships, and it is personal relationships that matter.

We have the ability in this country to look at covid as though it is a British problem, ignoring the wide world out there and looking only at what is happening here, but every country is facing the same challenges and trying to find its own models and interventions to protect its people. When we look internationally and at what we have achieved in the UK, we find some real bright spots. Today, we heard that 70% of our PPE will come from UK suppliers by December. That is a fantastic statistic. Textile manufacturers in the north-west of England, in places such as Burnley, are securing jobs and ensuring that our care homes have security of supply. We have an app that has been downloaded more than 10 million times. That, too, is an incredible statistic. We have seen some of the most advanced biomedical developments in this country. Vaccines are progressing, and drugs that reduce the fatality rate are being researched here.

We know we have longer to go. We are not yet over this virus. I believe that the British people are willing to make the sacrifice, but to do that, the Government have to take us with them. We have to see light at the end of the tunnel, so with a clear, targeted and transparent approach to where we are going and how we are going to get there, I think the public will stay with us.