Anum Qaisar
Main Page: Anum Qaisar (Scottish National Party - Airdrie and Shotts)Department Debates - View all Anum Qaisar's debates with the Department for Transport
(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Grant Shapps
Far be it for me to get between my hon. Friend and the House authorities, but I do have to say it is time for those delegations to be able to return.
We have today set out a form of travel where amber can be treated as green and where double vaccination—or I should say full vaccination, because some people will have a single vaccination in the future—plus 14 days provides reason to travel, and I very much hope that that then brings to a conclusion this long-running situation where my hon. Friend and others have not been able to travel to important Council of Europe and other business.
Anum Qaisar-Javed (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP) [V]
The newly appointed Health Secretary has said that the UK Government’s policy of returning to normal may lead to as many as 100,000 covid cases per day. It is entirely possible that these case rates, uncontrolled by the UK Government, could lead to further curbs on UK travellers abroad. How will the Secretary of State’s plans announced today accommodate these projected domestic case rates?
Grant Shapps
It is important to know that we are in a different phase of this coronavirus now, as never before have we had the majority of our population double vaccinated, and everyone is welcome to come forward—and, indeed, should come forward—if they have not been for their vaccinations yet. The rest of the world is not quite in that situation as yet but will want to get itself to that position.
For us, therefore, increasingly the focus is not so much on the specific case rates—after all, we are not vaccinating children yet, and we wait for the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation to let us know whether it is scientifically proven and advisable to do so— but on hospitalisations and deaths. Other countries will experience the same thing, and there is no reason, as we have seen throughout the coronavirus, to think that one country’s epidemiological situation is different from another’s. We know that while we may have been suffering from the delta variant, other countries, sadly, will be in the future; I hope that they can get themselves vaccinated in time.