Covid-19 Update

Baroness Keeley Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I of course understand why many in the wedding industry and many who are planning to get married in the next month would prefer to be able to do so without any of these rules at all. I do not want these rules either, but, unfortunately, we have a virus that is growing again. We have to take the extra time to allow the vaccines to come through, so the social distancing rules are staying in place right across the board. Carving them out for one very specific activity is something that we looked at, but that we found a very, very difficult decision to take for all sorts of reasons, legal and practical, and in terms of fairness to everybody right across the board in different circumstances.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab) [V]]

I wish to return to the question of surge vaccinations. Case rates in Salford are higher than they have been since mid-January. They are five times higher than the national average and they are doubling around every seven days. We need to get vaccines into arms as quickly as possible, but this week we only have 3,500 doses of Pfizer, and that is falling to 2,200 doses next week. Despite promises from the Secretary of State of enhanced support and some talk of surge vaccinations in hotspots such as Salford, that lack of doses of the Pfizer vaccine is the major barrier to getting everyone in Salford jabbed. Will the Secretary of State remove that barrier? Will he make sure that we get the supply of Pfizer and the flexibility to vaccinate all our over-18-year-olds?

[Matt Hancock]

I am afraid that my reply is the same as it was to the hon. Member for Rochdale (Sir Tony Lloyd), which is that supply is the rate-limiting factor.

[Barbara Keeley]

indicated dissent.

[Matt Hancock]

The hon. Lady shakes her head, but it is a matter of fact that supply has been the rate-limiting factor throughout. We will do everything we can to support vaccination using the doses that we have. As she well knows, the UK, thankfully, is right at the front of the global race to get vaccinated, and that is because we bought early in very large bulk. Of course, we have worked to make that supply as big as possible as fast as possible. We go as fast as we can, but we cannot go faster than we can.