Covid-19

Ben Spencer Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)]

I welcome the road map announced today, particularly the return to school on 8 March, the clear vision, the refutation of a zero-covid strategy, and the commitment to a steady and irreversible lifting of restrictions. This will bring added certainty and hope to many of my constituents.

Our local roll-out of vaccinations in Runnymede and Weybridge has been fantastic. Vaccination hubs have opened at Chertsey Hall, Egham Hythe and St Peter’s Hospital. Each and every one of our volunteers and staff at these sites are saving lives and getting us all one step closer to the lifting of restrictions. I thank everyone who has worked and continues to work so hard in our vaccination hubs and everyone who helped out or volunteered in the recent surge testing in Egham.

The road map charts a course to lifting the restrictions on the back of the vaccination programme, and it promises that the process will be irreversible, but I hope that the Minister will not think me churlish in asking for another plan—a long-term plan to enable us to live with the virus and support the NHS as it faces the major challenges on the horizon, in particular the coming winter pressures.

It is increasingly clear that covid is a seasonal disease, like other coronaviruses. Winter pressures have plagued the NHS for pretty much every year that I have worked as a doctor, but this autumn and winter will be different. The NHS has reduced hospital capacity as a consequence of social distancing in hospitals, the increased need for infection control measures such as testing and the burden of cleaning and PPE on throughput. Even if the number of patients needing to be hospitalised with covid this winter is radically reduced—and we all hope it will be— the NHS will still face normal winter pressures from diseases such as flu and pneumonia, but with reduced capacity as a result of its covid infection control measures.

I asked my local hospital, St Peter’s, what it needs to increase NHS surge capacity—is it more money, real estate or oxygen? It says that the limiting factor is more trained staff, which I am sure is the case in many of our hospitals. The NHS and our staffing plans were not designed for surge capacity in a pandemic or when recovering from one; why would they be? While the road map focuses on what we need to do to reduce the number of patients who need to be hospitalised, we also need to think of the other side of the equation: how to increase overall NHS hospital capacity—not just surge capacity for covid, but capacity for all care in a post-covid world. While I welcome the announcement of increased nursing applications over the weekend, we need these nurses now. We know that winter pressures are coming later this year. What do we need to do now to prepare us, so that we can live with this virus for the long term, as the road map charts, and prevent any prospect of future restrictions?