Coronavirus Bill

Bob Seely Excerpts

Committee stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 23rd March 2020 Commons Chamber

Government amendment 52 recognises those rights and provides legal protection for the deceased of Muslim and Jewish communities, requiring their wishes and faith to be shown due regard, to prevent cremation. In some ways, it is clearer and goes further than my amendment. It provides protection to those from faiths where people choose to be buried and to those who choose to be cremated. I therefore do not press my amendment 66 and will support Government amendment 52 to provide this much-needed addition to the Bill.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I shall speak to new clause 6, which I tabled to enable quicker action to support Island and isolated communities. I intend to talk briefly about the new clause and to ask some questions of those on the Front Bench.

The Isle of Wight is dependent on three private ferry firms. If staff from one or more of those firms go ill with covid-19 and we have an outbreak, there will be serious consequences for the Island. Competition law currently prevents the firms from talking. That is still the case, despite eight days of efforts to get it moved. In basic terms, the new clause would allow the relevant Secretary of State or devolved Administration to issue directions to allow ferry firms to talk to one other, potentially to plan and implement joint services for the purpose of resilience—for the provision of food, medicine and other essential goods, and of passenger transportation.

Although we are an island, we need to stay open because we need food going out and coming in, we need key workers to go backwards and forwards, and we need people to continue to receive life-saving medical treatment in Southampton and Portsmouth. If the ferry firms fall over, we cannot do that. They are a true lifeline. I think people do not realise that an island separated from a land mass without a fixed link needs ferries.

The Department for Transport understands the lifeline nature of our services and is doing a good job. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has not yet acted on that. I understand that officials are working up a statutory instrument, and apparently there is a letter coming from the Secretary of State at some point. The Competition and Markets Authority says it will not take action, but as of this evening the firms—I am being texted by my ferry firms as we speak—still are not willing to talk because, for compliance purposes, they need a letter from a Government Minister and a Secretary of State.

Critically, I want Ministers to understand that I do not blame the Government. I know how stressed they are across the provision. This new clause is designed to be helpful because a Government diktat—a fiat—means that the Government will allow the ferry firms to talk to each other, avoiding much of the bureaucracy there seems to be at the moment, by getting a statutory instrument in place.

I would be delighted if the Government accepted new clause 6 in its entirety—I thank the Public Bill Office very much for its work. If they are not going to accept it, will a Minister reassure me this evening that a Secretary of State will write a letter with the assurances that I need? Can somebody also give me the assurance that the delegated legislation will be laid before Parliament?

Can somebody reassure me on medical supplies? For example, a consultant at a hospice contacted me today to say, “If we run out of morphine on the Island, can we give out other opiates?” Because of a glitch in the system, nurses can give out morphine, but they cannot give out other opiates.

[Penny Mordaunt]

Can I just answer that point, because my hon. Friend made it on Second Reading, and I have checked the issue? The Department of Health and NHS England are looking at precisely the issue of being able to authorise healthcare professionals to administer other opiates. I can also assure my hon. Friend that he will shortly get a letter from the relevant Secretary of State with regard to the Isle of Wight ferry issue. I do not know its contents—I am not briefed on that—but his lobbying has worked.