Coronavirus

Bob Seely Excerpts

Thursday 25th March 2021 Commons Chamber

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

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond).

I will start with some positives. The success of the vaccination programme is a fantastic achievement; Katie Bingham is a national hero. The Secretary of State has also worked tirelessly, as have many other Ministers. I thank again everyone involved with the vaccination process on the Isle of Wight, including the NHS teams in primary care and secondary care.

However, I am not happy with the Government’s plans today and I think they are unbalanced. In the next couple of minutes, I will explain why. First—this has been echoed by others—the Government have said that they will base their response on data, not dates, but it has become clear that the data has changed quicker than predicted and the dates have not changed. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) just said, Government action is now based on data that is old and negative—too old and too negative. I have yet to hear a credible explanation as to why. Where is the new updated data that we should be using if we have fresh, new data? I fear that, yet again, science is being used gently to lead the debate, rather than to frame it with the evidence necessary for us to make decisions.

Secondly, basing lockdown on cases, not deaths, is not good enough. I was listening to Professor Van-Tam briefing Members a couple of days ago. He is clearly a very impressive man, but his presentation was clear: lockdown was being justified on cases. But cases are not deaths or hospitalisations. I felt as though I was almost being misled, and I say that with great respect to him. He was saying that we have to continue this way because we have cases, despite the Government saying that we cannot eliminate covid from our society and we have to live with it. We have been under house arrest for nearly a year now. Justifying continued mass house arrest based on cases, not deaths or hospitalisations, frankly felt like very thin gruel from the Government.

Thanks to the miracle of vaccination—and it is a scientific miracle, as this is the first time in human history that a pandemic is being defeated with science, which is an extraordinary event in the history of humanity —the link between cases, hospitalisation and death has been broken. Yes, we need to be mindful of cases, but cases are not deaths. The continuation of these draconian measures, now based on a “not quite sure” approach, is not normal. As my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady) said, we should not be normalising this response, because our liberties belong to us, not to the Government. Continuing in this way now, when we have broken the link between death, hospitalisation and cases sets a dangerous precedent.