Public Health

Debate between Bob Seely and Andrew Murrison

Tuesday 30th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I record my interest as a practising doctor. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) that there appears to be a problem with the availability of slots for vaccinations, and that was before the Government announced this week that we were to expedite the booster programme. I am concerned about that, and I hope the Minister, who has commented briefly on that already, can confirm she has a cunning plan to ensure that people who need to be vaccinated are vaccinated and in particular that those vaccines reach the elderly and the vulnerable. At the moment, I have severe concerns about the availability of those slots, if not the vaccines themselves.

I will be supporting SI No. 1340 today on face coverings. I am mindful that we have to rely on the best available evidence. The evidence for a lot of these non-pharmaceutical interventions is more common-sense than actual. It seems to me to be a minor imposition to ask people to wear a face mask, particularly given the evidence published by The BMJ last week on this matter, which we have referred to already. The hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) in particular spoke about it.

I am more concerned about SI No. 1338 for two reasons. While SI No. 1340 expires on 20 December—or, at least, Ministers can decide whether to continue it on that date—there is no such luxury contained within SI No. 1338. That seems to be illogical. When pressed earlier, I regret to say that the Minister, who was very good at taking interventions from hon. and right hon. Members, did not address that point. She needs to explain to my satisfaction, and that of other Members, why 20 December stands in SI No. 1340, but it is 24 March for SI No. 1338. It seems that there is an appetite in the House to return here, if necessary, to reconfirm or refute the need for these measures to continue into the new year. I hope that the Minister has heard that loud and clear.

I for one would be more than happy to be here well past the time at which we rise, and right up to Christmas if necessary, and the reason for that is this: the things we have been discussing today touch heavily on the liberties and livelihoods of our constituents. These things are not trivial; they are of vital importance, and all actions have consequences. I am worried about things like this because of the messaging it gives off. It will be very difficult for businesses deciding whether to invest. They will look at SI No. 1338 and think, “Good gracious me, this will go on and on and on.” While they have been happy to go along with some of the impositions that we have had over the past 18 months, they are now coming to the point where they are thinking, “This could basically be the new normal. This will go on and on, and on what basis will we continue to invest in our businesses if every few months we have these kinds of things and goodness knows what else that may follow?” I am worried about that.

I am also deeply worried, as other hon. and right hon. Members have pointed out, about this “suspected of” bit. That seems to me to be rather clumsy and I am not comfortable with it. Presumably, anybody showing any coronavirus symptoms could be “suspected of” having the omicron variant.

The World Health Organisation touched on a potential solution to that at the weekend, which is the Thermo Fisher PCR test. I assume that it relies on the detection of the S-gene dropout that has been referred to, which could expedite the diagnosis of omicron as opposed to straightforward coronavirus. I wonder whether the Minister could reflect on that and say whether her understanding is that such a test would be the basis on which we would decide whether somebody was suspected of having it, because that could shorten the length of time that people are required to be out of action and might make No. 1338 slightly more palatable for those of us who have concerns about it.

I disagree with some hon. Members about what will change in three weeks’ time, because I think a great deal will change, as a number of international authorities have made clear. Indeed, the doctor who first found the variant, Angelique Coetzee, seemed to be of that view in her upbeat assessment of how it is affecting her patients, as is Dr Anthony Fauci, the adviser to the President of the United States. Many international authorities are saying that in two weeks’ time, we should be a lot further along the journey of understanding how the variant behaves.

That makes sense because, in two weeks’ time, if the variant is a problem, we will presumably see an uptick in hospitalisation at least among the vulnerable population. It is wrong to suggest that everybody in South Africa is young and vibrant; of course it has its fair share of elderly, vulnerable and frail people and of people with comorbidities. In two weeks, I expect there will be at least some indication of whether it will be a problem. We should also keep in mind that it might be part of the salvation, rather than the problem, because we do not know how the virus will behave. Some viruses mutate downwards and others mutate upwards. We must hope for the former not the latter, but at the moment we simply do not know, which is the basis of my support for No. 1340.

There is an assumption that perhaps southern Africa is not sophisticated in healthcare terms, but I gently make the point that the Republic of South Africa certainly is sophisticated. It has been the victim of its own generosity in having invested heavily in sequencing. It is a bit like the UK in relation the Kent variant: if we look, we will find. We need to be careful about suggesting that other healthcare economies are not up to spec, because I do not think that is necessarily the case for South Africa.

I also observe that yesterday, 25 deaths were attributed to covid-19 in South Africa and the seven day average is 35 deaths. Many of us are captivated by the covid graphs; I check them daily. I confess that I do not generally obsess about South Africa, but recent events have made one focus on its graph, which is bumping along the bottom. We are in no way seeing a wave as yet, although we may yet do so, but we need to be careful about suggesting it will be a major problem, as Angelique Coetzee and others have been.

The Government are right to be cautious—of course they are—but we also need a sense of proportion. We need to understand that everything we do in this place with regard to regulation has a consequence for liberty and livelihoods, for the economy in general and for young people in particular. I made that point in connection with the apparent suggestion of the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) that it was a no-cost measure. We need to be careful about the impact that it all has on young people and especially on mental health.

[Bob Seely]

Does my right hon. Friend share my frustration that we have all these charts about covid, but we have never had them in context—how many people are born, how many people die, how many people die of flu, how many people die of other illnesses—so we have become fixated by something when there are many other causes of death in this country that, frankly, claim many more people, and by taking this out of context we create unnecessary fear?

[Dr Murrison]

Yes, I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. The point about that is of course that the national health service at the moment is running very fast to catch up because for the past 18 months, necessarily, it has not been doing a lot of the elective work in particular that it would have wanted to do. That is actually going to be a problem, I think, for years to come. What I would say is that there seems to me to be very little likelihood of our NHS being overwhelmed this winter. There are always pressures at this time of the year, and an overwhelmed NHS was the absolute cornerstone of Government policy towards this particular public health emergency at the start. Those things are not there now, and I think that we just need to contextualise a lot of what is going on.

Of course we need to reduce the number of admissions to the NHS, particularly to ITUs, for covid-19. It is a huge burden for the NHS, and it prevents us from doing other things, but we are certainly not in the position now that we were in this time last year. So while I will certainly be supporting No. 1340, I am afraid that I will not be able to support the Government in respect of No. 1338, because of the lack of a sunset provision similar to that enjoyed by No. 1340 and also because I am very concerned about “suspected of” and what that might mean in terms of a chilling effect on schooling, the economy, liberty and livelihood.

Middle East Peace Plan

Debate between Bob Seely and Andrew Murrison

Thursday 30th January 2020 Commons Chamber

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

Whether one likes it or not, this plan recognises the new realities, which are that the Palestinians have fewer and fewer friends and that every time there is something with the words “peace” and “plan”, they will be offered less and less land. I just want to check with the Minister: are the Government endorsing the plan, or are they simply welcoming a document relating to the middle east that has the words “peace” and “plan” on it?

[Dr Murrison]

We are welcoming the release of the plan, but we are in no way endorsing it. That is not really for us to do; it is a matter for agreement between the two principal parties affected by it. In this, we appear to be on exactly the same page as all the countries that I have read out, and, it would appear, as the great bulk of the international community.

US Troop Withdrawal from Northern Syria

Debate between Bob Seely and Andrew Murrison

Tuesday 8th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Murrison]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that. She talks about being the best, but I think we probably are that. If we look at the sum total of our contribution to this, we see that it is extraordinary, and I am really proud of it. I am proud of it on behalf of my constituents and hers, because they are the ones who ultimately provide this contribution—she and I do not. If she looks at the humanitarian package in Syria objectively—I am more than happy to sit down to discuss it with her—she will share my view that we are doing extremely well, and we will continue to do so.

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

I wish to declare an interest: I have worked alongside the peshmerga—men and women—in northern Iraq, and I consider them to be impressive soldiers and incredibly generous hosts. My question to the Minister is: if this is just about a redeployment of 50 servicemen, is he saying that this crisis is overblown? It seems to me—I am not trying to trap him into a trick question—that if the Turkish army and the Syrian Kurds are at each other’s throats at any point along their extensive border, it is a potentially extraordinary state of affairs both in respect of ISIS soldiers, and the stability and humanitarian aspects of this problem.

[Dr Murrison]

Yes, we are obviously responding to events and what we are being told, but the information available to us is that this is envisaged as being relatively modest. I have to say to my hon. Friend, whose experience in these matters is broad and deep, that he will know that the matter is extremely kinetic and may very well change. However, we have to be consistent; we oppose any move into Syrian territory by Turkey—that is the wrong thing to do. I would probably leave it at that, but obviously this matter is evolving and we are going to have to respond as we find the situation at the time.