Sue Gray Report

Debate between Boris Johnson and Daisy Cooper

Wednesday 25th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I repeat my condolences to those who suffered from covid, to those who could not get the treatment that they needed during the pandemic, and to the family of Ruby who could not see her when she was suffering from cancer. All I can say now is that we want to get on with our work, which is to clear the backlogs, particularly for cancer patients up and down the country.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

For the bereaved families of covid, this report will unleash another cruel wave of loss, grief and anger. As a bare minimum, will the Prime Minister promise that the interim findings of the covid inquiry will be published before the next general election?

[The Prime Minister]

That is a matter for the chair.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Boris Johnson and Daisy Cooper

Wednesday 27th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

It is no disrespect to those who have not been sanctioned when I say that all those 287 should regard it as a badge of honour. What we will do is keep up our robust and principled support for the Ukrainian people and for their right to protect their lives and families, and to defend themselves. That is what this country is doing and it has the overwhelming support of the whole House.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

Today, a court has found that the Government acted unlawfully when their policies led to the discharge of untested patients from hospitals to care homes at the start of the pandemic. The court also found no evidence that the former Health Secretary addressed the issue of the risk to care home residents of such transmission, despite the Government insisting at the time that a “protective ring” had been thrown around care homes.

The Government have once again been found to have broken the law. Will the Prime Minister apologise to the families of the thousands and thousands of people who died in care homes in the first half of 2020? Will he also apologise to care workers for the shameful comment that he made in July 2020, when he said that

“too many care homes didn’t…follow…procedures in the way that they could have”?

[The Prime Minister]

Of course, I want to renew my apologies and sympathies to all those who lost loved ones during the pandemic—people who lost loved ones in care homes. I want to remind the House of what an incredibly difficult time that was and how difficult that decision was. We did not know very much about the disease. The point I was trying to make, to which the hon. Lady refers, is that the thing we did not know in particular was that covid could be transmitted asymptomatically in the way that it was. I wish we had known more about that at the time. As for the ruling she mentions, we will study it and of course respond further in due course.

Sue Gray Report

Debate between Boris Johnson and Daisy Cooper

Monday 31st January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I must say I think the hon. Member is wrong in what she says. As for who is covering the police costs, the police are covering the police costs.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

The Prime Minister has inadvertently referred to this as “the” Gray report when, if he had read as far as the front cover, he would see that it is called an “update”. It is because it is an update that it makes public trust in the Met’s investigation even more important. The public must know that the Met will investigate without fear or favour, so can the Prime Minister confirm that, not at any single stage, has anybody in No. 10 or the Cabinet Office sought to influence the Met’s decision on delaying its initial investigation, or was the delay the result of its own incompetence?

Covid-19 Update

Debate between Boris Johnson and Daisy Cooper

Wednesday 19th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend, who is completely right. We need to learn the lessons of the last two years. We need to make sure that if we are, heaven forbid, attacked by another variant—a more lethal variant than omicron—we have different ways of dealing with it, and we have resilience built in to the NHS and into the way we handle it. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health will be setting out our plans for how to live with covid, irrespective of what kind of variants we encounter.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

I was very concerned earlier to hear the Prime Minister repeat an incorrect claim. He said that the UK was able to approve the vaccines only because we had left the European Medicines Agency. That claim has been roundly and repeatedly debunked, including by Full Fact in December 2020. Was he aware that that claim is incorrect, or is it just that in the last year, nobody has told him?

[The Prime Minister]

It is not incorrect. We were the first country in the world to license a vaccine.

[Daisy Cooper]

indicated dissent.

[The Prime Minister]

That is a fact. Is the hon. Lady going to deny it? It is true.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between Boris Johnson and Daisy Cooper

Wednesday 5th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I really do not think that the Opposition Front Benchers, or indeed any of them, have the faintest idea about what is going on. They have six or seven different positions on lockdown. They came to the statement this afternoon not even knowing that this country has the largest lateral flow manufacturing facility in Europe—they did not know it.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

In his statement, the Prime Minister indicated that lateral flow tests would be given to 100,000 critical workers, but the national railways alone employ almost double that number, and GPs and pharmacists in my constituency of St Albans are wondering why they have not been included as critical workers. Indeed, we could add supermarket workers to that list. Would the Prime Minister explain where that number of 100,000 came from, because it seems at the moment to have been plucked out of the air for yesterday’s press conference?

[The Prime Minister]

I understand the point that the hon. Lady makes, and I know that a lot of people will have jumped to the same conclusion as she did about what we could do. We have targeted the 100,000 that we have in mind. Obviously, all the public sector has access to free tests, including teachers and everybody else, but what we wanted to do particularly was to ensure that those vital nodes such as railway signalling hubs, and other crucial services such as HGV drivers, had access to tests.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Boris Johnson and Daisy Cooper

Wednesday 10th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 10 March.

[The Prime Minister (Boris Johnson)]

The whole House can be proud of the UK’s vaccination programme, with more than 22.5 million people now having received their first dose across the UK. We can also be proud of the support the UK has given to the international covid response, including the £548 million we have donated to COVAX. I therefore wish to correct the suggestion from the European Council President that the UK has blocked vaccine exports. Let me be clear: we have not blocked the export of a single covid-19 vaccine or vaccine components. This pandemic has put us all on the same side in the battle for global health. We oppose vaccine nationalism in all its forms. I trust that Members in all parts of the House will join me in rejecting this suggestion and in calling on all our partners to work together to tackle this pandemic.

This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.

[Daisy Cooper [V]]

The Government are throwing a staggering £37 billion at a test and trace system that we know has made barely any difference, yet they say they cannot afford to give more than a pitiful 1% pay rise to NHS workers. The Prime Minister has said that he owes his life to them. He stood on the steps of No. 10 and applauded them. So will the Prime Minister do more than pay lip service? Will he pay them the wage that they deserve?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady is indeed right that we owe a huge amount to our nurses—an incalculable debt—which is why I am proud that we have delivered a 12.8% increase in the starting salary of nurses and are asking the pay review body to look at increasing their pay, exceptionally of all the professions in the public sector. As for test and trace, it is thanks to NHS Test and Trace that we are able to send kids back to school and to begin cautiously and irreversibly to reopen our economy and restart our lives.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Boris Johnson and Daisy Cooper

Wednesday 13th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am delighted that my hon. Friend is campaigning for a free port. I am a passionate supporter of free ports. There will be a process, as she knows, and successful applicants will be announced in the spring.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD) [V]]

I hope that the Prime Minister will join me in congratulating the local GPs and all the admin, medical and volunteer staff who have set up the Batchwood Hall vaccination centre in St Albans at incredible speed. They have already vaccinated thousands of residents, but their enormous local success is being hampered because they are being provided with only enough vaccine supplies to vaccinate 1,100 people a day on just two days a week, and they are often getting the vaccine deliveries at very short notice. Will the Prime Minister personally intervene to ensure that Batchwood Hall vaccination centre in St Albans and all primary care network-led local vaccine services have a much greater and more consistent vaccine supply, so that they can get on with the job of vaccinating the country against covid?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Boris Johnson and Daisy Cooper

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Indeed. I hope that I can reassure my hon. Friend by saying that clinical modelling work is complete and the site development is now under way as we speak.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

On 16 June, the Prime Minister agreed to provide free school meal vouchers to hungry children over the summer holidays after claiming just 24 hours beforehand that he was completely unaware of the campaign that was calling for it. Last week, the Liberal Democrat Education Minister for Wales, Kirsty Williams, guaranteed that free school meal provision during school holidays would continue until at least Easter 2021, and yesterday the Scottish Government committed to do the same. Can the Prime Minister confirm that he is indeed aware of these announcements, and, if so, when does he plan to do the right thing?

[The Prime Minister]

Governments of all stripes have supplied free school meals since 1906, and I am proud that it was this Conservative Government who extended universal free school meals to five, six and seven-year-olds. The Labour party was in power for 30 of the past 100 years and never did anything like that. We support kids of low incomes in school, and we will continue to do so, but the most important thing is to keep them in school and not to tear off into another national lockdown, taking them out of school. We will continue to use the benefits system and all the systems of income support to support young people and children throughout the holidays as well.

Covid-19: Strategy

Debate between Boris Johnson and Daisy Cooper

Monday 11th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am so sorry to hear about my hon. Friend’s father, and I am sure the whole House joins with me in extending him our sincerest condolences. The point that he makes about care homes is also, I am afraid, a very important one. It will be no consolation to those who have lost friends and relatives in care homes during the current epidemic, but the numbers are very substantially coming down now. The numbers of deaths in care homes are very substantially coming down. But where he is totally right is that we cannot make progress as a nation on the steps that we have outlined—the further steps that we have outlined: step 2, step 3—unless we crack these twin epidemics both in care homes and in the NHS. I have been very clear on that both last night and today in the House, and I hope that the House understands that.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD) [V]]

The Prime Minister has set out five tests that underpin the alert system, but there is one big problem. While the Government have told us how many pieces of PPE they have procured, how many tests they have undertaken and how many temporary hospital beds they have created, to date they have not once told Members or the public how those numbers compare with what we actually need. Will the Prime Minister report to the House openly and regularly on both sets of data—what we have and what we need—and also set out how those metrics will inform his decision—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I call the Prime Minister.