Caroline Lucas
Main Page: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)Department Debates - View all Caroline Lucas's debates with the Cabinet Office
(3 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend is completely right in the analogy he draws. The only reason I am able to say to the country that we must learn to live with covid as we live with flu in the long term is, of course, because we have this vaccination programme and the capability to evolve our vaccines.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green) [V]
As well as welcoming the success of the vaccination programme, I want to emphasise that there is a lack of sufficient financial support for self-isolation. There is, in the words of one of the Government’s own advisers, a “huge gaping hole” in the Prime Minister’s covid strategy. The payments are not enough and they are not reaching the right people. So as well as fixing that once and for all, will he also take this opportunity to respond, with the seriousness it deserves, to the High Court’s ruling on Friday that the Secretary of State acted unlawfully by failing to publish covid contracts? No one has ever suggested that Ministers did not need to act fast to procure PPE and other covid-related contracts, but transparency matters, even in a crisis, so if the Government have nothing to hide, will the Prime Minister now publish details of who benefited from the VIP lane, who lifted the velvet ropes for those favoured companies, what price they were paid and why they were chosen? Parliament and the country have a right to know.
The Prime Minister
Of course, we will continue to look after those who are self-isolating and improve their support where we can, as I have said. As for the contracts that the hon. Lady just mentioned, all the details are on the record, and of course it was right to work as fast as we possibly could to get the PPE that this country so desperately needed.