Covid-19

Catherine West Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

It is always a pleasure to hear from my hon. Friend, who is also my friend, in this House, and he raises an extremely important point. I can give him the reassurance that I, other Ministers and particularly the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), who is leading the vaccine deployment effort, will continue to look at ensuring that every means appropriate is utilised to ensure that people in my hon. Friend’s constituency and across the country get notified when their turn is up, so that they have every opportunity to get that life-saving injection.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

rose—

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[Edward Argar]

I will give way briefly to the hon. Lady, and then to my hon. and gallant Friend.

[Catherine West]

Does the Minister agree with the suggestion that, given that youth unemployment is shooting up, this might be the time for Royal Mail to take on some extra staff to cover those who are off sick? It is crucial that people know when their appointments are so that they do not miss that golden opportunity to get the jab.

[Edward Argar]

I had the pleasure of working with the hon. Lady in a past life before either of us were Members of this House, and she makes a typically sensible suggestion, which I am sure Royal Mail will have heard. I hope that it will reflect carefully on what she has said.

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[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

It goes without saying that we must use this opportunity to thank all our public health workers, as well as our journalists and broadcasters. My favourite is Victoria Macdonald from Channel 4, who seems to portray the pain and suffering, and yet the strength and solidarity of our health workers; a huge thank you to all our broadcasters and journalists, who are doing such a good job of keeping us informed.

I regret that the Government did not tackle soon enough a review back in the summer of what went wrong in the first wave, which in my view has led to our being in a third wave. Had we had an effective review in the summer and, for example, introduced testing in schools on 1 September, we might not be in the situation that we are in now.

On the question of long covid, I am on the all-party group, with many Members from across the House. We know that there is not a proper care pathway. I think of a 40-year-old constituent of mine who has not recovered, even though he suffered from covid last April. It is now coming up to 10 months and he still has not seen a specialist because he was never in accident and emergency and within a proper care pathway. We must urgently address that dreadful long-covid syndrome, which is affecting so many people who are recovering from covid.

I put on record my regret that we did not tackle the isolation strategy with enough energy, and with enough understanding of the lives of people who work in insecure roles, who desperately need to be compensated, whether for taxi driving or being a security guard. In all those insecure jobs, they need to be paid to stay at home. I also put on record, as many have in the debate, the 3 million excluded. It is probably more than 3 million. The work of the all-party group is very important, but it is particularly the creative sector that is terribly affected by the covid crisis. It has been going on for several months. People feel that there is no way out and they are feeling absolutely desperate.

In particular, I ask the Minister, first, whether nurseries will stay open. If they do, will nursery nurses be put forward for early vaccinations? Will dentists be higher up the list? They are very at risk because of their work, in terms of the covid germs. No. 3 is optometrists and then, of course, other professionals such as teachers. Also, prisoners, prison officers and prison educators are very much at risk of covid. Will the Minister please take back to the Justice Secretary the question of whether classes in prisons should be going ahead at the moment? I would not want anyone not to be protected from this terrible virus.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

We are just going to see whether we have the electrics sorted out at Sir Geoffrey’s place.