Public Health

Debate between Charles Walker and Peter Kyle

Monday 15th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

Tonight we are debating the continued removal of civil liberties and we are not having a vote at the end of this debate. We need to start voting on these matters. I find it absolutely extraordinary that 10, 11, 12 weeks into this crisis we are yet to have a vote. This is important stuff—important to my constituents, this country and Members, and we need to get back to business as usual, as much as we can.

[Peter Kyle]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Charles Walker]

Very briefly.

[Peter Kyle]

I will be brief. The House of Lords—the other place—voted tonight. It did so electronically. Does the hon. Gentleman not think that that would be a more sensible way forward here, because we could have been doing it already?

[Sir Charles Walker]

I will come on to that point.

We have got to get people back to work. I am going to lose hundreds of small businesses in my constituency and thousands of jobs—and that is just if we all go back to work tomorrow. If we delay week after week after week, more and more jobs will go and more and more businesses will close, not just in my constituency but in yours, Madam Deputy Speaker, and in everyone else’s in this Chamber—all colleagues. It will be catastrophic. It is going to be really, really bad for a lot of people. Not having a job, losing your business and not having a home have bad outcomes—bad health outcomes, bad mental health outcomes, and just bad outcomes all round for your family and community.

We talk about when we do not have coronavirus any more—when we have banished this virus from our shores. Well, we may have to learn to live with this virus. I did a bit of research and found a book by the virologist F. M. Burnet, written in 1953—a very good read it is too. He was an expert on Spanish flu, and he wrote this:

“Influenza remained unduly active and unduly fatal through 1919 and 1920, but gradually reverted to normal character. The change from the young adult incidence of fatality to the standard type involving virtually only the old was not complete until 1929.”

That was a decade.

You will know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that as most viruses mutate they become less fatal, and hopefully that it is what is going to happen to coronavirus; I suspect that it will be the case. There is this idea that we can stand here and say, “We’re not going to go back to work—we’re not going to go back to normal—until we banish coronavirus.” But we could see this hybrid Parliament lasting a lot longer than any of us thought it would last. We could see a lot more of our constituents out of work and a lot more businesses failing; in fact our whole country could fail.

We talk about leadership; we talk about the Government leading. That is a realistic expectation—that the Government lead—but what about our obligation to lead? Parliament came back two weeks ago after the Whitsun recess and we had a number of votes. We were asked to queue for half an hour, in the sunshine, and we started whingeing and tweeting out. Why were we whingeing that we were being asked to stand in a queue? My God, for crying out loud, our constituents had been doing it for the past 10 weeks, and yet when it is our turn we do not like it at all. Where is the leadership there, I ask you? And it did not go unnoticed by our constituents.

I will return to the issue about democratic accountability and the democratic deficit, and why this place needs to meet vibrantly to debate matters of great concern. You will remember, Madam Deputy Speaker, that during the EU debates there was heat, passion and emotion, but it never spilled over into the streets because we were the safety valve. We were allowed to let off steam in this Chamber on behalf of our constituents, and they felt they had a voice. But now in London we are seeing people who feel passionately about an issue—who feel it viscerally in their hearts—not having voices in Parliament organically, through a debate, sharing, debating and discussing their concerns.

That is why it is so important that we start voting on matters of civil liberty—that we take it upon ourselves to return to this place to lead the country back to work. It is not good enough to think we have done our bit by clapping fantastic NHS health workers and people in supermarkets, and yet when it comes to our turn we say, “No, that is for other people.” We have got to get back to work—ourselves and the nation.