Covid-19

Chris Clarkson Excerpts

Monday 28th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chris Clarkson (Heywood and Middleton) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sure that colleagues will be delighted to know that my time has been shortened to four minutes.

First, I join colleagues across the House in thanking the great British public, including my constituents in Heywood and Middleton, for their continued forbearance, patience and public spirit as the pandemic wears on. After months of sacrifice, it would be nice to be able to say to them, “Mission accomplished. Job well done.”, but we cannot and nor can any country, even those that the Opposition and their army of amateur epidemiologists on social media were holding up as examples at the beginning of the crisis. We must redouble our efforts, unbowed and unbroken. The same blitz spirit that saw Britain and the Commonwealth through world war two is still alive and well. It is in every one of the acts of kindness that I spoke of in my maiden speech. It is in people such as Michelle Eagleton and Clare Cartmel in Middleton, who planned a community spirit award to pay tribute to their neighbours who went the extra mile during lockdown, and in people such as Sue Coates and Annie Cooney of Heywood magic market who welcomed freelancers and sole traders to the market for just £28 a week, so that they could continue to earn a living through the crisis.

People in my communities know better than most how tough it is to endure long periods of restrictions. For weeks now, our infection rates have gone up by hundreds of thousands. Heywood and Middleton, Bamford, Castleton and Norden, along with much of Greater Manchester, have been under additional measures as we try to get control of the virus. For the most part, people have just got on with it. I am not saying that the rules have been enthusiastically welcomed. I am not sure that anyone would expect them to be, but people have got on with it. That is what we do in the north: we crack on.

We may soon be asked to vote on an amendment in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady). Sir Graham is well liked and well respected, not just in this place but across Greater Manchester, so when I say that I shall not be supporting the amendment, I say it believing that it is the wrong approach and not as a judgment on the hon. Gentlemen bringing forward the motion.

This country is facing an emergency. Even the most libertarian of us, and I count myself as such, have to recognise that, on occasion, the Executive must be given room to manoeuvre to make decisions in the moment. We already have checks, balances and safety mechanisms in place to ensure that decisions are appropriate and proportionate. What the amendment proposes is the equivalent of the House of Commons making Churchill come here to take a vote every time he wanted to send out Spitfires. It ignores the reality of the situation to satiate an ideological predilection and I cannot support that.

What if Parliament comes to the conclusion that the Coronavirus Act 2020 should not be extended, or that it should be watered down? It is a possibility, after all. There will be a caucus of politicians with one eye on the polls, telling those justifiably angry people who email us about their liberties that everything can go back to normal at the click of a finger. That would be hugely popular—it absolutely would—but the truth is that it would be like telling somebody to take their parachute off at 200 feet because the job of slowing their descent has already been done. It will, of course, be up to hon. Members as to how they vote when or if this amendment comes forward. I suspect that I will not have changed that many minds tonight.

Before coming here, I spent eight years as that rarest of the rare—a Tory member of Salford Council. The city’s motto is rather ironically a quotation from one of the great Conservative thinkers, Marcus Tullius Cicero, “Salus populi suprema lex”, which means the welfare of the people is the highest law. I urge Members across the House to keep that in mind as they choose what to do later this week.