Covid-19

Chris Grayling Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con) [V]]

I wish to start by saying some words of praise for Ministers and, indeed, everyone involved in the vaccination programme. It has been an extraordinary achievement and put us fully on the path back to recovery as a nation. But that is why I am, frankly, disappointed by what I have heard today. The path set out this afternoon is too tentative and does not adequately take into account the impact of this pandemic on our society as a whole. We needed to do more, quicker. We needed to identify those things that are the lowest risk and allow them to start again now. We needed to give those people, particularly among the younger generation, whose mental health is under intense strain or whose business prospects and job prospects seem hopeless the most rapid safe path back to normality.

For example, there is virtually no evidence that the virus transmits easily outdoors, so why do we need to wait a month before a group of four or six people can go for a walk in the park? Why do we need to wait a month before a small group of people can start to play outdoor sports again? What difference does it really make if someone drives 50 miles for a walk with a relative, as long as it is outdoors?

I have argued all along that the strategy to reopen should be based on a hard-nosed assessment of risk. We know that the virus transmits most seriously in a small number of settings—in hospitals, care homes, schools, workplaces and indoors in the home in particular—but it does not transmit easily in the park, on the beach, on a tennis court or in the hills, so why are we not unlocking the great outdoors now to ease the pressures on people and give them more space in their lives so that they can start to rebuild their mental strength, which has been through such difficult times? Where is the risk in letting pubs open their gardens again for Easter, or zoos open their outdoor areas to visitors, and start to rebuild their finances; or in a promise today to reopen air corridors to low-risk countries later in the spring, rather than a tentative review? A trading nation cannot close its borders indefinitely. However good the furlough scheme may be, the longer we wait to reopen, the fewer businesses and jobs will be there when that day comes.

This Government, the Prime Minister, his team and the Health Secretary have done an extraordinary job in getting us to where we are in vaccinations, but this country and this Government must not blow that now with an approach that takes caution beyond common sense. Lord Hague was right in saying at the weekend that when the top nine groups have had their jabs, we should be unlocking almost everything, but where we know the risks are low, we should be unlocking now.