Business of the House

Christian Wakeford Excerpts

Thursday 5th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Once and we lose a day’s business and have to do it all again, whereas we have a system that is tried and tested, works and means that we are leading by example. We expect teachers to be teaching; we expect MPs to be voting. We expect people to do their job at their place of work when they cannot do it from home, and we cannot be a proper scrutinising legislature without being here in person; that is of fundamental importance.

I note the right hon. Lady’s appeal on the Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Bill. It is on the list for private Members’ Bills. It is very difficult to find extra time. There was a suggestion that the sitting Fridays be moved, which the Government listened to and accepted. That is the situation that we are in. Changing the PMB Fridays does allow a few more people to work from home one day a week, which slightly helps with the overall balance of risk. I therefore think that we will have to come back to all private Members’ Bills in the new year.

The right hon. Lady asked a question on procurement that is important and a crucial act of parliamentary scrutiny, but which is also misplaced. The two positions are not contradictory. It is the job of this House—and has been for centuries—to ensure that public money is well spent. That is why the Public Accounts Committee is so highly respected. In defence of what the Government have done, when we go from a standing start to try to ensure that the country deals with a pandemic, we have to act quickly. Our usual processes for procurement assume that there is plenty of time. In this instance, there was not.

Let me give the House some of the facts. There is now capacity for 519,000 tests a day. We have delivered over 10 million testing kits to 14 million care homes. This type of work has had to be done extraordinarily quickly. On vaccines, we have secured early access to over 350 million vaccine doses through a portfolio of promising new vaccines, to ensure that we are best placed to get the vaccine when one is tested and turns out to be workable. The increase in personal protective equipment delivery has been phenomenal. To do this, things have had to be done quickly. Yes, of course, they must be scrutinised—that is absolutely right—and when they are scrutinised, the Government will have turned out to have behaved with impeccable propriety.

[Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Con)]

Throughout the pandemic, places of worship have helped to maintain social cohesion. They have mitigated the impact on the mental health of worshippers, and, more importantly, have been a sign of hope. Churches, Islamic centres and synagogues across Radcliffe, Whitefield and Prestwich have gone above and beyond to become covid-safe environments. Will my right hon. Friend, as a man of faith himself, join me in commending their efforts to protect the health and wellbeing of worshippers, and will he look to undertake an urgent review of places of worship so that they can continue to provide these most vital of services during these difficult times?