Covid-19

Claire Coutinho Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con)]

Tomorrow marks 11 months since the Prime Minister first set out restrictions on our daily life here in Britain, so I welcome the road map he set out today, particularly for the hope it will give people that life will be able to return to normal and the ambition we have for June and July that there will be no restrictions on social contact. He has set out a sensible and pragmatic approach. I also welcome in particular the priority given to schools.

The past year has been extraordinarily difficult, but it has also seen the best of my communities in East Surrey. I would like to pay tribute to some of their work. First, the Tandridge Voluntary Action group, which I met recently, set up a befriending contact system for people, with over 100 friendships across the constituency. Those friendships have been lifelines for people who otherwise would have experienced severe loneliness throughout the pandemic, and I know from talking to the volunteers that it has brought much happiness to both sides of the friendships.

I would also like to point out some people who have gone above and beyond in my constituency. Geoff Ledden has been running a community group to provide skincare for nurses packages to our local hospital, East Surrey Hospital, which means that, at the end of a long day at work, nurses have been able to use some welcome skincare products to deal with the daily trauma to the skin of using PPE. That is just one example; there are so many across East Surrey.

I also pay tribute to the brilliant work of the national vaccination programme, from the scientists in Oxford to Kate Bingham—with her brilliant venture capital experience, and unpaid for her role, she has secured us one of the best vaccine packages across the board—the health care officials, the officials in DHSC and the Ministers involved as well as all the volunteers on the ground. We have used our local community centres with great aplomb in East Surrey, from the Westway centre to the Centenary Hall in Smallfield, and we have had an army of volunteers supporting health care professionals to ensure that we can roll out the vaccine. Surrey Heartlands CCG has administered 250,000 vaccine doses so far, with 95% of over-70s given at least one jab to date. That is a tremendous record, which I am so proud of.

NHS staff—many of whom I seem to be related to, but I also have many in my constituency because of East Surrey Hospital—have had a tremendous, relentless year of hard work. I hope that in the months ahead, as we try to look forward to dealing with the NHS backlog, we also support the need for them to have some rest and recuperation.