Covid-19 Update Debate

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Department: Cabinet Office

Covid-19 Update

Daisy Cooper Excerpts
Wednesday 19th January 2022

(2 years, 10 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Boris Johnson Portrait The Prime Minister
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I thank my hon. Friend, who is completely right. We need to learn the lessons of the last two years. We need to make sure that if we are, heaven forbid, attacked by another variant—a more lethal variant than omicron—we have different ways of dealing with it, and we have resilience built in to the NHS and into the way we handle it. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health will be setting out our plans for how to live with covid, irrespective of what kind of variants we encounter.

Daisy Cooper Portrait Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
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I was very concerned earlier to hear the Prime Minister repeat an incorrect claim. He said that the UK was able to approve the vaccines only because we had left the European Medicines Agency. That claim has been roundly and repeatedly debunked, including by Full Fact in December 2020. Was he aware that that claim is incorrect, or is it just that in the last year, nobody has told him?

Boris Johnson Portrait The Prime Minister
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It is not incorrect. We were the first country in the world to license a vaccine.

Daisy Cooper Portrait Daisy Cooper
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indicated dissent.

Boris Johnson Portrait The Prime Minister
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That is a fact. Is the hon. Lady going to deny it? It is true.