Public Health

Debate between Daisy Cooper and Andrew Murrison

Tuesday 30th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Daisy Cooper]

rose—

[Dr Murrison]

rose—

[Maggie Throup]

I give way to the hon. Lady, who has been trying to intervene.

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[Daisy Cooper]

I take that point. We know that many of these measures often result in a lose-lose situation. A real problem over the past 18 months has been the way in which people have tried to frame this as public health versus the economy, because for me, having a strong and healthy workforce and a strong and healthy economy are two sides of the same coin. Notwithstanding that, I am encouraging the Government to ask people to work from home where they can, in order to strike the right balance that would reduce levels of transmission. I am not suggesting a blanket mandate for everybody to stay at home; I am suggesting encouraging people to work at home where they can, in a balanced way.

[Dr Murrison]

I am listening carefully to what the hon. Member has to say. Does she agree that the group in society that has really borne the brunt in the past 18 months is young people? They have been particularly affected by so-called work from home, and their mental health in particular—which I know her party takes a close interest in—has in many cases been devastated. I commend to her the best available evidence as published last week. As the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) pointed out, that evidence suggests that two interventions—that is to say, mask wearing and cleaning our hands properly—may well have some impact, but to be honest the evidence for social distancing is pretty thin. Would the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) perhaps like to reconsider the sort of swingeing measures that she appears to be recommending?

[Daisy Cooper]

I thank the right hon. Member for his intervention, but I respectfully disagree with him. What we have learned over the past few months, from public health directors in particular, is that the more measures we take, the better protection we have. It is not an either/or. If we wear a mask, wash our hands and limit the amount of time spent in close proximity to someone else, we limit our overall chances of either catching covid or passing it on. The more measures we can take, the better. Notwithstanding that, when I was talking about working from home, I was not referring to children studying at home. I was talking about the working population. I recognise that there have been enormous impacts—

[Dr Murrison]

I was talking about university students.

[Daisy Cooper]

Ah, okay. I thought the right hon. Gentleman was talking about schools and young people. Of course there have been major issues for young people, but when I was talking about working from home, I was talking about the working population. On the question of students at universities, of course there needs to be a balance. Many universities got it wrong during the pandemic, and I said so at the time. I was utterly appalled when some universities put railings around the student accommodation. We need to strike a balance. This is about reducing our contacts to reduce transmission. There is nothing to prevent university students from going in to study, if that is the point that the right hon. Gentleman was trying to make.

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[Dr Murrison]

How on earth does the hon. Lady think that we can mandate or suggest that people work from home but then expect students to tip up? University is about being taught, and being taught requires people to go to work. Or have I missed something?

[Daisy Cooper]

Something appears to have been lost in translation here. I am not entirely sure whether the right hon. Member is referring to students or to the academics who teach them. I am talking about encouraging people to work from home where they can. There are of course examples where people will need to go into work, and they can change the ways in which they work, but working from home has been proven to reduce levels of transmission.

I am concerned that we are talking solely about the new variant, and that the mantra around putting in place restrictions to protect the NHS appears to have stopped. I worry that the Government appear to have lost their tongue. Ambulance services across the whole of England are at their highest alert level: level 4, or code black. That means that there are people in the back of ambulances who cannot get into hospitals. The NHS 111 line has had more than 1 million calls abandoned after 30 seconds this year, when they should be answered within 20 seconds. We have GPs who are reducing their hours or resigning because of the workload and the abuse. Some of them are really worried and saying that they will not to take on the contracts to deliver the booster jabs because of the expectation that they will still have to do the same amount of work seeing their patients and that if they are required to do the booster jabs as well, that will mean longer waits for other appointments. They are not getting the support they need in that regard, and I hope that the Minister will respond to this point. We have record backlogs—