Covid-19: Winter Plan

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend completely sums up the strategy that we need now, just as we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Now is the moment when it is vital that we concentrate on the road ahead and do not veer off one way or the other, and do not allow ourselves to throw away the gains that we have made. It will be a tough few months, but the vaccines that he talks about have unquestionably changed the logic, and massively, massively improved our position, but it is too early—far, far too early—to be complacent about that. Obviously I thank the company in his constituency profoundly for what it has done.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister failed to answer the question from the Leader of Opposition about the extent to which local areas would be consulted on what tier they would be returned to, and the Secretary of State was fantastically vague about the geography of any such areas. Will the Prime Minister therefore clarify what exactly the criteria are that are going to be used to make these decisions?

[The Prime Minister]

With great respect to the hon. Gentleman, perhaps that was one of the answers I gave that was mysteriously truncated in the course of my giving it. I think I said pretty clearly that the criteria we would use to decide who went into which tier would be case detection rates in all groups, case detection rates in the over-60s, the rate at which cases are rising or falling, positivity rates, and pressure on the NHS. Those are some of the criteria that we will use.