Oral Answers to Questions

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have previously said that bank managers are more regulated than NHS managers. This Labour Government will pursue an agenda of greater accountability, transparency and candour when it comes to those making managerial and executive decisions in our national health service.

[Dave Doogan (Angus and Perthshire Glens) (SNP)]

In integrating health and social care it is vital to take the staff component along with you. It is also vital to have sufficient funding. We integrated health and social care in Scotland in 2012 and it has been a difficult road, but health in Scotland is funded £323 per head more than it is in England. Will the Minister commit to put his hand in his pocket and make sure English people enjoy the same health funding as people in Scotland?

[Andrew Gwynne]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman back to the House, but I politely say to him that he needs to be a little bit patient. There will be some announcements in the near future on this Government’s plans for social care. He should rest assured that we on the Labour Benches understand the integration agenda. We understand the need to fix both the NHS and social care, and this Labour Government will do that.

Under-age Vaping

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Wednesday 12th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

It is very welcome that we are here today. There is surely nobody in this place who thinks that we should not be working to protect children and young people from the health harms of vaping. The SNP absolutely supports the motion that we are discussing today. I am also very glad that the SNP Scottish Government are taking this issue seriously, too. They are looking at tighter restrictions on vaping advertising and promotion, they have a tobacco action plan being published later this year, and an urgent review is under way of the environmental impacts. Certainly, the management of single-use vapes is something that significantly concerns me. The potential policy responses could include a ban—on a personal note, I sincerely hope that that is what happens.

I have been in a number of these debates and, usually, comments are made about smoking cessation. Just to be clear: I am very supportive of all measures that allow people to be supported to stop smoking. Reusable vapes are a potential option. My concerns are very significantly around disposable vapes, but we should look at this issue as broadly as possible. Countries around the world are already doing that. In Argentina, Japan and Thailand, there is a complete ban on e-cigarettes. In the Netherlands, production stopped on 1 July and sales will end on 1 October. China, which is the main exporter of these vapes worldwide, has itself banned the sale of flavoured e-cigarettes. As things stand, there are 35 countries, which covers around 41% of the world population, where e-cigarettes have been banned.

One of the reasons why I became interested in this issue was that a constituent of mine, Laura Young, drew it to my attention. She said that whenever she was out walking with her dog she saw these disposables discarded everywhere. Of course, once she said that to me, I could no longer walk anywhere without finding disposable vapes myself. They are everywhere. It is an incredible amount of litter. They are on streets, on beaches, and in our schools, as we have heard. I found one in the loo in Portcullis House yesterday. They are described as disposables, but these things, which are being thrown away so casually, are not disposable; they contain plastic waste, and rare and potentially harmful elements including lithium.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

I am greatly relieved that my hon. Friend has touched on the environmental consequences. I realise that the motion is about children and vaping, and I think there is scarce evidence that there is anything other than harm available to children from vaping, in terms of their respiratory and oral health. Quite apart from that, the clue is in the title: disposable vapes. Only 30% of the million or so that are consumed in the United Kingdom every week are recycled, and those that are dumped are littering our communities and environment with their heating elements, lithium batteries and plastic packaging. Those that end up in landfill contribute significantly to the 250 fires a year at landfill sites. There is literally nothing to recommend these abhorrent products, so why does she think that the Tory Government are dithering in this way?

[Kirsten Oswald]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and am delighted that he is as enraged as I am about the harm that these products are causing. I know that in his community people are equally as concerned as in mine. His comment bears reflecting upon, because how realistic is it that children will find ways to recycle this disposable product, or so-called disposable product, which is undoubtedly targeted at children, given that they are probably hiding it from their parents in the first place? There are no positive grounds for keeping these things about. I secured a debate last year focusing on the environmental impact, which bears reflecting on. My hon. Friend is right, so I am glad that he made the points that he did.

I am also deeply concerned about the impact on children and young people, because these vapes are so available, so inviting, and so increasingly used by younger people. I am particularly concerned about under-18s. The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), who opened the debate very powerfully, talked about the Health and Social Care Committee having heard from a headteacher about the significant proportion of children vaping regularly. If we speak to headteachers in any of our constituencies, they will say the same thing. I was also alarmed, though unfortunately not surprised, to hear him highlight issues of primary-aged children vaping. That is terrifying. It is why today’s motion needs to be taken seriously.

The Advertising Standards Authority says that

“adverts for e-cigarettes must be targeted responsibly”.

I am not sure that that is what is happening. Such ads must, apparently,

“not be directed at under-18s”.

Again, the ASA has a job of work to do there. I wonder, although I suspect that it is perhaps unable to, whether it would want to look at issues such as sports advertising. Blackburn Rovers—other teams may do this, but this is the only team that I am aware of that are doing it—are being sponsored by a vaping retailer, Totally Wicked, for the sixth season in a row. We would find it unacceptable if our football club came out with cigarette branding on their shirts. I cannot understand why it is any more acceptable for a football club to come out with vaping advertising. I am keen for the Minister, or Government Members, to address that.

Irish Diaspora in Britain

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

Happy St Patrick’s day to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, to colleagues across the Chamber and to friends of Ireland around the world. I give a big thank you to the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) for securing this debate. Anyone questioning the potency of outward-looking, culturally rich states with, by global standards, relatively small populations and their ability to penetrate the highest offices of the global system in Brussels and Washington need look no further than the Irish to see what can be done. It is great to celebrate the sons and daughters of Ireland in this Chamber, even though some of us would like to ply our political trade elsewhere. When I got elected two years ago, I was pretty confident that I would be the first double-o Doogan MP in this place, but sadly not. It turns out that in the late 19th century there was a chap from County Monaghan who beat me to it, but that is one for the record books.

I am Scottish. As you may have established over the past two years, Madam Deputy Speaker, I am very proud and motivated by that fact. However, I am of Irish stock, and I wear that complementary characteristic with great pride also, and this year I will take delivery of my Irish passport to underscore that I will not be stripped of my European citizenship, and I will also get through the airport quicker.

My family hail from Donegal, Ireland’s premier and most picturesque county with the tallest mountains, the finest golden beaches, the sweetest turf smoke and the wettest bogs. It is the Irish county against which all others are judged. My mother and father came to Scotland separately working in service and in agriculture respectively, settling in Perth to raise six children. It was a rich childhood experience being part of the Perth community and the Perth Irish community and being pals with the kids who lived around about, but also with the kids who went with me to the Catholic school across town.

My mum raised us with the heavily repeated expectation of “We could do well for ourselves”—that we could do better than those who went before us with the opportunities of employment and education that we had. As kids and young adults, we were repeatedly told, “You have the ability.” This immigrant ideology of ambition and betterment is not unique to the Irish diaspora—far from it—but it stood generations of us, the product of Irish immigration, in good stead.

Slightly contradictory, however, was the equal but opposite message that we also got from our parents, which was, “Don’t get too big for your boots or somebody will cut you down to size”—life could often be complex at home. Perhaps because of that advice from my mum and her contemporaries, the sons and daughters of the four families who I grew up with in Perth—sons and daughters of the Irish in Scotland—have gone on to Spain, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, the US, England, Colombia, Bahrain and the Netherlands and back to Ireland. That is limiting it just to my first cousins; I am sure there are more that I cannot recall. The bulk of us remain on these islands in Scotland and England, however, which I know is not uncommon.

My dad was an agricultural and building contractor who came to Scotland to work the land as a teenager in 1938. He stayed in Great Britain for most of the second world war, during which time he was employed harvesting sugar beet and constructing the new runway at Biggin Hill airport in Bromley, which became a key RAF location in the battle of Britain. In half a century of contracting across Angus, Perthshire, Clackmannanshire and Fife, he created wealth, employment and capital, as did thousands of other Irishmen through industry based on their labour and their business acumen. These enterprises, the length and breadth of Britain, changed the face of our streets, building sites, agricultural production, pub trade, literature, professional football and energy production in the hydro schemes in Scotland.

Right hon. and hon. Members have touched on the prejudice faced by the Irish in some quarters. That was a real and ugly struggle faced by the Irish community and others. I will not dwell on that except to note that the Tunnel Tigers are a legendary Irish tunnelling corps, many of whom hailed from Arranmore island off the coast of Donegal. They have been tunnelling their way under Great Britain for the last 75 years or more. They were a key component of the hydro schemes and dams in Scotland and of the tube lines in London, but strangely they received no mention in Scottish Hydro’s official social historiography of the tunnel projects in the central highlands of Scotland. I am grateful to my friend John O’Donnell for campaigning on the issue and to my colleague Annabelle Ewing MSP for raising it in the Scottish Parliament.

Here on the western shores of Europe, Scotland has many close friends and neighbours, all of whom, bar our friends in England and Wales, are across the sea. Of those, Ireland is our closest and that closeness extends well beyond the realm of geography. The symbiosis of Ireland and Scotland goes back more than 1,000 years with the Gaels and their culture reaching across the channel to the western isles and into almost the entirety of the Scottish mainland. Although Gaelic culture may have been forcefully driven out of Scotland to great effect, we value the Scotland-Ireland relationship very highly.

Scotland’s bonds with Ireland remain deep and strong. Ireland and Scotland are steeped in the tradition of education and shared learning that dates back to the time of St Colmcille, whose monastery on Iona provided the first centre of literacy in the region. For more than a millennium and a half, Ireland has been influencing life in Britain and I do not see any end to the positive influence of this proud independent nation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Maria Caulfield]

My hon. Friend makes some excellent points, and I put on record again our thanks to community pharmacists and all community pharmacy teams. During the pandemic, more than 1,500 community pharmacy-led covid vaccination sites have been set up, delivering 15 million covid vaccinations so far, and this winter more than 3.8 million flu vaccines have been delivered through community pharmacies, which shows that they are leading the way in primary care.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

The role of community pharmacies across Angus and Scotland during the pandemic cannot be underestimated. The way they were able to alleviate pressure on clinical services and the wider NHS must be noted. That is why the Scottish Government have introduced their NHS Pharmacy First Scotland service, backed by £7.5 million last year and going up to £10 million. Can the Minister assure me that the lessons we have learned in Scotland are accepted by Whitehall, and would she like to come to see the lessons we have learned in Scotland? I would be happy to accompany her.

Covid-19 Update

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Tuesday 14th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend is right to make that point—indeed, people in my family had that very issue. I know that the Minister for Covid Vaccine Deployment is looking at that matter, and I have discussed it with the health Minister in Scotland. We are working to see what more we can do.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

As we go into another winter, placing the welfare of our communities in the hands of health and social care staff, will the Secretary of State reflect on the fact that in England the 3% NHS pay rise does not marry up well with the 4% backdated pay rise in Scotland? Why will he not grant the same esteem to health and social care staff in England as we do in Scotland?

[Sajid Javid]

When it came to the pay rise to which the hon. Gentleman refers, we accepted the recommendation of the independent pay review body. I think that was the right thing to do.

Covid-19: Contracts and Public Inquiry

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

If you type the words “covid contract” into Google, the first suggested return is “corruption”, so this Government are fooling nobody. There is no denying that the pandemic was unprecedented. There is no denying that every single Government across the globe have made mistakes, even in countries regarded as having a high degree of covid success, ahead of that of the UK—and there are many countries ahead of the UK in that respect. But the havoc wreaked on the UK by this Government is unforgivable. Efforts to secure contracts for friends and jobs for associates were their priority. That is the epitome of sleaze, and makes the cash-for-questions scandal that engulfed the same Tory party in the 1990s seem like a teardrop in the ocean. Many tears have been shed over the past 14 months, and I would like to pay my respects to the devastated families across these islands whose loved ones have succumbed long before their time as a result of this pandemic.

The UK is currently at the wrong end of the European table, with 1,952 deaths per million, compared with Ireland at 1,011, and Japan—the benchmark—at 127. That is an unforgivable outcome for an island nation with a developed economy and a developed, highly functioning health service. British exceptionalism lies at the heart of this Tory Government’s failed response, combined with delay, dithering and distraction by financial considerations and commercial opportunity. That saw an inevitable UK covid death toll expand to the actual UK covid death toll, and we need to see the gap between those two figures quantified in a public inquiry.

We must also inquire why it was only recently that such an inept Health Secretary was replaced. He presided over a litany of judgments as arrogant as they were poor and over decisions that, when taken together, allowed the covid death toll to reach more than 128,000 people during the pandemic in the UK. He was a Health Secretary whom the Prime Minister himself described as useless. We need the public inquiry to commence immediately.

The Prime Minister’s watery defence that we are fighting the pandemic and must wait till next spring was weak when he announced it and it has collapsed completely now. If he thinks it is time to remove face coverings— and it is not—then it is time for a public inquiry. No more time must be afforded to this dodgy, delinquent Administration of clientelism to tidy up their loose ends and administer away their inconvenient paper trails—where paper trails exist at all.

These Ministers are quite prepared to break domestic and international law if it suits their objectives—“Why let the law get in the way of Tory ideology?” is what I take to be their mantra. Let me provide three examples: the preparedness to breach the Northern Ireland protocol, the unlawful prorogation of Parliament in 2019 and Ministers now unlawfully refusing to publish a full list of covid contracts. What we do know is that billions have gone to politically connected companies, to former Ministers and Government advisers, and to others who donated to the Tory party; billions have gone to companies that had no prior experience in supplying PPE, from fashion designers, to pest controllers and jewellers; and billions have gone to companies with a controversial history, from tax evasion to fraud, corruption and human rights abuses.

In November, the National Audit Office revealed that this Tory Government had awarded £10.5 billion-worth of pandemic-related contracts, without a competitive tender process, in a VIP lane—how very Tory—and that companies with the right political connections were 10 times more likely to win than those outwith. The attitude at the heart of this UK Government was so demonstrably rotten, so bold and so unashamedly opportunistic that the Chancellor of the Duchy of the Lancaster felt that he could simply spend vital covid moneys on political polling on the state of the Union in Scotland. He could have asked me, because I would have told him for nothing: the Union is a busted flush in Scotland. He even made sure that his pals, the private fund Public First, got the contract into the bargain.

On track and trace, quite how this Government have budgeted £37 billion—a cost described as “unimaginable” by the Public Accounts Committee—to a system that has singularly failed to do its solitary job of helping to avoid a second lockdown, when we have now just emerged from a third, is simply incomprehensible. The UK Government have committed to wasting more than the entire budget of the Scottish Government in 1920 on a project that has failed miserably. For context, let me say that £37 billion would buy 148 Type 31 frigates from Babcock in Rosyth. That is the colossal scale of what we are talking about, but that is the Tory way, and they have no opposition in this place, as we can see from a depressingly empty set of Labour Benches—we might have thought that Her Majesty’s Opposition would front up to talk in detail about some of these important issues. That is the Tory way, where patronage and cronyism are rife and are upheld by privilege that starts at Eton and Harrow, and gets refined at Oxford and Cambridge, before reaping its entitlement off a weary population of taxpayers.

But that is not Scotland’s way. When the public inquiry reports, if it does, Scotland will take a different way. We take one look at the posh old pals’ network masquerading as a Government—for the next 30 years, unopposed—and Scotland says no. We have already rejected their so-called Union, we will have our referendum and we will be independent, forever turning our back on unending Tory sleaze.

--- Later in debate ---

[Angela Richardson]

I agree with my right hon. Friend: as always, he makes an excellent point.

We have acted at pace to protect our NHS and save lives, by delivering more than 11 billion items of personal protective equipment to our key workers and helping to protect all those working on the frontline in our fight against the virus. From the onset of the pandemic, we have acted at pace to secure the PPE that we all need. We purchased over 32 billion items for the whole of the UK, three quarters of which will now be provided by British manufacturers—that is massive upscaling at speed—and we have distributed over 11.7 billion items of PPE across England since February 2020.

We have talked about the success of the vaccine roll- out, but what was amazing was securing those 507 million doses of the eight most promising vaccines through our vaccine taskforce for every corner of our Union. We can be incredibly proud not only of that but of the investment in the COVAX project.

[Dave Doogan]

Let me share with the hon. Lady my appreciation that the vaccine roll-out has been a tremendous success. I am not certain that any of my colleagues said that it was not a tremendous success. Does she agree, however, that it is the one thing that this Government got right in the whole pandemic, and that a vaccine never brought anybody back from the dead?

[Angela Richardson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I think he is being a little bit too narrow in his focus by saying that we only got one thing right. The way we invested in that scheme was replicated across many areas. We rightly hold that up as the absolute beacon of success, but there are many other areas where we used similar sorts of processes and where we had successes. We need to keep that in mind. Our diagnostic capacity has been excellent at identifying new strains, and we have to discuss that as well.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

If he will publish a timetable for adult social care reforms.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

What steps his Department is taking to bring forward proposals on social care reform.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

If he will publish a timetable for adult social care reforms.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Whately]

I welcome the hon. Member’s support for and interest in social care reform, along with others across the House. We know that social care reform is needed. We have rightly over the last year focused on supporting social care through the pandemic, getting £1.8 billion of extra funding for social care to the frontline and providing billions of items of PPE, over 100 million tests to social care and the vaccination programme to care home residents, those who receive social care and the workforce. We are working on our social care reforms and will bring those forward later this year.

[Dave Doogan]

Many in this place and across England will be asking, “Where is England’s long-awaited social care Bill?” because they will have seen that the SNP Government are delivering a new deal for the social care sector in Scotland, building a new national care service that will improve workers’ conditions and standards of care, and increasing investment in care by 25%. Will the UK Government follow Scotland’s lead in transforming social care, and will the Minister contact Scottish Government Ministers to learn from our over a decade-long experience of integrating health and social care?

Covid-19 Update

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Monday 19th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

I want to challenge the Secretary of State about the inexplicable delay in adding India to the red list of countries. I welcome the announcement that it will now be included on that list, and I hope very sincerely that this will not be another stable door moment in the Government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. The Secretary of State knows that the SNP has committed to increase NHS funding in Scotland by 20%. Will he commit to a similar uplift for NHS England in order to help drive the recovery of the NHS after coronavirus and truly build back better?

[Matt Hancock]

I recently saw the figures for the proposed increase for NHS spending in Scotland. The proposed increase is lower than in England; it is lower than the money that has been passed over to the Scottish Government from UK taxpayers to spend on the NHS in Scotland. My question is: what has happened to the money for the NHS in Scotland that was given to the SNP Government in Holyrood? They have not spent it on the NHS. We know that they have many wasteful projects. Thankfully, we work very closely together on important things such as the vaccination effort, which has been a true UK success story, but this question of the missing millions for the NHS in Scotland is one that we need answers to from the Government in Holyrood.

Covid-19: Access to Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I am grateful, as all our constituents will be, that this issue has been brought to the fore in the way that the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) has done in securing this debate. My only regret is that my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), who is a cancer specialist, cannot be here to share her wisdom and knowledge on such matters because she cannot participate remotely. You have got me instead, Ms McVey.

As we see from our inbox, there is concern that the reconfiguration of our national health services to meet the projected clinical demands of the pandemic went too far, and has come at a cost to non-covid patients. There are serious concerns about a cancer backlog. Gravely ill patients were, and clearly continue to be, cared for by our four national health services consistently throughout the pandemic, thanks to the dedication of clinicians and nursing and support staff. That is not to say that the pandemic preparedness had no consequences, but to defend the qualified and proportionate repositioning of the health services in the face of we knew not what exactly, back in March. The backlog is a consequence. How can we address it now?

As we have heard, Action Radiotherapy has suggested that there have been 100,000 missed diagnoses. That is a serious challenge for us to address across these islands. The Scottish Government undertook extensive work to improve cancer treatment over the last decade, and have made every effort to ensure that it was minimally disrupted throughout the pandemic. There has been disruption, however—of course there has.

Macmillan has expressed its concern that 50,000 diagnoses have been missed. When Macmillan speaks on these issues, Ministers in all four Administrations should listen to that message. A drop of 72% in cancer referrals as a result of covid is a cause for serious concern; we do not need to be specialists to understand that. Even though only a percentage of those referrals will result in a cancer diagnosis, there will nevertheless be a backlog of referrals and resulting care plans to be worked up as a result of covid. Dr Gregor Smith and many across these islands have insisted that people should report and present to their GPs when they notice something unusual. The First Minister of Scotland has also stressed that the NHS remains available to those who need it. Advice has been sent to all cancer service centres in Scotland, including the key message that health boards are expected to maintain full and urgent cancer services.

Who among us is unfamiliar with those in our communities, usually from an older generation, who do not like or want to trouble people, so do not present to their GP? For some, particularly men, there is a somewhat understandable reticence to present for healthcare in the middle of the pandemic. We can therefore see significant presentation deferral, which needs to be acknowledged, accepted and resourced. That needs to be resolved quickly, acknowledging the time-critical nature of some of the conditions. Cancer treatment services in Scotland—and, I assume, in the other three nations—have continued as much as possible throughout lockdown, using modified operational models. I thank NHS Tayside, which employs many of my constituents and looks after the healthcare of all my Angus constituents. I especially thank those at the cancer centre in Dundee, who have worked tremendously hard. The Scottish Government invested a great deal in additional MRI scanners and CT scanners to aid diagnosis, but I accept the important difference that other hon. Members have highlighted between diagnosis approaches and resource, and treatment.

Many challenges persist in this priority issue, not least the staffing of specialist consultants. That is especially challenging now because recruiting from EU countries is challenging as a result of Brexit, and retaining domestic consultants is also challenging. At the start of covid, the average age of NHS returnees—those who nobly answered the call to assist with covid and its consequences—was 57. Many of those doctors are retired because of the punitive implications of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs rules on pension allowance. That really needs to be addressed soon, to allow that dormant domestic capacity to keep their shoulders to the wheel should they wish to, without being unduly penalised. That issue of doctors’ pensions is one of the most hopeless instances of the total failure of a whole-system approach in modern governance, with HMRC tying the hands of our NHS behind its back. That is a really easy win—low-hanging fruit—that we can resolve quite soon.

The UK Government must ensure that cancer treatment does not move backwards in the aftermath of coronavirus, and must focus proper additional investment on our NHS. Despite the work of the NHS in Scotland and across the UK, there is a backlog of people seeking cancer screening and/or treatment. At this stage, we have three priorities: satisfying the routine cancer demand; the health commitments in and around covid; and the cancer backlog. To ensure that this does not spiral into an enduring secondary health crisis, significant and defined supplementary investment is needed to clear the backlog of screening and treatment, and to get cancer services restored to at least the level seen before the pandemic. It is important for colleagues in England to keep a weather eye on what the Barnett consequentials are for the devolved nations as a result of funding announcements. To be clear, if there are no Barnett consequentials for the devolved Administrations, what we are seeing is simply relabelled money rather than new investment. That will not fly.

The hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) do not need the clinical direction of the Department of Health and Social Care—that is taken care of by the devolved Administrations—but we are umbilically connected to the funding settlement for NHS England. That is why it is so essential. The £3 billion offered for next year is a third of what the SNP has been calling for on a yearly basis. After a prolonged period of austerity, £3 billion is not even enough to cover the outstanding hospital repairs required in England alone, much less to restore cancer services. Regardless of where we live on these islands, we have all convened here this morning to try to restore cancer services and protect those affected. I respectfully look forward to any specific indications that the Minister can give us of additional funding to address this very serious and pressing issue.

Covid-19 Update

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Thursday 15th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I will write to the hon. Lady on the first point. It is a very important point, but the proportion of people who are still infectious after two weeks if they do not have symptoms is thought to be very low. I cannot remember the figure off the top of my head, but it is very low. I will write to her and perhaps publish the letter to explain that scientific fact in full detail.

On the second point, I strongly agree with the hon. Lady. The principle behind the levels is that, if someone is resident in an area on a very high local covid alert level, that level applies to them wherever they are. If someone lives in a lower alert level area and they travel to a higher alert level area, the rules of the higher level apply if that is where they are. People who live in the Liverpool city region should not travel to West Lancs because the pubs are open there. That contravenes the regulations, and I look forward to working with her to try to ensure that that does not happen.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

Operation Moonshot was the UK Government’s latest world-beating covid intervention, but it seems that it has perhaps missed its target and is heading off into deep space. The public did not ask for world-beating; they asked for competent, and they deserve availability. Can the Secretary of State advise us on whether there are any positive signals from Operation Moonshot? When will it be rolled out nationally, or is it another testing failure?