Public Health

Derek Thomas Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)]

I want to believe that the new restrictions are motivated by the care and compassion felt by scientists and senior Government Ministers for the British public and to support the NHS. I heard the Secretary of State say that these measures will keep people safe and protect our liberties, but I am worried because that same care and compassion and support for the NHS does not seem to extend to other severe difficulties that our constituents face largely because of the Government’s having imposed restrictions to fight covid.

I wish to set out how some individuals are not safe and how their lives have been curtailed. For example, on cancer diagnosis and care, we are throwing everything we have at covid and the booster programme; how many more cancer patients will miss their diagnosis and treatment and lose their lives because we told them to protect the NHS? Surely, now is the time to reopen the Nightingale hospitals to deal with omicron and protect the NHS so that it can care for constituents who have had severe, life-changing or life-limiting illnesses.

Who is checking on the impact of measures such as those before us and the wider impact of covid on people with learning disabilities? When will we wake up to realise that these people are, in effect, locked up, safe from covid but living a miserable existence without their usual social network and normal activity? My right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) said that we are “scaring people witless” and he was absolutely right.

What about mental health and anxieties? Why do we feel that our robust response to covid justifies yet again plunging massive numbers of people into anxiety and mental health challenges, or maintaining them in that place?

On school disruption, how is it that for years we have made it an offence to miss school but we have now quite literally deprived children of a structured learning environment? With the renewed enthusiasm of the Government and Opposition, we already see schools closing early and children’s and families’ lives disrupted.

I accept that the measures we have been asked to vote on today do not in themselves trigger the problems that I have outlined, but the briefings and the encouragement of fear to justify these measures do not acknowledge the very real and horrible lived experience of people in each of our constituencies. We seem to have a Health and Social Care Department that is consumed by covid and has abandoned all other responsibilities, such as mental health, cancer, diabetes, social care, loneliness and isolation—a Department that is prepared to sack the NHS staff who care for patients.

I doubt that this new variant is the last. Are we to expect this level of rection indefinitely, with each covid threat? If not, perhaps now is the time to change our approach and have a fresh conversation about how we want to combat pandemics such as covid throughout the British Isles in 2022 and beyond. On that note, I shall vote in support of the booster jabs and testing, but against the other measures proposed today.

[Several hon. Members rose—]