Desmond Swayne
Main Page: Desmond Swayne (Conservative - New Forest West)Department Debates - View all Desmond Swayne's debates with the Cabinet Office
(3 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
We are making as much data available as we possibly can. Clearly, we cannot make people’s medical records available because that would breach patient confidentiality. The hon. Gentleman is right to raise the question of take-up among some groups and care home staff. That has been increasing, but we all need to work together to ensure that we encourage everybody to come forward and take the vaccine.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
The Prime Minister raised the possibility of new variants having an impact on the plan. Ordinarily, the laws of natural selection will favour more benign variants. However, lockdown reverses that, favouring the more potent. Therefore, in addition to an urgency on the basis of the economic and social costs of lockdown, there is indeed also a scientific urgency to lift it, isn’t there?
The Prime Minister
I defer to my right hon. Friend’s doubtless superior understanding of the biology of the variants, but I have a couple of reassuring points for him. First, we have no reason to think that our vaccines are ineffective in preventing death or serious illness against all the variants of which we are currently aware. Secondly, our scientists are getting ever better at evolving new vaccines to tackle the new variants.