Oral Answers to Questions

Ed Davey Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd April 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend. Of course, she will know that, as Foreign Secretary, I have been working flat out with the Foreign Office and our international network on that. It is worth saying that we have worked with foreign Governments and the airlines to return those stranded, and we have returned over 1 million British nationals on commercial flights. I am sure that my hon. Friend will understand that the scale of that operation is incredible and unprecedented. We have also introduced a special charter arrangement: we have put in £75 million and have a whole range of international or UK airlines signed up to it, and we have returned over 10,000 on charter flights. In fact, in the last few weeks, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has chartered 52 flights to get more than 10,000 people back from 16 different countries, including nearly 5,000 from India, which she has mentioned. We have confirmed further flights from several countries in the next few days, including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

[Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD) [V]]

In an answer to the Leader of the Opposition, the Foreign Secretary mentioned a consultant who died at Kingston Hospital, my local hospital. That consultant’s name was Anton Sebastianpillai. Anton came to the UK after qualifying as a doctor in Sri Lanka in 1967. Anton worked in our NHS for decades, and he was treating coronavirus patients when he caught the disease and, sadly, died. He was the best of us. On behalf of Anton and the other brave NHS and careworkers who made the ultimate sacrifice for others, and so that we learn the lessons urgently ahead of a future pandemic, will the Government commit now to a future independent, judge-led inquiry into how this crisis has been handled?

[Dominic Raab]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman and join him in paying tribute to Dr Anton Sebastianpillai. I know at first hand—I have been into Kingston Hospital; my boys were born there and I have been treated there—the incredible work they do there. It is my local hospital too, so I join the right hon. Gentleman in paying tribute to what they have done.

I have to say that I will not take up the right hon. Gentleman’s offer of committing to a public inquiry. There are definitely lessons to be learnt, and when we get through this crisis it will be important that we take stock and come together to understand, with such an unprecedented challenge on an international scale, what can be done to avoid it happening again. Right now, as we come through the peak of the virus, from our key NHS frontline workers to members of the public, people would rightly expect our full focus to be on making sure that we save lives, protect the NHS and steer the whole country through this crisis, rather than engaging in that process and that set of deliberations right now.