Covid-19 Update

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I understand the point that Professor Sikora makes, and I also understand the concerns of everybody who has cancer or who has a family member who suffers from cancer or any other life-threatening disease. It is precisely to protect those non-covid patients and to give them access to the NHS that we cannot allow our health service to be overwhelmed, as it would be on the current projections. That is why we must take the action that we are taking now. I hope that he sees the point and why it is precisely because we want to help cancer patients that we need to take this action now.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

My constituent Elizabeth O’Connor lay in agony for six hours after fracturing her hip and breaking four ribs waiting for an ambulance. Her distressed daughters were unable to comfort her or to see her when she was initially admitted to hospital. Elizabeth suffers from dementia and lives in a care home. Throughout this pandemic, the Government’s treatment of care home residents, staff and families has been negligent and unforgivable. The very least that the Prime Minister can do is allow one family member to be treated as a key worker for visits to help ease some of this suffering. Why will he not do so?