Covid-19 Update

Felicity Buchan Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right about the impact of the virus on the NHS in her part of the world in north-east London. Whipps Cross Hospital is under significant pressure. The case rate in her Waltham Forest local authority is 431 per 100,000. We have to work together to get the cases down, especially in east London, where they are very significant. We publish a huge amount of data on hospital admissions and the impact on the NHS, and I am publishing further data on this today and putting it in the Library of the House.

[Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)]

I am glad to see that three areas are coming down a tier. That is vital for compliance, because the general public need to see that if they follow the rules and get their cases under control, there will be a pay-off. Does my right hon. Friend agree that what is important is complying with existing restrictions, rather than ever more severe restrictions, and it is critical that we take the public, including the young, with us?

[Matt Hancock]

I agree with every word that my hon. Friend just said. I strongly agree that the best way to get out of tier 3 is by everybody coming together to comply with the restrictions—and not just to comply with them because they are the law but to take responsibility to ensure that we do not spread the virus, which each one of us can do unwittingly because of its asymptomatic nature. I thank my hon. Friend for her question and for the message that it sends: we can get areas out of tier 3 and we can get areas out of tier 2 and into tier 1, but we all have to work at it.