Public Health

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Wednesday 6th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab) [V]]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am glad to be speaking in such an important debate. First, I thank all the staff at St George’s Hospital and Queen Mary’s Hospital in Roehampton, who are working so hard at the moment to deliver much of the life-saving care that we are talking about in today’s debate. I also offer my condolences to the families of the over 1,000 people who have died in the last 24 hours, which really brings home why we need these measures, hard though they are. As such, I will be voting for them and supporting them. Our hospitals are under stress; we need to have these measures to save lives and protect the NHS.

I am highly disappointed about the failure of the track and trace system up to now, which I think is part of the reason why we are having to see these continuing lockdowns. We are not overcoming this disease, as they have done in other countries, so we have to get to grips with real tracking and real tracing, getting back to 100 contacts each. I welcome the roll-out of vaccines, and look forward to a “community first” way of rolling these out, in which local GPs—those who are trusted to provide and administer the vaccine—will be leading the way. I especially hope to see a vaccination centre in Roehampton in my constituency. I am disappointed that many people are still left out of economic support: a business rate holiday would make all the difference to my constituents and businesses.

Finally, there is still a failure to contract for scrubs. There are still volunteers making scrubs for our NHS providers, and this needs to be sorted out. I would really welcome hearing from the Minister whether I can meet with those who are involved with contracting on scrubs, along with experts in my community, who are still doing this on a voluntary basis when it should be done nationally. Thank you very much.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Thank you for being concise as well, Fleur. I call Alex Norris to start the wind-ups.