Public Health

Debate between Graham Brady and Andrew Murrison

Tuesday 30th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Graham Brady]

Absolutely. As a former Chief Whip, my right hon. Friend knows very well that there is always parliamentary time available when the Government want to do something; it is only when they are reluctant to do something that parliamentary time becomes elusive.

There is a further question as to why only one of the instruments before us has an expiry date in the regulations. Surely it would have been better to put an expiry date in place, which would have required some positive action to renew or extend the regulations if that was deemed necessary.

There are also serious concerns about the efficacy of what is proposed. We know enough about covid by now that we can see which interventions are ineffective. We can see that even full lockdowns possibly delay the spread of covid but do not eliminate it. In this instance, I am intrigued to know from the Minister exactly what action the Government propose if their research finds that this new variant is effective in evading the vaccines. Surely they do not propose to return to a full lockdown, knowing that that would simply defer the problem for a period of days, weeks or months.

[Dr Murrison]

If my hon. Friend recalls, the reason for lockdown was to reduce a potential impact on the national health service. Does he agree with me and everyone who has opined on the subject that there is no conceivable way in which our NHS is going to be overwhelmed by this? That would be a remarkable thing, since 90% of us have antibodies right now. Therefore, a justification for a lockdown falls away completely.

[Sir Graham Brady]

I am grateful to my medically qualified right hon. Friend for that intervention. He is of course right that that is unlikely. There would have to be some evidence of a very different kind of variant of covid for it to pose any kind of threat of that sort. He is also right to point out that when we first went into a lockdown, it was intended to protect the NHS for long enough for us to increase capacity in the service for a three-week period. The first lockdown then spread into three months. That is the most important thing the House should be guarding against: the mission creep that allows Governments simply to introduce restrictions and further restrictions, and then extend them, getting into the habit of regulating what we do. That is my most important concern of all.

In the summer of 2020, the Prime Minister said that it was time to move on and time to start to trust people to make decisions for themselves. I rejoiced at that and thought what a wonderful thing it was that we were moving to a point where we would advise people, inform people and make sure they had the best evidence to make decisions in their own lives. Now, however, we see the first instinct of the Government when we do not even have any evidence that the omicron variant is worse in its effects. There is some suggestion from South Africa that it might be less severe, but the Government’s first instinct is to introduce further compulsory measures and regulations relating to self-isolation and to face coverings in some settings but only until 20 December, plus measures that affect the travel industry, particularly the move back to PCR tests on day two.