Covid-19 Inquiry

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Pat McFadden]

The most fundamental thing, apart from specific recommendations or specific changes, is the underlying strength of the country and its services. That is true nowhere more than in the national health service. That is why the Budget, which has been attacked a lot, put in the resources to begin to turn the health service around. We can have the forums, the structures and the processes, but the underlying strength of the country is the most important thing.

The hon. Lady asked about the exercise this autumn. I very much hope it will not be the last; the inquiry recommended that they happen on a regular basis. It will be the first for many years and we want to make sure we learn as much from it as possible. In terms of funding for local resilience forums, they play an important role and we were able to put some increased resources into local government in the next financial year. That area, like others, will have to be considered in the round in the spending review that will be published later this year.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Middleton South) (Lab)]

I am less sanguine about the report than my right hon. Friend. The report, or what is part of a report—it is difficult to assess when we do not know what the rest will say—has been too expensive and has taken too long to produce. From reading it, it does not seem to me to include some of the fundamental questions that I and my constituents would like answered. What was the cost-benefit analysis of the decisions taken during lockdown, for instance? What about lockdown itself? Was that a benefit or a disbenefit? What was the cost of effectively closing down the NHS, apart from for covid patients? Where did the virus come from? Did it come from China, which most of the evidence seems to indicate? Those questions are not being answered. Furthermore, I do not believe that setting up a new quango in conjunction with the Cabinet Office, which has no experience of service delivery, will be the answer to any future epidemic. The report does not answer the questions I would like answered.

[Pat McFadden]

I hope my hon. Friend does not think I am sanguine; I am not sanguine at all. Anyone who reads the national risk register should not be sanguine because, as I said in my statement, we live in a world of risk and vulnerability. As for the inquiry’s work, the inquiry is independent and is not instructed by the Government on the specific areas it goes into. It has 10 modules, as decided by the inquiry because it is independent.