Public Health

Greg Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

When we debated the second lockdown, I wrote in my local paper that I had never felt more conflicted when it came to choosing how to vote in that, for locking down the country, restricting people’s liberties, freedoms and ability to see their own families was categorically not what I, or I suspect any Member of this House, got into politics to do. But I was persuaded by the case that our national health service could not become overloaded and overstretched and voted with the Government for that lockdown.

I am pleased to say that, in Buckinghamshire—I checked with the chief executive of Buckinghamshire NHS Healthcare Trust this afternoon—there are currently only five covid patients in critical care beds across our two hospitals. It is with that in mind that I look upon the tiered restrictions that we have in front of us today with some scepticism.

I know that there are no easy answers. I know that whatever Ministers decide they will be criticised for that and that there will be tough decisions to be made. I see the Minister for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), on the Treasury Bench. He and I have known each other for a long time and I have no doubt that he takes every decision—as do all Health Ministers—with incredible seriousness, but I urge the Treasury Bench this evening to look particularly at how we can get greater granularity into the way that we put tiered restrictions in place.

My constituents in north Buckinghamshire find themselves in tier 2 having gone into lockdown from tier 1. When I look at the Government’s own interactive map, I see infection rates going down in every single part of my constituency bar one, and the one that has gone up is by only three cases. So my constituents find it very difficult to accept a tiered system where, in the county of Buckinghamshire—the south touches London and Slough with high infection rates—north Buckinghamshire should be treated the same as the south. I am really worried about the economic impact.

Over the weekend, I was with a business owner in my constituency who rents out units to micro-businesses, and he told me that of the seven or eight units that he has, four businesses in those units have gone bust as a result of coronavirus restrictions over the past year. Those are business losses that will not be seen in the data at the moment. I appeal to the Government: as we have this review, let us have greater local decision making and get these restrictions as small as they possibly can be.