Covid-19: Winter Plan

Ian Blackford Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend and for the wisdom of his constituent, but I respectfully disagree. The people of this country have been obeying the rules to an astonishing degree. It is thanks to the heroic effort of the people of this country in following the guidance and the recent measures that we have the R down in the way that we have and that we have got the incidence down in some of those areas where the disease was really taking off—if we look at the graphs, we see that in the north-west in particular. It is now starting to track down across the country. I have every confidence in the wisdom of the British people to follow sensible guidance and rules. On my right hon. Friend’s point about local versus regional, alas, the disease is no respecter of borough boundaries. We have to have some regions in which to constitute the tiers that are sensible and large enough.

[Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP) [V]]

I thank the Prime Minister for advance sight of his statement and for his telephone call earlier today.

This morning, people right across these islands woke up to the more encouraging news on the development of vaccines to fight this deadly virus. It is right that we pay tribute to the remarkable efforts of thousands of scientists across the world who worked at unprecedented speed to produce those vaccines. All those scientists offer us hope that there is a way out of this pandemic, based on the primacy of safety for our society. Far too often in the recent past, expertise and science have been questioned or demeaned by right-wing politicians. Let us now ensure that those same politicians never forget that it is the commitment and dedication to science that is now coming to our society’s rescue.

While we all welcome that hope on the horizon, there remain far too many of our citizens who have not received a single penny of support since the beginning of the pandemic. Three million freelancers, sole traders and the recently self-employed all remain excluded from any of the economic support established by this Tory Government. Those include people across our community —painters, bricklayers, musicians, artists, entrepreneurs and plumbers—and because of the choices made by this Tory Government, they are now facing Christmas with no help and no support. I and my party have been raising that issue since March, eight months ago. The excluded are not asking for any special treatment; they are looking for some of the same fairness that others have seen. Others have received support, and those who are excluded should also be getting it.

The Chancellor’s spending review this Wednesday will take place exactly one month before Christmas day. Will the Prime Minister guarantee today that a package of financial support will finally be put in place for the 3 million people who have been excluded from any economic support? Will there be some pre-Christmas cheer for the 3 million who have so far been excluded from help?

[The Prime Minister]

I do not know who the right hon. Gentleman means in his attack on those who do not encourage investment in science. He certainly cannot mean this Government, because we put forward the biggest ever programme of investment in research and development and in a creating an advanced research projects facility that we hope will rival that of the United States. We are investing in pure science and applied science at a scale undreamed of by any previous Government—I think it arrives at about £22 billion a year at the end of the spending review period. I really do not know who the right hon. Gentleman is talking about, but whichever right-wing foes he has in view, they cannot be this Government.

On the point about supporting the self-employed, this has been very difficult, and we are doing whatever we can to help the self-employed and the excluded. So far £13.5 billion—I think more now—has gone to support the self-employed. Those particularly in the artistic and cultural sectors are beneficiaries of the £1.57 billion investment in the arts and culture. There are many things that apply generally, such as the cut in VAT, bounce back loans of all kinds and grants that are available to everybody, but the best thing for everybody in all sectors is just to get the economy moving again, get the virus down and move forward. That is the objective of this winter plan.