Covid-19 Update and Hospitality Curfew

Ian Mearns Excerpts

Thursday 1st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, and the updated evidence that we are publishing today shows that the just under a quarter figure is correct. It is the highest single identified area. The figures on outbreaks, which were also mentioned by the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), are measuring something completely different and are not a measure of how many cases are caught there. The 25% figure is, of course, for those who catch it outside the household. The single biggest place we can catch coronavirus is from somebody else inside your own household, but that is, in a sense, inevitable and very, very difficult to prevent.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab) [V]]

The tighter restrictions here in the north-east are already having a severe impact on many businesses that have been left without appropriate financial support. Although it is imperative that we prevent the further spread of coronavirus, it is also important that we protect businesses, workers, livelihoods and jobs. The arbitrary 10 pm curfew has increased the financial pressure on many local hospitality businesses and appears to have had the effect of inadvertently encouraging unregulated gatherings after the blanket 10 pm closing.Would it not be safer for those who are allowed to to sit in safe, regulated premises and adhere to social distancing after 10 pm, rather than to be on the streets or on public transport with significant numbers of other revellers, who may have reduced inhibitions or levels of self-control? Would it also not be better if businesses that are responsibly operating at much-reduced capacity and adhering to the regulations were provided with urgent financial support, as requested by local authority leaders in my area, to ensure that it is at least as viable for them to remain open for business as to close completely—possibly for good?

[Matt Hancock]

We have put extra financial support into the north-east, and I thank people across the north-east for what they are doing to stick by the renewed and increased restrictions that we had to put in place earlier this week. The point the hon. Gentleman makes about people’s reduced inhibitions later at night is the critical one, and as I just mentioned to my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), the Chair of the Science and Technology Committee, it is almost certainly true—I think this is one of the few things we know about this virus with great certainty—that transmission is much lower outside than inside, and that also helps with protecting people against this virus.