Covid-19

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement earlier, and in particular I welcome his honesty in recognising that we cannot pursue a zero-covid strategy. We have to face up to the fact that this virus will be with us forever and find ways to live with it. Thankfully, the vaccine provides us with exactly that.

Some us wrote to the Prime Minister to ask him to take advantage of the vaccine to relax restrictions as quickly as possible; I chide the Leader of the Opposition, the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), for describing those of us who did so as pressuring the Prime Minister to

“throw caution to the wind.”

We were expressing genuine concern about the wider impact of Government policy on restrictions on the welfare of our nation, and particularly on lives and livelihoods. The truth of the matter is that the burden of fighting this disease through social restrictions is not being felt fairly. Frankly, a middle-class white-collar professional can work from home. It is a bit inconvenient and they cannot go out for dinner, but it is just tiresome; it does not have an adverse effect on their health.

We should also reflect on those workers who have carried on going to work, for little thanks, yet they have been in harm’s way. I am referring to our postal workers and refuse collectors—all those people involved in delivering the services that every one of our constituents needs and expects. I do not see any of them demanding to be further up the queue to get a vaccine. We all owe them a great deal of thanks.

My biggest concerns are for those people who will lose their jobs. For each and every day that this lockdown continues, more jobs will be lost. That is my concern. There was a time when the Labour party was bothered about workers and jobs, but that is now left to us, and we will continue to fight that fight. My fundamental concern is that with each day that passes, we really must make sure that we lift the restrictions as soon as possible.

The truth of the matter is that no Government should restrict the rights and liberties of their subjects without being able to demonstrate the outcome, and I am afraid that demonstrations of the effectiveness of these lockdowns have been rather poor. There is no evidence that the curfew saved any lives. We know that 2% of transmission has taken place in what are now covid-secure venues. We know that we entered into the November lockdown but came out with higher rates because schools remained open and they were the agents of transmission into people’s households and businesses. The truth is that lockdowns do not work, but we have the key to deal with this virus through the vaccinations. The Government need to be much more ambitious than the route map that has been laid before us today, so that we can take full advantage to secure our freedom again.