Covid-19

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

There was a great deal in the right hon. Gentleman’s question that I agree with. He is right that we need to take decisive action now, and I am very grateful for the collaboration that we have all been engaged in across the UK. Our objective is to keep businesses going, to keep the economy moving as much as we can and indeed to allow people to go back to work where they must but, of course, to work from home if they can. It is very clear what the choices are and what the guidance is.

Of course we will continue to support businesses and people who face challenges because of coronavirus throughout our United Kingdom. I remind the right hon. Gentleman that, in Scotland alone, the Barnett consequentials of the support are now well over £5 billion, and across all the devolved Administrations they are about £12.6 billion. We will continue to send that support throughout the whole UK, to put our arms around the whole workforce of the UK and to protect jobs and livelihoods, but we also want to see those businesses continuing and jobs being created.

[Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con)]

I support the measures announced today. The Prime Minister will have decided them with a heavy heart, but all the evidence from South Korea, Singapore and other countries is that early, decisive action now is the best way to avoid a second full lockdown later. I want to ask him about testing. We have tripled capacity since May and will double it again by the end of October, so there has been a transformation, but we are not there yet. At a school in my constituency a child has tested positive, but it only gets a quota of 10 tests every three weeks, and it is worried that people may be passing on the virus asymptomatically whom it is not able to identify. How can he reassure that school and others up and down the country that are trying so hard to do the right thing?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that we have massively increased testing across the country. We are now prioritising teachers, as he knows. He raises a very important point about school pupils, and an interesting fact is that the rates of infection and transmission among school pupils are much lower than in the rest of the population. But I am not going to hide it from him that the future I see for our country and the way to defeat this virus is massively to expand testing, not just for teachers and not just in schools but throughout the country. That is why I am proud that, in spite of all the difficulties that the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) and others have legitimately pointed out, NHS Test and Trace is now conducting more tests than any other country in Europe. I think we should be proud of that.