Covid-19 Update

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Monday 19th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Let me address the final point first. As I said to the House last week, my approach was and is that local NHS employers are best placed to decide whether to take up offers of pay flexibilities, and Ministers are not involved in decision taking in NHS Shared Business Services. When it comes to the other matter that the right hon. Gentleman raised in terms of my declarations—which are known to him and to everybody else only because I have followed the rules in letter and spirit and made that declaration—I agree with the Leader of the Opposition, rather than him, who said that he was not suggesting that any rules were broken.

I turn to the covid-related matters. I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s support of the decision to put India on the red list, which is not one that we take lightly. He is right to ask about surge testing, to make sure that we limit the spread as much as possible of the variant first found in India, and I can confirm that we will be doing that.

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s support for vaccinations, which he has demonstrated at all turns. It is partly because of the unanimity across the House among all parties on the importance of vaccination that we have this absolutely spectacular level of uptake. He says that every attempt at mandatory vaccination is counterproductive. I gently point him to the fact that surgeons needs to have a vaccine against hepatitis B. Vaccination that is tied to work in fact has a longstanding precedent in this country.

The right hon. Gentleman asks many questions about certification, but he knows that a review of it is under way at the moment, being led by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who I am sure will have heard his representations and questions, and will be able to address them in the review.

Finally, the right hon. Gentleman says that we must avoid a third wave by sticking to the rules, and he is right. We should avoid a third wave if we can, and the way that we can do it is by sticking to the rules and getting the jab. That is why the vaccination programme is so important. It is why the road map is cautious and, we hope, irreversible. That is the plan, and with the 10 million second vaccines and the progress in the vaccination programme that we have seen in the last few days, weeks and months, I am very pleased to say that we are on track.

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

It is a pleasure to see you face to face, Mr Speaker, after some time.

The Health Secretary is absolutely right to put India on the red list and to explore mandatory vaccination of certain frontline workers, however difficult and sensitive that decision may be, but he will know that in the last week NHS waiting lists have risen to nearly 5 million people, which is nearly one in 12 of the population of England—the true cost of the pandemic. It is equally true that we have had capacity problems in the NHS for some time. That is partly why we have opened five new medical schools.

Does my right hon. Friend agree with the letter that he recently received from the three main health think-tanks, which says that Health Education England should be given a statutory duty to publish regular, transparent, independent, objective workforce projections, so that we can ensure that we really are training enough doctors and nurses? That approach is strongly supported by the Health and Social Care Committee and the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges. I hope that he will support it too.