Covid-19 Update

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee.

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

May I start by saying that I totally agree with your expression of disappointment, Mr Speaker, that in a parliamentary democracy Parliament heard about this news after the media, and much as I respect my right hon. Friend it should be the Prime Minister who is here this evening?

I happen to support these measures and the caution the Government are showing, but may I suggest to my right hon. Friend that one of the reasons for the disappointment many people feel is the use of words like “irreversible”? Tonight, Sir Patrick Vallance said that we will be living with covid for the rest of our lives. If there is a vaccine-busting variant that threatens another 100,000 lives, these measures will not be irreversible, and we have a duty to be completely honest with people about the bumpiness of the road ahead. So may I urge the Health Secretary to be as cautious with the language we use as he rightly is with NHS bed capacity?

[Matt Hancock]

The goal is that the steps in the road map are irreversible; that is the goal, and I am sure it is a goal that my right hon. Friend agrees with. We have demonstrated repeatedly during this crisis our willingness to take difficult decisions if they are necessary and if they are needed by the data, but it is also important to try to take steps when we can have a good degree of confidence that we will then be able to deliver that irreversible route, as opposed to moving faster than that, which might lead to a reversal. I hope that that explanation is one with which my right hon. Friend and indeed the House can concur in terms of what we mean when we say that we seek an irreversible approach to the road map.