Covid-19

Jeremy Wright Excerpts

Wednesday 6th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I make common ground with the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras: it is thanks to our United Kingdom NHS, and thanks to the strength of UK companies, that we are able to distribute a life-saving vaccine across the whole of our country. I think that is a point that the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) might bear in mind.

[Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con) [V]]

Most of us do appreciate the difficulty of the judgments my right hon. Friend is having to make, so I thank him, in particular, for the access he has given Members of this House to the Government’s medical and scientific advisers so that we can understand them better. Does he agree that just as it is important that everyone understands the reasons why we have gone into a national lockdown, it is just as important that everyone understands the circumstances that will allow us to leave it? Can I therefore ask him—although I appreciate that he cannot yet give a date—to be more definitive that when a specific point has been reached in the vaccination of priority groups, with the consequent reduction in the risks of hospitalisations and deaths, then the balance of risk between health, on the one hand, and livelihoods and learning, on the other, will be significantly different, and restrictions can be lifted?