Covid-19 Update

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend is right to talk about how hard GPs have worked throughout the pandemic, and about the need to provide greater support. We expect and need them to help with this big new vaccination effort. There are already signs of many people showing that they understand the need for GPs to reprioritise over the next couple of weeks, which is important too.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

It is clear from the Secretary of State’s statement that he is a considerable improvement on his predecessor, so I am sure that he accepts that covid is now endemic and variants will probably emerge for years, if not decades. In that case, surely by now, instead of the erratic response that we have seen, we should have a well-prepared plan of action and chain of command ready to be activated as soon as a new variant is detected, as well as enough supplies and trained personnel to operate it. Why does his Department seem to be continually surprised by the arrival of variants so that, instead of a smooth-running plan, we have chaos and panic?

[Sajid Javid]

Well, there will be variants of covid-19 for many years, as the right hon. Gentleman says—indeed, there have been many hundreds of variants. No country in the world is better at the surveillance of those variants; I remind him that the UK alerted the world to the threat of omicron. No country is better prepared, if we look at how swiftly the UK reacted—for example, with international restrictions and the information that we shared with the world about vaccines. I think he understands those points, and I regret the way that he has framed the question.