Public Health

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Members have spoken with sincerity and eloquence this afternoon, and it is clear that the House would have benefited from, the regulations would have been improved by, and indeed our constituents would have expected, a full day of debate. We are invited to endorse a long, hard lockdown that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster himself conceded at the weekend could well need to stretch beyond the beginning of December.

We will endorse the regulations before the House because, for all the disputes about graphs and modelling, the trends are clear: general and acute beds are filling up, critical care beds are filling up and more people will die over the next two to three weeks because we did not act sooner.

Our constituents will want to know there is a plan. It is still not clear what criteria will be used to judge whether the lockdown should be lifted. Is it bringing the nationwide R under 1? Is it falling hospital admissions? Is it lower prevalence rates among the over 60s? Is it a prevalence with which contact tracing is effective? I hope the Secretary of State can answer that.

I want to underline three quick points raised by Members on both sides of the House. John Steinbeck wrote:

“A sad soul can kill you far quicker than a germ.”

That is not entirely biologically correct, but we understand the point. Loneliness and isolation extract a heavy mental and physical toll, so will the Secretary of State guarantee a mental health plan for the winter? Will services continue to be accessible, either online or face to face?

At times of crisis, many of our constituents find solace in faith, communion and congregational prayer. Churches, mosques, temples, gurdwaras and synagogues have gone to great lengths, often at great cost to volunteers, to make themselves covid secure. We have Diwali coming up soon. Many mosques have been in touch with me to ask, if individual prayer is allowed in a church or masjid with social distancing in place, why not congregational prayer?

With respect to social care, I understand that the Secretary of State has published some guidance and that visits will be allowed outside or behind screens, which is welcome, but could he use the mass testing that is now coming online to allow people to be tested so that they can see their relatives inside a care home, and perhaps even hug them? Many will fear that this is the last Christmas for their loved ones in care homes.

Finally, what happens next? The Paymaster General warned yesterday of further lockdowns, but a hokey-cokey of lockdowns has to be avoided. This virus is controllable with the correct measures in place, so we urge the Secretary of State to use these four weeks to quickly expand saliva testing to all NHS staff and key workers. We also need tracing teams, led locally, doing the detective work to identify super-spreading events with retrospective tracing. East Asian countries are avoiding lockdowns with this cluster-busting approach. We should institute it here.

We need decent sick pay and support for those isolating, and we need to improve ventilation systems in public buildings. Finally, we need a plan for Christmas. When the lockdown ends, thousands of students will be travelling the country to go home. What is the Government’s plan to keep us safe through Christmas and the new year?

Tonight we will support these measures, but we are demanding that our constituents, who have paid a huge price, make greater sacrifices because of a failure to act sooner.