Covid-19 Update

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Monday 5th July 2021 Commons Chamber

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

I start by paying tribute to our NHS on its 73rd anniversary and thank again our extraordinary health and care workforce. The best birthday present they could have, of course, is a fair pay rise, not the proposed real-terms pay cut that is currently on offer.

We all want to see these restrictions end. Lockdowns are a sign of policy failure and I hope that, when the Secretary of State makes the final decision next week, it will be based on the data, the modelling and the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies advice, but let us be absolutely clear about what he is talking about today. When only 50% of the total population across England are fully vaccinated and another 17% are partially, his strategy, as he indeed was gracious enough to concede, accepts that infections will surge further and continue to rise steeply, and accepts that hospitalisations will continue to rise until they reach a peak—presumably later this summer. Some of those hospitalised will sadly die, and thousands upon thousands of mostly children and younger people, but others as well, will be left exposed to a virus mainly because they have no vaccination protection—we also know that even double-jabbed people can catch and transmit the virus—and many of them will be at risk of serious long-term chronic illness, the personal impact of which may be felt for years to come.

Even though vaccination may have broken the link with mortality, there are still questions about the link to morbidity. As part of the Secretary of State’s strategy of learning to live with covid, will he spell out today for the British public what that actually means? How many deaths does he consider are acceptable when we are living with covid? How many cases of long covid does he consider acceptable when we are living with covid? Given that we know that covid can escape and evolve when the virus circulates at high rates, what risk assessment has he done on the possibility of a new variant emerging? Will he publish it?

The Secretary of State says that every date for unlocking carries risk and that that is why we need to learn to live with covid, but we should not have to take a high-risk approach. We should be pushing down risk. Indeed, we mitigate risk across society all the time. We do not just accept other diseases; we take interventions to try to prevent them. Why is he therefore collapsing all mitigations completely when he knows that covid rates will continue to rise? He will be aware that Israel has reintroduced its mask mandate because of the delta variant, so why is he planning to bin ours? Masks do not restrict freedoms in a pandemic when so much virus is circulating. They ensure that everyone who goes to the shops or who takes public transport can do so safely, because wearing a mask protects others. If nobody is masked, covid risk increases and we are all less safe. He must understand that those in the shielding community are particularly anxious. Why should they feel shut out of public transport and shops because he has abandoned the mask mandate? That is no definition of freedom that I recognise.

Who else suffers when masks are removed? It is those working in shops, those who drive the buses, those who drive taxis and those who work in hospitality—it is the low-paid workers who have also been without access to decent sick pay. Many of them live in overcrowded accommodation. It is those who have been savagely, disproportionately impacted by the virus from day one and now the Secretary of State is asking them to bear the brunt of the increased risk again. Will he explain why he thinks abandoning masks is a sensible proposal to follow?

Given that people will still need to isolate, as the Secretary of State recognised, and that test and trace will still be in operation, will he accept that living with the virus will mean that, more so than ever, those who are sick will need to isolate themselves from the rest of society? Will he therefore ensure that they are paid proper sick pay and isolation support to do it? Does he agree that it has been a monstrous failure of the past 15 months that isolation support has not been in place?

Now, masks are effective because we know that the virus is airborne. The Secretary of State could therefore further mitigate covid risks by insisting on ventilation standards in premises and crowded buildings. He could offer grants for air filtration systems. Instead, all we get is more Government advice. Ventilation in buildings and grants to support air filtration systems do not restrict anyone’s freedoms. Indeed, they would probably help get back into school some of those 400,000 children who have been off school because of covid.

Yesterday, the Secretary of State said that he believed the best way to protect the nation’s health was to lift all restrictions. I know he boasts of his student years at Harvard studying pandemics, but I think he may well have missed the tutorial on infectious disease control because widespread transmission will not make us healthier. We are not out of the woods yet. We want to see lockdown end, but we need those lifesaving mitigations in place. We need sick pay, local contact tracing, continued mask wearing on public transport and ventilation in buildings and schools to prevent further illness. I hope, when the right hon. Gentleman returns next week, he has put those measures in place.

[Sajid Javid]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comments. First, I think he started by asking for reassurance on whether the final decision on go or no go for 19 July, which we will make on 12 July, will be informed by the very best expert data. Of course it will be, just as every decision has been informed in that way. I am only about a week into the job, but I must say that I am incredibly impressed by our scientists, medical advisers and Public health England. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to all they have been doing.

Turning to the right hon. Gentleman’s second point about the link between cases and hospitalisation and death, that is absolutely central to the next step we are taking. Case numbers are high. As I said, they will go significantly higher and we need to be ready for that, but what is far more important is how many people are ending up in hospital and how many, sadly, are dying. That is where the vaccines have worked, alongside the treatments we now have that we did not have a year or so ago. That has meant that the link between cases and deaths has been severely weakened. The last time we had 25,000 new cases a day, we had around 500 deaths a day. The level now is a thirtieth of that. I know the right hon. Gentleman will welcome that and understand that there is no absolutely risk-free way to move forward, but we need to start returning things back towards normal and learning to live with covid.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about masks. Again, we have taken the best public health advice. He will know from what I have said that, although we will remove all legal requirements for anyone to wear a mask in any setting, we expect people to behave sensibly and think about others around them. The guidance will be there. If one is on public transport—let us say on a very crowded tube—it would be sensible to wear a mask, not least to show respect for others. However, if you are the only person in a carriage late at night on the east coast main line, then you can choose much more easily not to wear a mask because there is hardly anyone else around. We expect and trust people to make sensible decisions. That is the way we should move ahead.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about compensation and sick pay. He knows that many measures are in place and we will continue to keep them under review.