Covid-19: Winter Plan

Julian Sturdy Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

It is absolutely vital that we vaccinate fairly across this country—across the whole of the UK— according to clinical need. That is the agreement that we have reached among the four nations. It is the principle that I am determined to follow, given that, obviously, the UK vaccination programme will cover the whole United Kingdom. On that basis, we have agreed a fair allocation of vaccine so that vaccination can occur at the same speed in all parts of the country according to clinical need.

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con) [V]]

Given the big sacrifices that York residents have made to get the virus down locally, does the Secretary of State accept how unfair it will feel if the city is kept in high tier restrictions even when our covid rate is considerably lower than it was when we entered tier 2 and one of the lowest in our regions? Does he agree that the new restrictions policy has to give people hope that self-discipline and resilience will be rewarded?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, those values are important and should be rewarded. I hope that, in the areas of the country where the case rate has really come down a long way and is coming down fast, we will see the fruits of that effort. Having said that, it is absolutely critical that areas that need to go into tier 3 do so in order to get the case rate down and to protect the population. We will take these judgments based on public health advice over the forthcoming days. The reason that we have not set those details out today is that the more data we have the better. We want to give businesses time to plan to be able to reopen, but, at the same time, we do want to take into account the very latest data. In York, as in some other parts of the country, the number of cases is coming down, and I welcome that, but I want to see a few more days’ data before we can take those final decisions.