Public Health

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Wednesday 30th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I am very supportive of this legislation and the principle of tiers, but the counterpart to legislation is, of course, implementation, which could perhaps be improved by the taking of a more localised approach and by giving local responsibility to our excellent local resilience forum. Will our excellent Minister consider making the North Yorkshire local resilience forum a pilot scheme for a more localised implementation process?

I have listened carefully to many of the speeches in this debate, and I quite understand the concerns about a Government who restrict freedoms. In particular, our Government—a Conservative Government—should be the guardian of our freedoms. We are the party of business and should at all costs keep the economy open, so I can understand the concerns. Having said that, we are also the party that is responsible for running the NHS, and it would not be me or other Back Benchers who have spoken in this debate who would have to answer to the press, to other parliamentarians and to the public if the NHS was overrun by covid, so I quite understand that we need these restrictions.

Today, North Yorkshire has gone into tier 3, which I support—other areas have gone into tier 3 at a similar level of infections—but North Yorkshire is a huge place: our districts are the size of counties in other parts of the country. As you probably know, Mr Deputy Speaker, it takes two and a half hours to drive from one side of the constituency in the west to the east side—and that is not in my car; that is in a good car on a good day. Putting a huge county such as North Yorkshire into one tier masks huge differences in the infection rate among districts. Some districts have an infection rate that is two or three times that in other districts, so it is possible that some of our districts should be in a higher tier and some in a lower tier. We should consider that.

My other concern about tier 3, as I understand it, is that lots of areas have gone into tier 3 and not seen infection rates fall. That may well be because of what we have seen in North Yorkshire: we saw lots of people from other parts of the country that were in higher tiers travel down into York and North Yorkshire because of our greater freedoms. There are a number of things that our local resilience forum might try in York and North Yorkshire—for example, using districts for tiers because of the huge geographical differences and the differences in infection rates, and taking a different approach to solving problems. Our resilience forum identified that the problem in one part of the county was not with hospitality but with household mixing. It introduced an excellent process to speak to households and inform them, which has seen rates falling in one district of the county very successfully.

We might try a shorter, sharper shock, which I would support from a business point of view; I declare my interest in that regard. We may feel that schools should close for a longer period, to try to bring infection rates down more quickly to a level that will enable us to go into a lower tier. I speak as the parent of a child who is doing their A-level exams this year, so I do not say that lightly. We would definitely want to move travel restrictions from guidance to being an offence. That would prevent a lot of the travel we are seeing, with many people moving from different parts of the country into our area, which is increasing infection rates. Whatever the Minister decides, I ask her to take that away. When the police have used their powers in terms of mixing within hospitality venues or households, that has been very effective, and the word has gone round quickly. It would have a similar effect if we started to fine people for travelling without good cause.

We also need to look at the financial side of things now that we are in a higher tier. The monthly grants should be increased for businesses that are required to close and those that can stay open but are affected by covid, and the job retention scheme does not allow those who were employed after 30 October to access it, so I ask the Treasury to look at that.