Oral Answers to Questions

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Huq [V]]

With the Office for National Statistics finding that in coronavirus, black and minority ethnic people are less likely to be in management positions, more likely to be unemployed and more likely to earn less, confirming the Government’s own McGregor [Inaudible.] report, when will the Government implement its 26 recommendations?

[Mr Speaker]

Minister, make what you can of that.

[Guy Opperman]

I am happy to write to the hon. Lady through the Department when she gives me a more detailed version. I can just answer that we have 500 kickstart jobs per day, and from 20 locations—from Bradford to Barnet, Glasgow to Leicester, and Manchester to her own Ealing community—jobcentres are specifically helping BAME people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Guy Opperman]

I wholeheartedly reject the comment by the hon. Gentleman. The state pension has gone up dramatically under the triple lock—by £2,000 since 2010 —by the coalition and Conservative Governments. We have a system that is taking forward real change and making a real difference to state pensioners.

[Mr Speaker]

Before we come to Prime Minister’s questions, I would like to point out that the British Sign Language interpretation of proceedings is available to watch on parliamentlive.tv.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Prime Minister]

I want to thank everybody who self-isolates. They are doing the right thing. They are a vital part of this country’s protection against the disease. We will be moving away from self-isolation towards testing in the course of the next few weeks. That is the prudent approach, because we will have vaccinated even more people.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman cannot have it both ways. He says it is reckless to open up, yet he attacks self-isolation, which is one of the key protections that this country has. Let me ask him again. On Monday, he seemed to say he was in favour of opening up on 19 July; now he is saying it is reckless. Which is it, Mr Speaker?

[Mr Speaker]

Maybe I can help a little. Just to remind us, it is Prime Minister’s questions. If we want Opposition questions, we will need to change the Standing Orders.

[Keir Starmer]

The question was simply how many people are going to be asked to self-isolate if there are 100,000 infections a day, and the Prime Minister will not answer it. We know why he will not answer it and pretends I am asking a different question. He ignored the problems in schools; now there are 700,000 children off per week because he ignored them. Now he is ignoring the next big problem that is heading down the track and is going to affect millions of people who have to self-isolate.

It will not feel like freedom day to those who have to isolate when they have to cancel their holidays and they cannot go to the pub or even to their kids’ sports day, and it will not feel like freedom day, Prime Minister, to the businesses that are already warning of carnage because of the loss of staff and customers. It must be obvious, with case rates that high, that the Prime Minister’s plan risks undermining the track and trace system on which he has spent billions and billions of pounds.

There are already too many stories of people deleting the NHS app. The Prime Minister must have seen those stories. They are doing it because they can see what is coming down the track. Of course we do not support that, but under his plan it is entirely predictable. What is the Prime Minister going to do to stop people deleting the NHS app because they can see precisely what he cannot see, which is that millions of them are going to be pinged this summer to self-isolate?

[The Prime Minister]

Of course we are going to continue with the programme of self-isolation for as long as that is necessary. I thank all those who are doing it. But of course we are also moving to a system of testing rather than self-isolation, and we can do that because of the massive roll-out of the vaccine programme. It is still not clear—I think this is about the fourth or fifth time, Mr Speaker—whether the right hon. and learned Gentleman is actually in favour of this country moving forward to step 4 on the basis of the massive roll-out of vaccines. This is unlike the law, where you can attack from lots of different positions at once. To oppose, you must have a credible and clear alternative, and I simply do not hear one. Is he in favour of us moving forward—yes or no? It is completely impossible to tell.

[Mr Speaker]

Once again, it is Prime Minister’s questions and the Prime Minister answers questions.

[Keir Starmer]

If the Prime Minister stopped mumbling and listened, he would have heard the answer the first time. We want to open in a controlled way and keep baseline protections that can keep down infections, such as mandatory face masks on public transport. We know that that will protect people, reduce the speed of the virus and the spread of the virus, and it will not harm the economy. It is common sense. Why can the Prime Minister not see that?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

  When my grandmother, whom I loved dearly, was lying on her hospital deathbed, none of us was allowed to be there to comfort her in her final moments. I could not even carry her coffin on my shoulders. I also had to endure the agony of watching alone, online, the funeral of my fun-loving uncle, and we were not there to comfort my brother-in-law’s father, who had somehow contracted covid in a Slough care home during his final moments—all this because we followed Government guidance.After we had experienced such painful personal sacrifices, like many others, imagine our collective disgust when, to curry favour with a Prime Minister’s chief adviser, we saw sycophantic, spineless, hypocritical Government Ministers lining up to defend the indefensible, saying, “It’s time to move on.” Some even had the gall to tell us that they, too, go for a long drive when they need to get their eyesight tested. What an absolute disgrace! They should all be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.When is the Prime Minister finally going to apologise to the nation for not mustering the courage and integrity to do the honourable thing and sack his chief adviser, who so shamelessly flouted his own Government guidance? He could have regained that lost public trust and confidence, and demonstrated that it was not one rule for him and his elite chums and another for the rest of us plebs.

[Mr Speaker]

This is a very emotional issue.

[The Prime Minister]

Perhaps the best thing I can say is how deeply I, the Government and everybody sympathise with those who have gone through the suffering described by the hon. Gentleman. No one who has not been through something like that can imagine what it must feel like to be deprived of the ability to mourn properly and to hold the hands of a loved one in their last moments in the way that the hon. Gentleman describes. I know how much sympathy there will be with him.

I take the hon. Gentleman’s criticisms of the Government and everything we have done most sincerely, but all I can say is that we have tried throughout this pandemic to minimise human suffering and to minimise loss of life. He asks me to apologise and, as I have said before, I do: I apologise for the suffering that the people of this country have endured. All I can say is that nothing that I can say or do can take back the lost lives and the lost time spent with loved ones that he describes. I am deeply, deeply sorry for that.