Covid-19 Update

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

There is hardly any area of the country that I do not intend to visit in the course of the reopening of pubs and hostelries. There is a massive opportunity now for our pubs, with all their inventiveness, to think of ways of making their businesses covid-secure, exploiting hitherto unloved and unvalued outdoor spaces that may become havens for tables and chairs and using their ingenuity to open up in all the ways that they can.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

People crave confidence and competence. With England’s so-called world-beating app scrapped before it even launched, contact tracers unable to reach a third of positive cases and no financial scheme to support workers when public health requires them to self-isolate, what assessment has the Prime Minister made of the risks to business and public confidence if local lockdowns or a second peak prove beyond his Government’s ability to manage?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Lady knows very well that the Government have invested record sums in protecting businesses, by comparison with any other country. We have done more to protect businesses around the whole of the country, including in Wales. I said that we are proceeding as one UK, and we are. I have my doubts about the 5 mile rule in Wales and wonder whether that might be something that was reviewed. But she makes a very important point about the need to protect against a second outbreak and to make sure that we are in good shape to crack down on flare-ups. I believe that we are and I believe to an extent that perhaps we did not think possible a month ago we are able to do local whack-a-mole in the way that she has described.