Health and Social Care Update

Lord Haselhurst Excerpts

Monday 22nd March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I am not sure that I have at my fingertips the precise rollout plan for domestic manufacturing. All I can do is reassure the noble Baroness that we are exploring all options equally hard and are working 110% on every opportunity we have for delivering vaccines into the UK. I reassure the noble Baroness and all noble Lords in the Chamber that we are doing all we can and that at this stage we are hopeful and confident that the supply chain will deliver the vaccines we need in order to vaccinate all adults by the end of July.

[Lord Haselhurst (Con) [V]]

My Lords, as it may not be possible to maintain the remarkable number of vaccinations currently being achieved over the next few weeks, and noting the pent-up desire of people for an overseas holiday, is the trickiest task now facing the Government not to persuade people to hold off a bit longer? There is still too great a risk of importing strains of Covid-19 and spoiling the progress that their sacrifice has achieved to date.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My noble friend is entirely right: this is a considerable dilemma not just for the Government, but for everyone. We in the UK have an enormously valuable project in our vaccination programme. Who does not relish the potential freedom from this horrible disease that it gives us? Yet we need only look overseas to see infection rates rising and the variants of concern spreading. The bottom line is that we do not know the impact of the variants of concern on the vaccine. Anyone who says they do for sure is simply not representing the truth. We have to be patient and figure out and fully understand the threat from the variants of concern. When we have that information, we can make a pragmatic, sensible and informed decision on foreign travel, as the Prime Minister has promised.