Covid-19

Lucy Powell Excerpts

Wednesday 6th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Pettifogging, yes; malicious, no. I am going to have to take the hit here. The intention is to stop the virus, protect the NHS and save lives. To do that, we have to engage in restricting transmission between human beings. I know that my right hon. Friend and other right hon. and hon. Members will find all sorts of reasons to oppose all sorts of restrictions, but in the end, we have to look at the overall budget of risk caused by transmission between members of the human race, and that is what we are trying to restrict.

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

I have just come from a call with the big business organisations. I know that the Prime Minister is meeting them later, so let me give him the heads-up. Businesses are on their knees. It has been a year of lost trade and mounting debt. Cash grants are welcome, but they are not enough, and most businesses will not get them anyway. What they desperately want is not more sticking plasters but a proper long-term plan to help them survive to the spring and then thrive beyond it. It cannot wait until the Budget, because many will be bust by then, so will the Prime Minister urgently tell his Chancellor to come to the House with a proper plan for jobs and businesses? I say to him, please do not insult us by re-rehearsing what he has already done, because honestly, it is just not enough.

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady asks for a timetable, as indeed have many colleagues on both sides of the House. Business rightly wants as much certainty as possible. What we have now, for the first time since this pandemic began, is clear sight of the end and the way to the end. We have set a deadline, as she knows, of the middle of February—15 February—to vaccinate the first four cohorts. I am sure she will appreciate that those groups comprise the overwhelming majority of those who have already, alas, died from covid. She will readily appreciate the implications of that for our ability to reopen our economy, and she will also understand, I hope, the implications that that could have, if all the conditions that I have already described are satisfied, for businesses across the country. I do believe that there are real grounds now for them to be very hopeful and very confident about the months ahead.