Coronavirus

Luke Evans Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

For over 800 years, this House has been making decisions on risk, be it sending men and women to war, providing financial support or instigating reform in trade or even laws, and tonight’s vote boils down to an assessment of risk. Essentially, there are three options: we open on the 21st, we delay or we close and put more lockdown measures back in.

If we accept the premise that we cannot get rid of covid, we can disregard the reintroduction of lockdown rules on the basis that it is too risky to the economy, non-covid health and education. I do not think that even a tiered approach to deal with regional variation would be stomached by the public. That leaves us with two options: open as planned or delay.

I checked the data on the dashboard this morning, as many Members have, and it shows that the seven-day increase of cases, the average, is 38.8% and hospitalisation is increasing by 22%, but we also know that we have vaccinated 79% of the population with one dose and 57% with two doses. We also know that no measure is 100% effective, that no mask is 100% effective and that no vaccine is 100% effective, but we know that putting those measures together mitigates the risk.

That is all against the backdrop of a delta variant that is 50% to 70% more contagious than the alpha variant at Christmas, which in turn was 50% to 70% more virulent than the original variant. This House is therefore being asked to make a judgment call: carry on opening as we are, risking further spread and increased hospitalisations, or buy time, see the trend, get more people vaccinated and reassess but, of course, at the expense of businesses and freedom.

This is another Sophie’s choice. I know from my constituents that they will not thank this House for a four-week delay, but they will not forgive this House if further lockdowns return. I will vote to support the motions today, but they still leave certain sectors as zombie industries: not officially closed but not open, because there are not enough customers. For the travel, events and wedding industries, and for the night-time economy, I urge the Government to consider sector-specific support.

Some might mistake my words for the sound of a risk-averse man, or a doctor who thinks too much about health. In my day job, my entire career has been spent managing risk, from dealing with people’s cholesterol to working out whether a headache is stress or a brain tumour. I do that openly and frankly with my patients, and now it is what we need from the Government: a debate on the acceptable level of covid risk.

There were 1,500 deaths and 25,000 deaths or serious injuries on UK roads last year. As a society, we accept this risk. We could ban all road travel and stop all deaths, but of course we would lose the economic benefits and our freedoms. During the next month, I urge the Government to bring forward a debate on the risk this House is prepared to accept from covid. After all, as I said at the start of this speech, the House has been deciding this for 800 years. Why should it change now?

Covid-19: Government Handling and Preparedness

Luke Evans Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Of course, we have learned a huge amount about how to respond to a pandemic. We have built assets and capabilities such as the vaccination programme and the testing, which is so important both to protect people directly and break the chains of transmission, and to understand where the virus is spreading.

I am glad that we cleared up the issue the hon. Gentleman raised with respect to Kirklees. I worked with colleagues in Kirklees and elsewhere while I was in the west country to make sure that we got the best possible solution to the need in Kirklees: to have a turbocharge on the vaccination programme, to have mass testing to break the chains of transmission, and for people to be cautious and take personal responsibility as we lift measures to make sure that things stay under control.

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for what he said about me personally, and for the leadership he has shown in his community.

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con) [V]]

Yesterday, our Committee meeting was supposed to be about lessons learned. In that spirit, we know that the World Health Organisation stated on 14 January that there was no human transmission. On 11 February, the WHO actually named the virus. We then know that on 14 February, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, in update No. 4, stated that the risk to health systems in the EU and the UK was “low to moderate” and the risk to the population was “low”. We also know that the UK had a plan, but it was mainly based around flu, not brand new viruses. Look at where we are now. Is not the biggest lesson learned that we need a global response and a global resilience plan? Will the Health Secretary be pushing the Prime Minister to make that case at the G7, when we host it here in the UK in June?

[Matt Hancock]

I think that is one of the lessons. I do not need to push the Prime Minister on that; he is absolutely seized of the point. We will be developing the work on that next week at the Health Ministers G7, which is being held in Oxford, and then, of course, at the leaders’ summit which is being held in Cornwall later next month. My hon. Friend is absolutely right in the view he takes as to the importance of reforming and strengthening the global institutions, as well as learning the lessons here at home.

Covid-19

Luke Evans Excerpts

Tuesday 25th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

We are working closely with the Welsh Government to enable the integration of Welsh citizens’ data with the NHS app, NHS.uk, for the purpose of covid status certification, including undertaking the required scoping and impact assessment that will enable us to set out a detailed timeline for the delivery of that integration.

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con) [V]]

The people of Bosworth are a pragmatic bunch, as are the people of Leicestershire. Leicestershire surrounds Leicester. What advice does the Minister give to those people who are in Leicestershire who send their kids to school in Leicester, who work in Leicester, and who are thinking of having bank holiday time with family in Leicester?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I thank my hon. Friend—[Interruption.] I hear the right hon. Member for Leicester South saying “Good question.” He is absolutely right. We have to exercise caution and common sense, as I described earlier, around visiting. People absolutely can visit family and friends at half-term if they follow social distancing guidelines. I think people absolutely will exercise that personal responsibility and common sense when they go about their family time or school time.

Covid-19 Update

Luke Evans Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

We are of course worried about the impact of long covid, and the evidence is growing about the different impacts. The clinical advice is that there are a number of different syndromes that are, together, badged as long covid. For some people it has an impact, as the hon. Member says, on lung scarring; for some people the impact is more neurological. So we have to make sure that the services, the response and, indeed, the research are targeted at the different types of long covid. I am very happy to arrange a discussion between him and our clinical leaders on long covid, because it is a very important topic.

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con) [V]]

The Health Secretary may be forgiven, as he is one of the busiest people in the country at the moment, if he missed Tielemans’s strike from 30 yards and the VAR decision late on in the game, but 21,000 fans saw it live, and many of them were my constituents who were there to celebrate Leicester City winning the cup. Wembley of course holds 90,000 people and it was a test event, so when will we find out the results of the test event and the outcome for things such as the Euros in the future?

[Matt Hancock]

We will find out the results in the next few weeks. Of course, the right hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) may have been so cheerful in his opening remarks because he was there, and he saw Leicester triumph. I watched it, and I just thought how brilliant it was to see a live crowd again. It was not full— that is true—and no doubt it could have been filled, but it was not full because we are taking it carefully. I am working with my right hon Friend the Culture Secretary and the Minister for Sport—the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston) —who I know found it extremely enjoyable to be able to go to a sports event as the Minister for Sport, which he has missed. We will assess the data that come out of it. Everybody who went is part of a testing regime. We will look at the results, as we will look at the results of the other pilots, such as the Brits and the snooker at the Crucible, and then make an assessment.

Health and Social Care Update

Luke Evans Excerpts

Thursday 18th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con) [V]]

The Secretary of State will know from his appearances before the Health and Social Care Committee that we are concerned about how the backlog is dealt with, so it is great that he is taking such a proactive stance to deal with it. He set out in his statement just how big the backlog for elective surgeries is going to be. The question from Bosworth is: how long does he estimate it will take to clear the elective-surgeries backlog that has built up?

[Matt Hancock]

I am currently working with the NHS to answer that question, which is a characteristically acute one from my hon. Friend. We are not yet able to answer it simply because the pace at which we can return activity to full, normal levels is not yet clear because the main barrier to that recovery is a combination of infection, prevention and control and the need for staff to get some R and R. We will know more in the coming weeks and months.

Covid-19 Update

Luke Evans Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The hon. Lady would get a better hearing if she started on this subject by congratulating AstraZeneca, the British player in this vaccine race, on the fact that it is rolling out its jab with no profit at all. It is doing that in order to be able to vaccinate as many people around the world as fast as possible, at an affordable cost. That should be our starting point. There would be no vaccines if it was not for the global pharmaceutical industry. I pay tribute to all those working in the pharmaceutical sector. There is no way that we would have these jabs were a policy followed that disparaged the pharmaceutical sector in the way she proposes or in the way the Labour manifesto proposed at last election. Instead, we should come together to support industry, scientists, the NHS and Government. It is a massive team effort.

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con) [V]]

For phase 2, will the Health Secretary commit to having mental health workers at national vaccine sites?

[Matt Hancock]

I will absolutely look into the suggestion that my hon. Friend makes, which is all about making sure that we reach out to people at a moment when everybody, or almost everybody, is going through a process together—and I hope it is everybody. It is very interesting proposal, which I will take away and hopefully speak to my hon. Friend about in the days to come.

Covid-19 Vaccine Update

Luke Evans Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

We are absolutely looking to make sure that unpaid carers are on the priority list.

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con) [V]]

Lockdown has affected the mental wellbeing of almost everyone in this country. The vaccine programme will mean that the NHS comes into contact with almost every adult in the country. With that in mind, will the Minister consider having a mental health worker at all the national vaccine centres, to provide opportunistic mental health interventions should people need it?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s excellent, thoughtful suggestion. I will certainly take that away and discuss it with the Minister responsible in the Department.

Public Health

Luke Evans Excerpts

Wednesday 30th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

Today is a bittersweet end to the year. The news is sweet nationally, as we hear of another new vaccine coming online in the fight against the coronavirus, and because we have got the Brexit deal done. That is hugely important to my constituents, the majority of whom voted for Brexit, but it also gives us the chance to pull remain and leave together to look forward, I hope, to an outward future for 2021. However, the news is bitter locally, because my constituency and the entire region in which I live are moving into tier 4. With that comes all the heartache, anxiety, stress, morbidity and mortality that go with increasing rates of covid.

I accept that decision, and I think it is the right thing. I have had contact with the hospitals that serve my area and the clinical commissioning group in Leicestershire. Some 30% of my patients go across towards the George Eliot, and both the health organisations there have talked about the pressure on the NHS—not only the numbers of covid patients coming in, but the pressure on non-covid services and the impact of covid on staffing, with the real threat posed by absences. Those things combined make for a really difficult issue.

On top of that, our rates are steadily increasing, although in my patch, in particular, we are lower than the national average. That all comes on top of the new strains that we have heard about in the last few weeks. I believe the Government were right to take the decisions that they took, and to change when the information changes. That is why I am pleased to welcome the Government’s dropping of the 14 days of isolation to 10 days. As the science changes and as we know more, we should change our approach and do something different.

That leads me on to my asks for the Government, and they are threefold. First, I have previously welcomed the Government’s approach of structuring their focus and putting the NHS first, followed by education, businesses, health and leisure activities, and then the hospitality industry. However, as we have ratcheted back up with the new tiers, we clearly still have the fundamental problems of providing support for things such as the travel industry, the pubs, the restaurants, the events industry and the wedding industry. Those problems are not going away. Fortunately, with the advent of a vaccine, the period is time-limited, so I urge the Government to consider putting in further support for those businesses to try to get them through.

My second ask is about the vaccine roll-out. As I said, I really welcome the fact that the Oxford vaccine has now come on line and will be going live from 4 January, with more than 500,000 vaccinations going out in the first week. It is also really good news that Ministers are reassuring us that the infrastructure is there and that as the supply becomes greater so too will the delivery, getting the fight against this virus under way. However, I am concerned about, and would like the Government to address, what happens when 10% or 20% of the population are vaccinated. For me, there is a real issue. As the public start to see people getting vaccinated, the way they behave may well change and in turn create a vicious spiral, where we elongate the period under covid and the need for further tiered restrictions because people feel that it is safe to go out. A strong message must come from the Government to make sure that people adhere to the restrictions and to give us an idea of what the saturation point for covid will look like. As the science changes, so should the advice.

Finally, in my last minute, I would like to raise something that I raised in the summer. Given that the end of the covid debacle is hopefully in sight, be it in the spring or the summer, I would like to push again for a Department of virus legacy—a time-limited Department to look at all the changes that have taken place during the covid pandemic. After all, covid has hit every aspect of our working lives and, indeed, our social lives—sometimes for good, and sometimes for bad. It is really important for the future to understand the lessons learned and to capitalise on the changes in my sphere of medicine, for example, where we now have telemedicine, better communications, a huge diagnostic network and a much improved vaccine programme, which will cover the entire nation. All those things should be looked at and capitalised on to make sure we have something that will stand the test of time if we ever face another virus.

Covid-19

Luke Evans Excerpts

Monday 14th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

Thanks, hope, change—three positive words that it is lovely to use in this debate. I want to put on record my thanks to all the scientists, researchers, staff, communications guys and the Government for getting it right last week and getting a vaccine out there. It really is the game changer and the hope that we have been looking for. As has been said many times in this House, the roll-out will be slow and steady, and things are not over yet—not for this month, for next month or for the months to come—but there is light at the end of the tunnel, and we have the opportunity to start to get things back to normal and see the change that we want. I welcome the news of the vaccine, and more in the pipeline, because it is what everyone has been hoping for.

I welcome, too, the fact that the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, and Ministers, listened carefully when Leicestershire MPs said that we wanted to be decoupled from Leicester. That was not because of some form of covid nimbyism, but simply because we have had lived experience throughout the entire summer of what our people do, how they react and what goes on. I hope that Leicester gets as much support as possible to fight the virus, bring the numbers down and make a difference. With that in mind, if we are being led by the evidence, I would like to see a push for a borough-based model, based on our lived experience in Hinckley and Bosworth. As my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Jacob Young) rightly pointed out, if our constituents are following the rules and making the difference but the evidence is changing, so should the tier system. All we ask is to be given the power to do that. When the data comes through, I hope that will be the case.

A lot has changed during the pandemic. We talk about lockdowns now, but if we think back to what happened in March, we can see that the recent lockdowns and the tier system are completely different. The Government have rightly changed and focused their emphasis. They focused on the NHS, and on making sure it was not overwhelmed. More importantly, we were able to continue non-covid procedures, investigations and treatments. The Government then focused on education, and on getting kids back to school so that they did not fall behind. That, in turn, has allowed people to get to work, which was the third focus: opening non-essential retail and businesses. On the next level, leisure activities, the gym, welfare, getting out to see people and looking after ourselves mentally and physically have been prioritised. Those are all levers that we can pull but, alas, that means that socialising and hospitality come last.

Given that there is light at the end of the tunnel, however, change can happen. I would like to see support for the hospitality sector—for pubs and restaurants—in the short term to help them to get through, but let us not forget the other industries that will take the longest to come out of this: events, conferences, the wedding industry and, of course, travel. I welcome the fact that the Government are making strides wherever they can and using the taskforce to help, and that is good news for those industries. We can now see where we want to go in April, May and June. We have the potential to lay out a plan, albeit in draft, so that we can say to these businesses, “This is what you can start to work towards.” As someone who got married last year, I know that trying to plan a wedding in a few weeks is not something that my wife would have wanted to do.

One thing that struck me when I was driving around from Newbold Verdon to Hinckley was how much life is starting to return to normal. It must be so hard for a pub or restaurant owner to see people going about their normal day-to-day working lives, but to be unable to make that change. We should keep that in our minds going forward to try to balance protecting the NHS and protecting livelihoods.

As we come to Christmas, and this is likely to be the last chance—I hope—to speak from the Government Benches before the new year, our minds are focused on that new year and the hope that is coming. Although I urge policy change, some things need to stay the same: caring for each other at Christmas. It is going to be particularly difficult for those who are choosing to isolate—lonely people. So we should pick up the phone, get on that Zoom or Teams call, and speak to neighbours, friends and families. Of course, the piece of Government advice that should never be lost and should stay the same until we have all had the vaccine is: hands, face, space, get a test.

Childhood Cancers: Research

Luke Evans Excerpts

Monday 7th December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

We can choose to be affected by the world or we can choose to affect the world. My constituent Isla chose the latter. In August 2017, seven-year-old Isla Tansey woke up unable to walk. After many horrible treatments, surgery and radiotherapy, in January 2018 she was diagnosed with DIPG. Isla’s mother described the terminal illness as the most traumatic and heartbreaking experience for a family ever to go through. Sadly, Isla passed away in July 2018, but not before inspiring thousands around the world with her positivity and creativity through her hobby: painting stones and pebbles.

Isla asked others to join in by painting their own stones, with any design, but she asked them to include the hashtag #islastones and the words “photo, post, re-hide”, and then to send a picture to a dedicated Facebook page for her to see. They were subsequently to leave the stones somewhere hidden, so that when they were found they could spread a little of the joy that Isla’s idea had given them—a little reminder of Isla’s joy. Isla’s mother, Katherine, hoped that a child might one day find one of the stones, learn about Isla’s story and become a researcher in childhood cancer.

Thousands of people took part in more than 149 countries. Although Isla could no longer walk, she loved to see where all the stones ended up and where they would travel to next. Places included the Taj Mahal, New Zealand, Disneyland and America, with a very special stone in Antarctica. Through the stones and the lovely people who made them, hid them and posted their photos, Isla travelled the world.

The hashtag #islastones grew to a Facebook presence with more than 75,000 members from all around the world. In 2019, a year on from Isla’s passing, at the Celebration of Smiles event in Hinckley in my constituency, a world record was set for the largest display of painted stones, with 8,542 stones—all in remembrance of Isla.

To continue her legacy, Isla’s parents, Simon and Katherine Tansey, set up the Islastones Foundation for raising smiles and helping to fight childhood cancer: a reminder of the fun and happiness that Isla brought to so many people’s lives. Isla is now permanently memorialised at Argents Mead in Hinckley, where her legacy of smiles and positivity will live on for ever.

Why does this matter? We have heard the stats in the debate, but these are the real stories behind the cases. Some 650 people in my constituency signed this petition to ask for transparency in the funding, for improvement in treatment options and for pulling together the clinical pathways that people who suffer in this situation have to go through. They ask for real understanding, for listening and for something to change. I am reminded of the quote:

“Your life is your message to the world. Make sure it’s inspiring.”

Isla’s message was truly that, and I hope the Government’s message on DIPG will be the same.