Mark Harper
Main Page: Mark Harper (Conservative - Forest of Dean)Department Debates - View all Mark Harper's debates with the Cabinet Office
(2 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
I am grateful, but I must say that throughout the pandemic the public have continually surprised on the upside with their determination to take this seriously. Rather than undermining confidence in them, a very high proportion of them continue to do the right thing and I believe always will.
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
May I press the Prime Minister on a couple of previous answers? He has come to the House today to extend plan B restrictions for a further three weeks, but he will know that the chief scientific adviser has said that covid is going to be with us forever, and we are going to have variants forever, so may I press him on his answer to our right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) about an exit strategy? We cannot respond to every new variant in the way we have to this one. We must have a plan to live as normal with this virus forever. When will he set out that plan in this House so that we all know where we stand?
The Prime Minister
If my right hon. Friend looks at what we are doing, he will see that the measures we have in place expire on 26 January, as he knows. Whatever the situation may be then, we will continue with the fundamental tools that we have—that is, vaccination, therapeutics and testing. But it is important that omicron already seems to provide some sort of immunity against delta. That is a point that he should feed into his capacious brain.