Public Health

Matt Hancock Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Matt Hancock)]

This debate this afternoon, and into this evening, has been on one of the great challenges of our time: how to respond as a country to this unprecedented pandemic. Our response to coronavirus has forced each and every one of us in this House to wrestle with fundamental questions of life and liberty, and to take and support measures that nobody would ever want in a liberal democracy. Like every other like-minded nation across the world, we are striving to take targeted action such as the measures before the House today. It is striking that the measures that we take in this country, and the measures in these regulations before the House, are similar in kind and seek to strike the same balance as measures in similar countries the world over. Like every like-minded nation, we face the same challenges, because this is a global challenge and a global pandemic. We seek a balance between our historic rights and our moral duty to keep one another safe, and it is not just about keeping ourselves safe. Because of the nature of this virus, it is about the importance of keeping others safe by our own actions, too.

Nobody wants to go into another national lockdown. These restrictions bring me, as a lover of freedom, no joy, but nor can we throw away all the work that we have done together to get this virus under control. With the winter ahead, and the problems that that always brings, and with the virus still at large, we must maintain our vigilance. Thanks to the incredible hard work and the sacrifices that people have made over the past four weeks, the virus is coming under control. The rates of infection are coming down, and in some parts of the country they are coming down sharply.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

The Secretary of State will know that Warrington moves from tier 3 to tier 2 tomorrow. At the start of the lockdown, we had case rates of more than 450 per 100,000. We are now at 147 per 100,00. I am sure he will join me in thanking everybody in Warrington who has worked so hard to bring those rates down, but can he assure me that mass testing will be made available to Warrington, as it was in Liverpool just down the road, so that we can keep Warrington in tier 2 and not bounce back up to tier 3?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes; I was going to say that my hon. Friend need just ask, but I think he did. I will ensure that the national team and his local team at Warrington Council are put in touch right away, if they are not in touch already, because we are extending the availability of mass testing throughout tier 3 and throughout the wider area close to Liverpool, which Warrington was in tier 3 restrictions with until we went into national lockdown.

I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that, as the experience of Warrington and Liverpool shows, we can afford to let up a little, but we just can’t afford to let up a lot. Let that be the message that goes out from this House. We know through repeated experience what happens if the virus gets out of control. If it gets out of control, it grows exponentially, hospitals come under pressure and people die. This is not just speculation. It is a fact that has affected thousands of families, including my own. We talk a lot of the outbreak in Liverpool, and how that great city has had a terrible outbreak and got it under control. This means more to me than I can say, because last month my step-grandfather Derek caught covid there and on 18 November he died. In my family, as in so many others, we have lost a loving husband, father and grandfather to this awful disease, so from the bottom of my heart I want to say thank you to everyone in Liverpool for getting this awful virus under control. It is down by four fifths in Liverpool. That is what we can do if we work together in a spirit of common humanity. We have got to beat this and we have got to beat it together.

I know that there are costs to the actions we take—of course I know that—but let us not forget the impact of covid itself. First, there are the health impacts. People do not live with covid—we cannot learn to live with covid; people die with covid. There is also the economic impact directly from covid. Where someone has to self-isolate and their contacts have to self-isolate, that itself has an adverse impact on services in the economy. I understand why people are frustrated that it is impossible to put figures on the economic impacts, but they are uncertain and we are dealing with a pandemic that leads to so much uncertainty. The tiered system is designed specifically to be the best proportionate response we can bring together, with the minimum measures necessary to get the virus under control when it is too high, yet the fewer measures where prevalence is low. The only alternative is a national set of measures, which would have to be calibrated to bring the virus under control where it is high and rising, as it is in Kent right now. That is the principle behind the tiered system and why it is the best way forward this winter.

[Derek Twigg]

May I offer my condolences and say how sorry I am to hear of the loss in the Secretary of State’s family? May I also ask him: what about the people who die because of the unintended consequences of covid, perhaps through cancer or heart disease, where they have not been seen quickly enough or have not come forward?

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Hancock]

The hon. Gentleman, who is also from Merseyside, makes an important point. It is undoubtedly clear that the best way to preserve life among those who suffer from diseases that are not covid is to keep covid under control. Everybody who works in an NHS hospital will confirm that, because the pressures on the NHS from covid make it harder to treat cancer. In this second outbreak we have successfully managed to keep cancer services going—going at over 100% of their normal last year in many areas—thanks to the hard work of the NHS.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is, of course, right to say that measured controls and restrictions are necessary to defeat this disease, but will he confirm that these tiers are not set in stone? Will he confirm that the review in December will, in the words of a letter he sent to me today, mean that areas will be considered within counties, on their “merits”, and that action will be taken accordingly to ease those restrictions, where possible?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, of course. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister set out earlier what happens if an area meets the five criteria. We have set out those five criteria: the pressures on the NHS, which we were just discussing; the case rates; the case rates in the over-60s—this is because of the direct impact that has on hospital admissions; the direction of travel of those case rates—this is because if it is rising fast, that is more dangerous; and the positivity. If an area meets the five criteria, of course we will seek to reduce the tier on that basis, and we will do that on the basis of the most localised geography that it is epidemiologically relevant to act in. This is about the human geographies that the Prime Minister spoke about with such eloquence earlier.

Let me turn to some of the many speeches that have been made, as I want to highlight a few. First, my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) gave a wise speech, talking about how there is no alternative. This phrase—“There is no alternative”—came up again, for example, from my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart). The right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) talked of the uncertainty in decision making, which was meant not as a criticism but as a description. That is something that I and those of us with the burden of decision making in this pandemic know only too well. But, as he said, there are facts, including about the power of vaccination, and on that he is absolutely right.

There were a number of excellent speeches from Members across the House both in favour of and against this action. I understand that reasonable people have different views on what are very difficult decisions. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) talked about the lesser of evils, and many talked about the decisions ahead of us not being easy because none is straightforward. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) said, it is about choosing the least damaging course to take.

I pay particular tribute to some of the newer Members of the House, including my hon. Friends the Members for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) and for Hyndburn (Sara Britcliffe), who made impassioned pleas in support of the Government. They said that it is not about doing what will win short-term popularity, but doing what is right, and that is the approach that we seek to take. Others asked about the publication of more data in real time. The challenge is that we publish data on the day that it comes to us, but it takes a few days to get all the results in and therefore to know the true trajectory of the disease, so there is a natural and unavoidable gap between getting the full data and the time that we are in now. That is why we look at the data from up to four days ago, because after that date, it can increase.

Many Members made points about the hospitality sector. My heart goes out to those in the hospitality sector. The Prime Minister has set out more support for wet pubs, and rightly so. The hospitality sector has benefited from more support from this Government in the pandemic than any other sector. Overall, the economic support provided by this Government has been set out by the International Monetary Fund as being one of the most generous packages in the world. We cannot support and protect all jobs, but we seek to protect as many jobs as we can, because we can protect jobs as well as protecting lives—that is the goal. We cannot protect all lives, and we cannot protect all jobs, but we seek to protect them both.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison) said that we have the right to do not what we please but what is right. In a pandemic, that is true of us all—it is true of every individual who has to choose how they act. The restrictions in these measures are not what everybody should push the boundaries of, but the limits up to which we should go, because we all have within ourselves the ability to stop the passing on of this virus to others. She made that point clearly struggling with the restrictions on liberty on which we vote tonight, but coming to the view that they are a lesser restriction than those we live under today, and they are a necessary restriction in order to protect life.

The consequences of inaction would be far worse than the consequences of these actions. Voting against these restrictions tonight is, in fact, a vote to allow the entire system to lapse tomorrow. I know that every Member of this House wants to control the virus, and no one wants to see the NHS overwhelmed, so support the motion to protect the NHS. Support the motion to back the nurses who we all clapped in the spring. Support the motion to back the doctors working on our wards every night. Support the motion to back the teachers who are working so hard to keep our schools open and to back the care workers looking after the most vulnerable. Support this motion to back the businesses that do not want another national lockdown, because that would be the only alternative. By voting for this motion, Members are supporting all those people and the public, who want to see us act together.

I can honestly say that from all my experience this terrible year, this proposal draws on all the lessons and all the learnings from our experience.

We have come so far in our fight against the virus. We are on the cusp of the scientific breakthroughs, the vaccines and the community testing that will let us cast aside the curbs that it demands. The end is in sight. The measures are temporary and time-limited, but no less necessary for that. The return of our freedoms is on the horizon. The virus is back under control. The NHS has been protected. Let us not throw it all away now. We must have the resolve, not to do what is easy, but what is right. I commend the motion to the House.

Question put.