Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Matt Hancock and Anne-Marie Trevelyan

Tuesday 6th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

A huge amount of work is under way to ensure that we are fully prepared for all eventualities this winter. It is an important piece of work across the Department.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)]

I would like to thank the Secretary of State for his commitment to Northumberland hospital investment, with the Northgate Hospital investment announced last week. Does he agree that rural hospitals such as Berwick Infirmary—one of the most rural English hospitals—are places to develop the technology to enable us to reach many more patients, without them having to travel long distances to get to hospital?

[Matt Hancock]

We have ended where we started this questions session: with my delight at a new hospital that has been funded and announced by the Prime Minister on Friday—Newgate in Northumberland. That is a very important development. My right hon. Friend makes a wider point about the importance of community hospitals, which are local to where people live. With modern advances in technology, we can deliver more services closer to people’s homes and in people’s homes, and then in community hospitals, while of course needing to build those superb hubs of science and care that our great hospitals are.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between Matt Hancock and Anne-Marie Trevelyan

Monday 21st September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes. We need the scale of the national system and the resonance of the local system and the local knowledge. We are increasingly driving things in that direction, and I would love to talk to my hon. Friend, who is incredibly knowledgeable in these matters, to see what more we can do.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his and his officials’ incredible efforts over the last few days that have meant he was able to make the statement today that informal childcare will sit alongside formal childcare to allow those selfless grandparents across the north-east and elsewhere where local restrictions have to be brought in to make sure, out of the goodness of their hearts and the love of their families, that their sons and daughters can go to work—often low-paid, seasonal work with difficult hours. I thank him for that. Does he also agree that it is for all of us to be selfless, not selfish, as we try to get to grips with the second wave?

[Matt Hancock]

That is a good point on which to end, because my right hon. Friend has worked incredibly hard over the last four or five days to try to ensure that we find a way to protect people who use informal childcare without unnecessarily harming others by widening the exemption beyond what is needed. It is important to control the virus and keep listening to people as to how best to do that, and she has helped enormously. Her final point is critical, which is that we all have a role to play in taking seriously the rise in cases and hospitalisations that we have seen and making sure that we are all doing our bit to control coronavirus.