Covid-19 Update

Debate between Matt Hancock and David Johnston

Monday 17th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I am afraid I do not agree with the hon. Lady’s characterisation of the situation, not least because the approach we are taking in Bolton did work effectively in south London. We are piloting new approaches to ensuring that we can support people to isolate, and some of those pilots are taking place in areas where we can see cases of B1617.2. We keep this under close scrutiny and review to see what works effectively.

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

Part of our fight against covid, and indeed against future viruses, is to improve our domestic vaccine manufacturing capability. To that end, the Government are fast-tracking the Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre at Harwell in my constituency. I will be visiting it in a few weeks, but could my right hon. Friend provide an update on the progress so far?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, we are making significant progress with the onshoring of vaccine capability. It is about developing the vaccine, as the team in Oxford did brilliantly, but also about manufacturing it onshore, and boy, if there is one lesson we have learned from this whole thing, it is that we cannot just not care about where manufacturing happens. Having it onshore really, really matters, for resilience but also to ensure that it is close to the NHS so that the whole supply chain can learn and constantly improve. I am delighted that we are pushing forward with the VMIC project in the same way that we have brought onshore manufacturing supply in Teesside, in Livingston in Scotland and in the fill-and-finish plants at Wockhardt in Wrexham, at Barnard Castle and elsewhere. It is a big project and, frankly, a big opportunity for life sciences in the UK to ensure that we can do all this onshore, because in my view, the pandemic has shown that we need to.

Covid-19 Vaccine Roll-out

Debate between Matt Hancock and David Johnston

Tuesday 8th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

All of us in Government feel encouraged by today’s progress, but we are also determined and resolute to get through this in the safest way possible, and out into the brighter seas beyond, when we can get rid of the restrictions altogether. I agree with the hon. Gentleman about how important it is that we all keep that resolve, not least because of the example that he set out, and I send my commiserations and those of the Government to his constituent. Many of us have suffered loss during this pandemic, and we want it to be over as soon as we can. We must keep going until it is safe to do so.

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

May I add my congratulations to my right hon. Friend and the many people who got us to the heart-warming images that we saw this morning? A lot of the highest priority groups in my constituency live in more remote villages rather than in towns, and there are issues from transport connections to a fear of going out. Will my right hon. Friend assure me that those factors that affect more remote locations are being included in the planning for the roll-out?

[Matt Hancock]

One hundred per cent. That is a very important point, and it is important right across the country, especially, if I may say so, in Scotland and Wales. We have the primary care network community roll-out, which aims to get the vaccine out into the community as close to where people live as possible.

Covid-19 Update and Hospitality Curfew

Debate between Matt Hancock and David Johnston

Thursday 1st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Of course the restrictions will come back to this House in the normal way. As the hon. Gentleman well knows, yesterday we made the further commitment that, wherever possible, all nationally significant measures will be brought forward for a vote before being implemented. I was very pleased that, as a result of that, there was an overwhelming majority of support for renewal of the Coronavirus Act yesterday.

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

I support the 10 pm restriction as an alternative to hospitality businesses having to close entirely, but it may well hurt certain parts of the sector more than others—for example, wet-led pubs that do not serve food, such as the Wheatsheaf in Faringdon. Will the Secretary of State and his colleagues confirm that they will look closely at whether certain parts of the sector are being hit hard, to see whether they need more support?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, of course we will, and I take my hon. Friend’s point about wet-led pubs. He is right that the 10 pm curfew is far better than the closure of hospitality—not that we want to do that, but we do need to take measures to suppress the virus. He is wise in his description of why we have had to take these decisions, because we cannot will the ends of suppressing the virus without also willing the means, and some of those means are difficult.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between Matt Hancock and David Johnston

Tuesday 5th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The hon. Lady is right that making sure that our whole social care system gets access to PPE is important. There is often a focus on PPE in hospitals and care homes, but on home visits, as she rightly raises, access to PPE is also vital.

There has been a global increase in the prices of PPE. The prices that the Government pay for PPE have increased a number of times over the course of this crisis. That is a feature of the global shortage of supply as the demand for PPE across the world has shot up. We are seeing that the world over. What I hope to do is bring on stream more and more domestic manufacturers of PPE, both to ensure that we get the quantity and to see whether we can stop the price rises happening.

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con) [V]]

Elderly constituents of mine in Wantage and Didcot have been concerned by media reports suggesting that they will be forced to stay in their homes for an extended period. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that that is in fact not the case and that, through all his work on testing and the tracking and tracing app, he is working to make sure that we can all return to a normal life as soon as possible?

[Matt Hancock]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. I would like to take this opportunity to set out the exact policy, which a few media outlets have got wrong in the past few days. We set out from the start, and clearly on the nhs.uk website, that broadly there are three groups of people when it comes to the strictures of the social distancing guidelines. There are people of working age who do not have underlying health conditions, who must follow the social distancing rules. There are those in groups that are, according to the science, more susceptible to this disease, including the over-70s and some with underlying health conditions, who we say are clinically vulnerable and must pay particular attention to the social distancing rules.

Then there is the group who are shielded. These are people with specific underlying health conditions who will have received a letter from the NHS. It is only to this last group that we have said, right from the start of social distancing, that they will need to stay away from people as much as is practically possible for 12 weeks. We know that that is a very significant impact and burden, hence we have written individually to those people; in many cases, they will have specific requirements because of their condition.

It is really important that people understand those three separate groups. I hope that that clears up for the House some of the confusion seen on the front pages of some of the newspapers.