Covid-19 Update

Debate between Matt Hancock and John Redwood

Monday 19th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, an awareness campaign is under way, and I am grateful for advance notice of this question. I will write to the hon. Gentleman with the full details. He may say to me, “Sorry, Matt; more needs to be done,” in which case I will look into it, but he makes an important point on which I essentially agree with him.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con) [V]]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the big reductions, based on the vaccinations, in case and death numbers. Will he briefly update us on better air extraction, cleaning and other measures to control infection in hospitals to reassure the many patients who now need non-covid treatment?

[Matt Hancock]

My right hon. Friend has asked about this many times, and he is quite right to, because it is not just about cleaning. We have learned a lot during the pandemic about the importance of good ventilation, and that is now embedded in infection prevention and control. As cases in hospitals come down, hospitals across the country are separating, as much as is possible, those who might or do have covid from people who are coming to hospital having been tested and knowing that they do not have covid. That is incredibly important to reassure people that if they are asked to come to hospital by a clinician, it is the best place for them.

Health and Social Care Update

Debate between Matt Hancock and John Redwood

Thursday 18th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con) [V]]

Many congratulations to the Secretary of State and his team on the vaccine roll-out. It shows the success of collaboration between Government, business and universities, and the beneficial side effect of more high-quality jobs and more self-reliant and productive capacity in the UK, which I hope we will follow in other areas. Can he give us a brief update on progress with finding new treatments for covid-19 and applying existing drugs?

[Matt Hancock]

I highly, 100%, wholeheartedly agree with my right hon. Friend. The model that we established in the vaccines taskforce—of the holy trinity of business, academia and civil service colleagues working together as one team—was learned from reforms from his time in government. It has worked incredibly well, and I think will do as well in the future.

We also apply that approach to therapeutics, and one of the reasons, alongside the NHS, why we are the only country in the world that has participated in the discovery of all the current therapeutics is our use of that approach. Obviously we are driving it further, and I would be very happy to discuss it with my right hon. Friend.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between Matt Hancock and John Redwood

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

No. On the contrary, we are putting extra support into Greater Manchester, and we are willing to continue with the support akin to the support that we agreed with the leadership of the Liverpool city region and with Lancashire, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Sara Britcliffe), who has now gone from the Chamber, set out. The unprecedented level of support across the whole of this pandemic has been possible only because of the UK acting together and working together. I hope that we can continue to work with the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) and her party to make sure that we get through this as best as we possibly can, suppressing the virus and supporting jobs and the NHS.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

More action is needed to help livelihoods and save incomes, so will the Government share and, if necessary, develop their work with the commercial and public sectors on how air-conditioning systems, ventilation systems, heating systems and air-extraction systems can be adapted or improved so that more commercial and public buildings can be kept open for proper use?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, absolutely; that is an incredibly important strand of work. It is being led by the Business Department, but I keep a close eye on it and, in fact, had an update on it this week, which I would be very happy to discuss with my right hon. Friend.

Public Health: Coronavirus Regulations

Debate between Matt Hancock and John Redwood

Tuesday 13th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

My hon. Friend—and he is an honourable man—makes an important point that has wider context than just his constituency, which is that we must make sure that we control the virus. My heart goes out to the families of those in his constituency who have died. The only alternative to suppressing the virus is that it then expands exponentially. That is what happens with a virus when the R is above 1. I know that some people feel that we should adopt a more relaxed approach, but that will lead to more of the sort of thing that my hon. Friend has related from his constituency.

Some people have set out this more relaxed approach, including those in the so-called Great Barrington declaration. I want to take this argument head on, because on the substance, the Great Barrington declaration is underpinned by two central claims and both are emphatically false. First, it says that if enough people get covid, we will reach herd immunity. That is not true. Many infectious diseases never reach herd immunity, such as measles, malaria, AIDS and flu, and with increasing evidence of reinfection, we should have no confidence that we would ever reach herd immunity to covid, even if everyone caught it. Herd immunity is a flawed goal without a vaccine, even if we could get to it, which we cannot.

The second central claim is that we can segregate the old and vulnerable on our way to herd immunity. That is simply not possible. As the medical director of the NHS said yesterday, we cannot somehow fence off the elderly and the vulnerable from risk while everyone else returns to normal. It is neither conscionable nor practicable—not when so many people live in inter- generational homes, not when older people need carers who of course themselves live in the community, and not when young people can suffer the debilitating impact of long covid. Whenever we have seen cases among young people rise sharply, we then see cases among the over-60s rise inevitably thereafter, and we are not the kind of country that abandons our vulnerable or just locks them up.

If we let this virus continue unchecked, the loss of life would be simply too great to contemplate. We know that it would put our NHS at risk, as my hon. Friends have just said. We know that both because of what happened in March and because of what is happening right now. We have already heard from the heads of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and the Royal College of Emergency Medicine that, if we do not act fast and come together to quash the virus, we risk putting the NHS under extraordinary strain both for covid treatments and for non-covid treatments.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

How long do the scientists think we will need these lockdowns for, and what is their exit plan?

[Matt Hancock]

We have seen the exit plan from local lockdowns. For instance, in Leicester, where we had a firm local lockdown, the case rate came right down. We lifted that and we have sadly seen it start to rise again. The case rate is determined by the amount of social mixing, and it reduces during a lockdown. In some parts of the country where the case rate has continued to rise, there is an argument for further ensuring that we do not reach the level of contact that is at the root of the virus spreading. The challenge is how to calibrate the lockdown to get the virus under control while doing the minimum damage to the economy and to education.

Covid-19

Debate between Matt Hancock and John Redwood

Monday 28th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I have said what I have to say on this. This is clearly an area on which I am very happy to engage with the right hon. Gentleman and everybody else, along with the Leader of the House and the parliamentary authorities, to try to find a way forward.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

May I have a progress report on something we have talked about before: infection control? This time round, will there be isolation hospitals so that we can control the infection in the hospital sector better, and will there be good controls to prevent the seepage of people with infection back to care homes?

[Matt Hancock]

The answer to both those questions is yes. We have learnt a huge amount about those and put in place improved procedures, but I am going to come on to the question of the impact of that on our strategy.

The virus has shown beyond all possible doubt that the health of one of us begets the health of us all. Without a doubt in my mind, the central question about the control of the virus, and one that I ask myself every day, is, “How do we best keep people safe from this virus while protecting liberty and livelihoods and the things that make life worth living?” I believe that in reality there is not a simple trade-off between those things, because the exponential growth of the virus means that there are in reality only two paths: either to control the virus or to let it rip.

There is no middle option, because once the virus is growing, it accelerates. To the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood), I am convinced that no matter how effectively we protect the vulnerable, and protect them we must, letting the virus rip would leave a death toll too big to bear. In reality, the only question is how to control the virus and when to put measures in place.

That comes directly to the question that we have been debating about both how to control the virus, and how we must act fast. The best thing we can do for schools, for our economy and for both lives and livelihoods is to act fast, together, to control the virus and to keep the rate of infections down. From that goal flows our strategy, which is to suppress the virus while protecting our economy and education until a vaccine arrives.

Coronavirus

Debate between Matt Hancock and John Redwood

Tuesday 7th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

We are constantly putting more money into the NHS and have put in an extra £30 billion over the crisis thus far.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Could the Secretary of State remind us how big an increase in intensive care capacity there has been for the health service? That increase is a great achievement. Were the unthinkable to happen and there was another surge in the virus, could we have isolation hospitals that dealt with that so that the rest of the hospitals and surgeries could carry on with their other work?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes. We have doubled the intensive care capacity, which, alongside the Nightingale, has been a remarkable achievement of the NHS. There are now green and blue areas in hospitals, or whole hospitals, depending on the geography—in a rural area, we could not make a whole hospital covid-secure or covid-free, because it would have to serve both covid and non-covid patients. That separation of the NHS into blue and green areas is an important part of their being able to reduce the impact of infection control procedures, which are obviously having a big impact on the provision of services.

Coronavirus

Debate between Matt Hancock and John Redwood

Wednesday 17th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, I do agree. I pay tribute to Marcus Rashford. The way he has conducted himself in making his argument has been absolutely brilliant. I was reading Harry Potter to my son last night, and it was clearly still stuck in my mind at 7 o’clock this morning, when I started on the TV. We all make errors sometimes, and I apologise to Marcus for getting his name wrong on one occasion. I had no reason to make that mistake, but what really matters is his brilliant campaign and the volunteering that he has done throughout this crisis.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

It is great news that steroids can save some lives, and I pay tribute to those involved, but as the Secretary of State has said, many people will not get a treatment that works. He says that there are seven other treatments in tests, which presumably started at a similar time, using different groups and families of drugs with different impacts. When will we know the results of those?

[Matt Hancock]

As soon as possible. The trials will also look at whether, in combination with dexamethasone, which we now know is effective, these drugs save lives. The way the trials work is that we will keep the treatments in trial until we know, to a point of rigorous scientific proof, that they work. As soon as that point is reached, we will roll them out. That point was met on Monday; I was told on Monday night about this success. We had stockpiled in advance, so we could immediately make the announcement and make the change through the NHS. I do not have a date, because it is all driven by the science.

Covid-19: R Rate and Lockdown Measures

Debate between Matt Hancock and John Redwood

Monday 8th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, we hope very much to be able to publish more and more granular, localised information and to work with local leaders to deliver on what is needed to act upon it.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Given the Secretary of State’s great success in expanding the number of tests, will we soon have more precise and accurate R figures, along with the other information now accumulated, and is there not a danger, in interpreting back trends, that they are unreliable because of differential test rates?

[Matt Hancock]

The answer is yes and yes. Survey testing is the most reliable way of assessing the prevalence of the disease and its downward trajectory, because it takes into account a randomised approach to working out where the disease is—much like the opinion polls that we are familiar with in this House—because as testing has gone up, inevitably more cases have been found. It is a good thing that more cases have been found, but we need to know the prevalence, which is best done by surveys.

Covid-19

Debate between Matt Hancock and John Redwood

Monday 16th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

We have set out the advice today, and I will look at the point the hon. Gentleman raises.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State make sure that in the legal powers and guidance will be provision to ensure that all our councillors who are over 70 can participate fully in council and committee meetings from their home, using technology?

Health

Debate between Matt Hancock and John Redwood

Tuesday 14th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

We are honouring the pay rise proposed—of course we are. I love the HSJ, which is an absolutely terrific journal, but it was wide of the mark on that. We are putting in record funding.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

The Secretary of State has done well in getting the extra money that the NHS needs. Will he briefly summarise what extra service and capacity we will get for that money? It is important to spend it wisely.

[Matt Hancock]

My right hon. Friend anticipates my very next point. It is important to get value for the extra taxpayers’ money we put in. I always try to refer to it as taxpayers’ money, because there is no Government money or NHS money. Every single penny we put into the NHS—rightly, in my view—comes from the taxes that people pay, and it should be treated with the respect that that deserves.

Data Protection Bill [Lords]

Debate between Matt Hancock and John Redwood

Tuesday 15th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I think it is very important that the elected House, having considered the question and in supporting a manifesto commitment of the party in government, should have its say. That is absolutely right. It is a very important constitutional argument, but I am also making an argument of substance. The approach that we are proposing is the right one—that we do not have statutory regulation of the process, but that we in this House can debate a report on what is happening in the press and the self-regulation of it. I think that is the best way to take this question forward.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I fully support what the Secretary of State is trying to do. Does he see a rather worrying undemocratic tendency in the other place—it does not like the result of referendums, the EU withdrawal Bill, which was a manifesto Bill, or this manifesto Bill, and now it wants to regulate the press because the press point out the errors of its ways?

Data Protection Bill [Lords]

Debate between Matt Hancock and John Redwood

Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 5th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

We debated this at length on Thursday and discussed the fact that it is vital that we look to what is needed for the media now, to ensure that instead of having a set of proposals that were designed several years ago and that would lead to any claimant being able to claim costs no matter the merits of their case, we have measures that enable our press to be sustainable for the future.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I support the Secretary of State in proposing that these amendments be removed. Like many in this place, I have been on the wrong end of fake news and misrepresentation many times, so I do not do so out of personal interest. I think there is a wider public interest: a free press is an extremely important part of a democracy. The press will not always get it right, but we need to be very careful about the amendments from the Lords.

[Matt Hancock]

I wholeheartedly agree with my right hon. Friend.

This Bill is an essential piece of legislation that makes the UK’s data laws among the most effective in the world. This House must never shy away from supporting new technology. The Electric Lighting Act 1882 was considered so important that the House sat on a Saturday to get it through. I hope that will not be necessary this time, but I do hope that the House will adopt similar enthusiasm in backing this Bill. Doing so would support our entrepreneurs in harnessing the value of data, while giving citizens confidence when they go online.

I was pleased a few weeks ago that the Opposition Front-Bench teams in the other place agreed that the Bill was a positive and necessary step. I hope the whole House will agree tonight, and I commend this Bill to the House.

Coalfield Communities

Debate between Matt Hancock and John Redwood

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

I shall come on to how best to support communities that used to have a large coal mining presence. In Yorkshire, unemployment has fallen by 30% over the past four years, going by the claimant count. That demonstrates that having a long-term economic plan is the best way to help communities get through these difficult times.

The transition of an economy that was dominated by outdated heavy industry into a modern service-based economy was necessary, and it has formed the basis of the nation’s current prosperity. That is not much disputed these days.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

The Minister is making an excellent speech. The shadow Minister said that the Government considered using the Army in the dispute. May I reassure my right hon. Friend that when I advised the then Prime Minister that the Army should on no account be involved in the dispute, she said, “Of course it won’t be” ? And it was not.

[Matthew Hancock]

The fact is that the Army was not used in the dispute. None the less, the dispute was a serious consideration in respect of energy security in this country, so it is no wonder that the questions about how to deal with it were broad, especially given the political nature of those attacking the Government. That is entirely understandable. Nevertheless, the dispute was dealt with in a way that did not involve putting the Army on the streets.

Start-up Loans

Debate between Matt Hancock and John Redwood

Wednesday 20th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

As we wish to spread the news to constituents, what is the typical interest rate for loans and the average duration of them?

[Matthew Hancock]

The interest is typically 6% and the average duration is up to five years, but those matters are of course also dependent on the proposition that is made. So far, in the year and a bit that the scheme has been going, the amount paid back has been pretty strong.