Arthur Labinjo-Hughes
Debate between Mick Whitley and Nadhim Zahawi(3 years ago)
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Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)
I, too, thank the Secretary of State for the tone of what he has said this afternoon.
The tragic death of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes has shocked and grieved our nation and served as a painful reminder that not nearly enough has been done to protect vulnerable children since the death of Baby P more than a decade ago. Lord Laming, who chaired the inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbié, has warned that 10 years of austerity measures have seriously undermined the ability of social services to protect the young people most at risk of serious harm. Does the Secretary of State agree that urgently restoring funding lost since 2010 is essential if we are to stop any other child from suffering as Arthur so tragically did?
Nadhim Zahawi
I think it important to note the £4.8 billion that local government will receive over the spending review period, but I hope the MacAlister review will give us an opportunity to look at how we can make the best use of funding operationally, and also to understand where the bureaucracy lies in order to free up the frontline and make social work an attractive profession. All that work will continue apace once we receive the review.
Covid-19
Debate between Mick Whitley and Nadhim Zahawi(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
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Nadhim Zahawi
I will certainly take my right hon. Friend’s constituents’ details and look into that. We urge all hospitals to make sure that when the frail elderly need social contact, they are able to get it.
Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab) [V]
No one is safe from covid-19 until we all are, but the UK continues to stubbornly resist calls for a waiver of covid-19 vaccine patents. Given that people in many of the world’s poorest countries cannot expect to be vaccinated until 2023, and given the failure of the COVAX initiative to distribute vaccines at the volume and speed that is needed, will the Government now follow the lead of the Biden Administration and reverse their position on a patent waiver?
Nadhim Zahawi
That is a really important question. Let me share with the hon. Member a little about the operational challenges around vaccine manufacture. We will of course look at any text that our US colleagues put forward on the intellectual property issue, but in reality if the exam question is to get more jabs in the arms of those who live in low and middle-income countries, the bottleneck is not the IP but the transfer of technology to manufacturers around the world. What Oxford-AstraZeneca has done incredibly well is to transfer that technology to 20 sites that can manufacture at scale. We have already delivered 450 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. The hon. Gentleman might recall that Pfizer did the same thing; it actually paused its manufacturing in Europe and expanded it, to go from 1.2 billion doses a year for 2021 to almost 3 billion doses. If the exam question is to get more jabs in arms, we need that technology transfer. It is not easy, as we saw in Halix in Europe, which had great difficulty operationalising the manufacturing, as did Catalent in the US. That is the real effort that needs to go in—as well, of course, as helping other countries with deployment. It is only one part of the jigsaw to get the vaccine into warehouses in those countries; those countries have to be able to get it out and into people’s arms.