Additional Covid-19 Restrictions: Fair Economic Support

Mike Kane Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

Not since the Peterloo massacre of 1819 has the state displayed such coercive power over the people of Greater Manchester. Oh, the irony of those talking about one nation Conservatism. It was Mayor Burnham who stood on almost exactly the same spot as Disraeli did in 1872 and spoke for a nation about what you are doing to our cities through this tiered system.

What we have seen this week has been nothing short of chaotic and incompetent. On Monday last week, the Secretary of State for Health told Greater Manchester MPs that we would be going into tier 2 lockdown—we had been there for 12 weeks, since July, without any support. Do you know what? He had unanimity in that room—he had our full support. Do you know what else? That night, The Times leaked that we were going into tier 3. That was leaked to the national press. Seven days of negotiation follows—we are just seven days older—and, to make it worse, The Guardian then leaked that we were running out of intensive care unit capacity. What the Government have forgotten is that the former Chancellor, the former right hon. Member for Tatton, gave us devolved function over some of our NHS services, so we know exactly what is going on in the hospitals. I am looking up at the Press Gallery—the Manchester Guardian should have known better than to be leaking against the city where it was founded after the massacre. This makes us so angry, up in the north.

The Government came to power on the promise of levelling up; those watching from Greater Manchester today will be reflecting on the emptiness of that promise. Tier 3 restrictions will hasten a tsunami of mental health problems already being reported to me by local general practitioners. Along with protecting people’s incomes, the Government need to prevent a mental health crisis.

We in this place are asking so much of the British people, who have gone through so much for us. The coronavirus has them at their wits’ end. Another local Wythenshawe hero from my constituency, Marcus Rashford, will be the subject of the next debate in this House. We are going to heap poverty upon the poverty of the people who go into tier 3 restrictions. The Prime Minister does not know how an area gets out of tier 3 restrictions —he did not know the answer today when challenged by the Leader of the Opposition. Not only will we face further poverty in areas that go into tier 3 restrictions, but we are now cutting off the food supply of the youngest people. Marcus Rashford is teaching the Prime Minister a thing or two about how to bring people along when tackling such an important issue.

This week, the city of Manchester has had a 17% reduction in reported coronavirus cases. The conurbation as a whole has flattened off, yet we have been in these measures for 12 weeks—since July—and now the Government want to shut us down altogether for the next 28 days, with no end in sight.

When I was a young councillor in the early ’90s, Manchester was a dying industrial mill town, after over a decade of Thatcherism. We have pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps to regenerate our airport and our city and to bring back the jobs that we lost in the lost ’80s. We are now an international cosmopolitan city, and you are drawing that away from us. You are pulling the rug from under our feet by making our citizens materially worse off. This has to stop.