Munira Wilson
Main Page: Munira Wilson (Liberal Democrat - Twickenham)Department Debates - View all Munira Wilson's debates with the Cabinet Office
(3 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
Of course I can. I thank my right hon. Friend for what he has just said and I am so sorry that the faith communities temporarily must go through this difficult period of not being able to observe services in the way that they want and I would like. This is only for 28 days and the hope I can offer—the candle in the darkness—is that we will, if we get this right, be able to go back to something much more like normal life before Christmas and people will be able to celebrate Christmas, in churches and elsewhere across this country.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
Experts are clear that lockdowns merely defer, rather than solve, the problem and buy us time. They are united in the opinion that until we have a vaccine, a robust system to test, trace and isolate every case is the best way both to keep people safe and to protect our economy, yet we have heard nothing today that will address the woeful rates of contact tracing or how we improve support and incentives for self-isolation, which the Prime Minister has admitted is not working. What is he going to do to ensure that we avoid a boom and bust cycle of lockdowns and that he will not squander this lockdown like he did the last one, with us back here in January or February discussing the same issue again?
The Prime Minister
If I may so, the hon. Lady raises the most important point, the one we have been circling around all afternoon. In common with much of the rest of Europe, we are seeing an autumn surge now. I believe we have the right package of measures to address it. As for how we avoid endlessly going in and out of these types of measures in the way that she describes, I think the answer lies not just in getting people to self-isolate, but in mass testing—the lateral flow tests and the loop mediated isothermal amplification, or LAMP, tests of the kind I have described, which will not only help to drive down the R by isolating the positive cases, but liberate the negative cases to go about their lives much more normally. That is the game changer we can all look forward to.