Oral Answers to Questions

Nick Fletcher Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

New guidance on care homes and visiting relatives safely—because the point the right hon. and learned Gentleman makes is incredibly important —is going to be announced today to try to strike the right balance between people’s real, real need to see their loved ones and obviously the risk of spreading the disease in care homes. We are going to be publishing some guidance about how that can be done today.

I am grateful for the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s offer to work collaboratively, but I have to say that the House will generally have noted that he has used this crisis as an opportunity to make political capital and to have what I think a shadow spokesman called a “good crisis”—a “good crisis”. Can I commend a different approach, because he has attacked the Government’s strategy? Can I commend a different approach? The former Labour leader, the right hon. former Member for Sedgefield, who is not as fashionable on those Benches as he once was or should be—[Interruption.] Not with all of them; perhaps on the Front Bench, but not all of them. He had written a good piece in today’s Daily Mail, in which he supports—broadly supports—this Government’s strategy: praising UK drugs companies for what they are doing; supporting our search for a vaccine; and supporting mass testing in Liverpool, which the right hon. and learned Gentleman deprecates. I think what he should do is actually take a leaf out of the Blair book, and by the way, I can tell him that Tony Blair would not have spent four years in the same shadow Cabinet as Jeremy Corbyn, standing shoulder to shoulder with him.

[Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)]

I understand the position that the Government are in today, and although it is desperately hard for people and businesses, I agree that these measures are the right decision. However, once we are through this period, it is business that will restore the economy. Does my right hon. Friend agree that easing congestion in the south- east with the border control point in Don Valley will help trade to flow through the country and level-up the north, following the transition period?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Department for Transport is already engaged on that matter, and I am sure it would be happy to meet him and representatives from the iPort that he describes.