Coronavirus

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I understand the point that the right hon. Gentleman is making. It is in some ways similar to the flu point. We do not just glibly accept smoking. We take measures in society to try to push down rates. I do not think the House would want to go as far as to ban smoking outright, despite what any of us might feel as individuals about smoking, but we do what we can to push down smoking rates because we want to reduce the poor health outcomes from smoking. That is what we will have to do with covid. We will have to put measures in place to mitigate the negative effects of covid, which I would argue is about allowing people to isolate themselves with proper sick pay, doing things around ventilation, giving local authorities more responsibility, perhaps to inspect premises without proper ventilation standards in place, and obviously resolving some of the issues around contact tracing that still have not been resolved 15 months on. So I do understand the point that the right hon. Gentleman is making, and he makes it well, as always in this place.

Before I was taken off course, I was quoting some of the health organisations. The point is that, given where we are now in our response to the virus, I believe that we should listen to those health professionals and take into account what they are saying. Delaying the road map by four weeks will hopefully relieve the pressures on hospitals, which is why we are prepared to support the restrictions tonight in the Lobby. I fear that lifting all the restrictions now could be akin to throwing petrol on a fire, so we will support the Government. But, of course, we should not be here. We are only here because over the last eight weeks we have failed to contain the delta variant and have allowed it to become dominant.

I have always tried to keep our dealings with the Secretary of State civil in public and private, but that is not so, it seems, for the Prime Minister. The right hon. Gentleman is now forever branded as “hopeless” Hancock by his own leader. Our constituents watching the news tonight will know that the Government have failed to protect our borders, that they have allowed this variant to take off and that restrictions are being extended, and I have no doubt that many of them will repeat the Prime Minister’s expletive-laden sentiments about the Secretary of State tonight.

We are being asked to endorse these restrictions because the Government failed to prevent this variant from reaching our shores. Rather than red-listing the delta variant when that was needed, they gave it the red carpet instead. Let me remind the House what happened. On 24 March, India’s health ministry warned about a so-called double mutant variant. On 30 March, The BMJ warned that India’s cases had taken a sharp upward turn since March and that India had the third highest number of confirmed cases and deaths from covid-19. On 1 April, the original B1617.1 was designated as under investigation. By 2 April, the Government had put Pakistan and Bangladesh on the red list, but not India. By this time, cases were running at close to 100,000 a day in India and thousands of people were returning to the UK from India. The Secretary of State justifies his position by saying that he did not have the data, but he should have acted on a precautionary basis. When he could see that the virus was raging, with 100,000 cases a day in India, he should have immediately put India on the red list, because the one thing that we know about the virus is that if we do not get ahead of it, it quickly gets ahead of us.

The House is being asked to extend these restrictions, but there are a number of pressing issues. First, many of us have been contacted by business people in our constituencies who are deeply concerned about the extension of these restrictions. For my constituency in Leicester, which has been living under a form of restrictions more severe than other parts of the country, other than perhaps parts of Greater Manchester, this has been particularly devastating. I hope that the Government will be putting in place full support for businesses such as mine in Leicester and Greater Manchester and elsewhere.

The second issue, which we have touched on a little bit, is whether these restrictions will ever end, or whether the Prime Minister has trapped us in Hotel California, where we can never leave. He has talked about 19 July as the terminus date, but the explanatory notes themselves say that the four tests will apply on 19 July, and that these four weeks will be used to gather more data.

Even with the vaccination programme going ahead and going further—I, like the Secretary of State, have had my second jab rearranged and am looking forward to it in a couple of weeks’ time—there will still be a large proportion of the population who have had one jab or no jab and who will still be vulnerable to catching the virus, and the virus can still exploit that opportunity to transmit.

It was the Secretary of State himself who said some weeks ago that

“Delta can spread like wildfire”

among those who have not had a jab. That will mean further disruption to people’s lives, more people needing to isolate and more people suffering from long covid. When I put these points to him on Monday, he said that the logical conclusion of that is that restrictions remain in place forever. On the contrary, the logical conclusion of that is that we put the other measures in place that will allow us to push down infection rates. I am talking about basic infection control measures such as sick pay and isolation support. A total of £38 billion has been allocated to testing and tracing, and yet the numbers using lateral flow tests have gone down six weeks in a row. This is because we do not have proper sick pay for people. Moreover, anecdotally, we are also hearing that more people are deleting the app from their phones.

We will support these restrictions tonight, and we hope that the Secretary of State or the Minister can give us a commitment that they will come to the House in two weeks’ time and give us an update on that data. We hope that the Secretary of State will give us a commitment to put in place the other measures that will help push down infection rates, but the sad truth is that we have to push forward these restrictions again for another four weeks, because the Secretary of State was indeed hopeless and failed to contain the delta variant.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

We will have a four-minute limit immediately, but I think that that will be reduced later on. We have had a few withdrawals, so please do not assume that everybody is here on the list. Of everybody contributing, there are only four contributing virtually today, so everybody else is physical, which is very pleasing for the Chair. The four-minute limit is for Back-Bench contributions only.

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[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It feels a little like groundhog day—another month, another debate on covid regulations—yet we really should not be here having this debate today. For people and businesses up and down the country, this four-week delay to fully restoring our freedoms is a huge and very costly blow, yet the sacrifices that continue to be demanded of the British people are not being coupled with the support that they need to do the right thing. That is why Liberal Democrats will not be voting with the Government tonight on the public health provisions. While we support the motion on continuing the hybrid proceedings in this place, I gently ask the Minister why the Government think we as Parliament need to continue meeting in a hybrid way whereas councils up and down the country have been forced to meet in person, often at great cost when they are already under huge pressure.

As my Liberal Democrat colleagues and I have been saying for the past six months, the way to restore our freedoms must be three-pronged: vaccination; test, trace and isolate; and robust border controls. The point has already been made countless times that the reason we are here is that Ministers undoubtedly failed completely on the last of those three points by putting India on the red list far too late, for political reasons, allowing the delta variant to be seeded into the community. Even once the Secretary of State recognised it as a variant of concern, we know there was a 17-day delay in designating it as such, which meant that surge testing commenced far too late. That cannot happen again.

The situation we find ourselves in was avoidable. Ministers must take full responsibility for having to delay the lifting of restrictions next week, and part of that responsibility is to support people to do the right thing. With businesses on their knees, jobs are at risk and many of the self-employed have yet to get a penny of support. The hospitality, events, weddings, culture, tourism and travel industries are on their knees. Even after domestic restrictions are lifted, we know that the travel sector will have to continue to bear the brunt of restrictions, given that the biggest threat to our full reopening in the UK will be variants brought back in through international travel, so the complete lack of a bespoke package of support for those industries beggars belief.

If we want to restore our freedoms fully next month, as the Prime Minister has promised us, and allow our economy to thrive again, it will be critical to test every potential case, trace every contact and support self-isolation. Experts have been calling for better financial and practical support for the past year, and finally the penny dropped earlier this month for the former head of Test and Trace that supported self-isolation was the missing piece. Even so, there has still been no comprehensive package announced to pay people their wages to self-isolate, provide accommodation if necessary and support those with caring responsibilities. That is the way to break chains of transmission and stop new outbreaks in their tracks, and it is an awful lot cheaper than blanket restrictions.

Learning to live with this virus, as I believe we absolutely must, requires a proper strategy and an action plan—not hoping for a fair wind. It means bringing together the UK’s world-leading genomic sequencing capability with traditional public health test and trace at a local level, coupled with the right support. Our public health directors up and down the country are crying out for that. They will continue to be our frontline in managing this virus as we learn to live with covid. Let us give them the tools they need and not be back here again in a month’s time asking for a further delay—or, worse still, be asked to reintroduce restrictions months down the line.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I call Dame Andrea Leadsom—congratulations on your well-deserved recognition in the Queen’s birthday honours list.

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[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I will make absolutely certain that the right hon. Member’s request is presented to Mr Speaker and I am sure that he will respond in his usual fashion.

[Sir Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)]

The pandemic has been a massive challenge to the British Government. I happen to think that, given the uncertainties that they have faced, the Prime Minister and senior Ministers have done a pretty good job. In terms of the vaccination programme, they have certainly proved to the world that Britain can go alone and do a lot to safeguard its population when it uses its science and its ability to get things done.

When the road map was unveiled, I thought to myself, “At least that stops me voting against the Government again”— until we get to the point when the Government have delayed opening up. I do think that this is a matter of balance and judgment. My view is that most of the senior Ministers who took this decision need a damn good holiday. If we look at the data and at what is happening in the country, the restrictions are totally out of kilter with the sense of the problem.

Let me take the south-west of England. There are 5.6 million people in the south-west of England.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Sir Robert, can you please face the Chair? Your voice is not being picked up by the microphone and Hansard cannot hear you.

[Sir Robert Syms]

There are 5.6 million people in the south-west of England. There are 23 people in hospital. There are two in ICU. In Dorset, where there are nearly 1 million people, we have one person in hospital. Yet there are hundreds of couples who want to get married, businesses that want to be viable, and people who want to get their lives back in order. I just think that the balance is wrong. Most of the population have now been vaccinated. We may not totally break the link with people going into hospital, but there are more than 100,000 beds in the NHS. One per cent. are taken by covid patients. Now it might go up to 2%. We already have experts on TV saying, “In order for the NHS to catch up, we may well have to keep restrictions for longer.” I think that is unacceptable to the British people. As a Conservative, I am perfectly willing to accept restrictions when hundreds and thousands of people are dying and we are dealing with a virus that we do not understand, but we have sort of got to the point where we have won the battle. There will be variants. There will be challenges, but we have to get on with normal life.

The points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) are perfectly right. If it is simply that we need to get second doses in—if that had been explained—we might be a little more relaxed. If we look at the explanatory notes, though, we will see that we have a review of data in two or four weeks’ time, and not necessarily a release date. We need to get people’s freedoms back. We cannot save everybody, but what we have done is save thousands and thousands of lives. Now we need to safeguard employment, safeguard businesses and safeguard people’s personal relationships.

I began by saying that the Government have done a pretty good job and that the vaccine programme is outstanding, but we have to now take the dividend from that to get people back to normal life. When they queued up with their enthusiasm to get that jab in their arm, they thought that that meant that things would get back to normal. They did not expect that they would be in further restrictions which would go on and on and on. I think we should have lifted all restrictions on 21 June. I hope and I pray that, in two weeks’ time, the Government will look at the data again and set people free.

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[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I wonder whether you could help me in regard to social distancing. There is not a single Labour Member on the Opposition Benches. There are no SNP; there are no Liberal Democrats; there are no Plaid Cymru. Of course there are the DUP. Would it be appropriate, because the Conservative Benches are packed, for half of us to move over to the other side of the House to improve social distancing?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I think, Peter Bone, if you look around, even on the Conservative Benches there are a few green ticks, so please stay where you are. I call Jim Shannon.