Covid-19 Update

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Thursday 13th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I very much agree with what the hon. Gentleman has shared with the House. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend that debate, but the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield) did, and she will also be meeting the all-party parliamentary group on radiotherapy and listening more. I know the hon. Gentleman agrees with me that it has been absolutely right during this very difficult time for the NHS to direct more resources especially to looking after more covid patients and to the booster programme, but it has also been right to protect cancer care.

[Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

As the world improves with the vaccine programme that we have had and continue to have, which has been brilliant in this country, could I ask the Secretary of State to urge doctors who are not on the covid frontline to actually see their patients face to face again, because doctors in hospitals and GPs are still not doing this fully and people’s problems are being missed?

There is also a problem as the world opens up that if someone who has had covid needs to travel, they cannot take a PCR test because that shows they are positive even though they may have long since had it—they are not positive for covid any more, but it still shows positive on a PCR test—and they cannot prove to the country they are going to, and many people are wanting to travel more now, that they do not have covid, so people can actually be stuck for 90 days during which they cannot go out of this country to any country that requires a negative PCR test because they cannot get one.

[Sajid Javid]

First, I agree with my hon. Friend about the points she has made on these issues. On her final point about travelling, as she has seen just in the last few days, the UK Government keep our travel rules under constant review. The moment we have been able to safely remove any of those rules based on the evidence, we have done so, and I know my hon. Friend has respected that. When it comes to the rules of other countries for British citizens wishing to travel for holiday, business or otherwise, those are of course their rules. However, we are working at many levels—in my Department, the Department for Transport, the Foreign Office and others—with those countries to see how we can best co-ordinate on such rules.