Covid-19 Update

Peter Grant Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I am glad to say that we will get to my hon. Friend before the end of July, no matter how young he is. I am pretty sure he is an adult in both actuality and attitude—crikey, I am getting myself into more trouble than I anticipated.

I understand my hon. Friend’s broader point, which is a call against local lockdowns, and we have had differences of view on that in the past. It is not where we want to go, though of course we do not rule it out. We have seen our approach work—it worked in south London —and we have this huge testing capacity, which we did not have in the autumn, of hundreds of thousands of tests a day. That capacity is expanding, as the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) articulated. We also have millions of lateral flow tests, which are simple and easy to use, and people get the result fast. With surge testing plus the vaccine, we have many more tools in our armoury than we did before.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP) [V]]

I am very grateful in advance to the NHS Fife staff who will give me my second dose of the vaccine exactly 10 weeks to the day after my first one.

The Secretary of State indicated that probably a significant factor in the spread of the highly transmissible new variant is that people who could have been vaccinated by now chose, for whatever reason, not to accept the vaccine. In a number of cases, people have genuine concerns, but a major issue must be that people are declining the vaccine because they believe the lies deliberately and maliciously spread by anti-vax campaigners on social media. What further action do the Government wish to take against those who deliberately spread those lies for no other purpose than to put the lives of others at risk?

[Matt Hancock]

The anti-vaxxers have not had a very good time of it recently, and I am absolutely delighted that take-up is as high as it is. One of the reasons we have been able to take on the anti-vaxxers so effectively is that we have not danced to their tune. Instead, Members right across the House—I am looking around now and I see people in all parts of the House who have played their part in this—have put across the positive, science-based, objective, enlightenment values, if you like, of why the vaccine is the right thing. We as a House, as leaders of our national debate, have done that with one voice, based on the scientific advice. We have done it across the four nations of the United Kingdom with one voice. We have done it with scientists, with clinicians, with religious leaders—with all those who have a strong voice in this debate. Telling the positive story is the vital thing that we can do. Of course there may be those who do otherwise, but that is not for us—it is for us to tell the positive story.

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for playing his part in that by celebrating having his second jab. I am thrilled that he will have, in just a couple of weeks’ time, the maximum protection that one can get. He is helping not only himself and his loved ones, but all of us together to get through this.