Covid-19: Restrictions on Gyms and Sport

Peter Kyle Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) and the Petitions Committee for giving us the opportunity to have the debate, as well as those people who signed the petition.

Throughout this period in Parliament, it has been difficult as when we get the opportunity to speak—when we are successful in the ballot—we often must speak about the biggest ticket issue. Due to the nature of the virus, the pandemic and the medical emergency we are going through, speeches are often limited to those subjects and we do not get the opportunity to speak about others. This subject is very important, but it has been difficult to speak on it.

I have two concerns. The first is about the lack of Government long-term strategic planning since the beginning, which has impacted people’s health and wellbeing. The second is about the nature of gyms and their importance going forward. That first concern has been an intense frustration to me, as I represent the community of Hove and Portslade, which had the first outbreak of covid-19 in the second week of February. We had the first so-called super-spreader at the time, which dominated the news. I benefited from daily briefings from the deputy chief medical officer and Ministers, because of the focused nature of the situation.

They told me then that their strategy at the very beginning was to delay. They wanted to delay in order to learn from the foreign experience, because things were occurring elsewhere first and fastest. As the pandemic rolled across the continent of Europe, I saw that testing, tracing and contacting people was crucial. The second thing we learned in that period was that a third of people who died in Spain and a quarter of those who died in the first wave in France, before the outbreak here, died in social care. The Government did not put a protective ring around those institutions.

I understand that the challenges were overwhelming. Gyms had to be closed and exercise had to be limited in the first wave, because of the nature of a first-wave response. Over the summer, however, rather than preparing for the next stage, summer was all about, “Show some guts and get out on to the beach. Get down to bars and restaurants.” None of it was about a national debate on what the second wave would look like. In every single pandemic for which we have data the second wave was larger than the first, including the Spanish flu in 1918. It was entirely predictable that we would be in this situation, but we did not prepare for it.

On my second concern about gyms and their nature, health and wellbeing is important. The Prime Minister himself learned that the hard way. Being healthy helps you survive illnesses, including covid-19, yet no preparation went into keeping gyms open during the second wave. There are ways of doing it, because of how modern gyms operate. The gym that I use has electronic entry systems and, since February, it has limited the number of people who can be in the gym at any one time.

I asked the Government over the summer whether they could devolve responsibility for which gyms can stay open and are safe to local authorities. Local public health officials should have been able to make an individual assessment of whether gyms could do social distancing. We could have had additional measures, such as wearing masks inside the gym, allowing fewer people in, and closing changing rooms, where it is quite difficult to socially distance. All those measures could have been put in place; all could have been consulted on way in advance of the need for a second lockdown, but that did not happen, which is why we are in this position—not by accident, but because of bad planning.