Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

From listening to the SNP, Mr Speaker, you would think there was no Scotch whisky industry or no banking and financial services industries in Scotland. Even then, they are missing the point because this is a massive opportunity for the Scottish agriculture sector. What they need is a different type of MP who can champion and get behind them, and who actually believes in Scotland. That is what the people of Scotland need.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

  One of the reasons for the popularity of the Prime Minister is that he has always been on the side of the public, rather than on the side of the establishment. Given that overall deaths in the UK over the last 13 weeks are 8,873 below the five-year average, which includes the time the Indian variant has been around, can my right hon. Friend explain why, instead of trusting his world- leading vaccine programme, the common sense of the British people and his Conservative instincts of individual freedom and individual responsibility, he instead prefers to trust people like Professor Susan Michie at the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, a long-standing member of the Communist party who last week let the cat out of the bag and said she wanted some covid restrictions to last forever?

[The Prime Minister]

Nobody, least of all my hon. Friend or I, wants to see covid restrictions last forever, nor do I think that they are going to last forever. As I made clear earlier this week, I think we can have a high degree of confidence that our vaccination programme will work. I think that we need to give it a little more time, as I have explained, to save many thousands more lives by vaccinating millions more people. That is what we want to do.