Health and Social Care Update

Debate between Philip Hollobone and Matt Hancock

Thursday 18th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

That is absolutely our goal. The hon. Member is 29; I am 42. The fact is that we have to vaccinate an awful lot of people of our age to save the same amount of lives as vaccinating just one octogenarian. We will take this time to loop back and find as many people in the most vulnerable cohorts as possible. That is the way to save as many lives as possible and reduce pressure on hospitals as much as possible. I hope that she will bear with, in the same way that I am having to bear with, until we are able then to open up vaccinations—first for those in their 40s, then those in their 30s, and finally the youngsters.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Kettering-born Professor Sarah Gilbert of Oxford University, who has led the team that developed the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, attended Kettering High School for Girls, which is now Southfield School, in the 1970s. It was at that school that she first decided she wanted to work in medical research.

As Sarah is a heroine of the town, her name is today being added in a mayoral ceremony to Kettering’s historic timeline in the marketplace, which commemorates key milestones, achievements and famous local people. Will the Secretary of State join me in congratulating Sarah on that thoroughly well-deserved accolade from her home town, praising her outstanding work and recognising her as a role model for young people everywhere who want to enter a worthwhile career in science?

[Matt Hancock]

I am sure the whole House will agree with every single word that my hon. Friend said. They say that success has many fathers, and Kettering has discovered another extraordinary daughter in the vaccine roll-out. Sarah Gilbert worked on the Ebola vaccine before this one and has played a role in saving many, many thousands of lives over her career in medical research. I have no doubt that she will save many, many more in the future. We all salute her work, and we salute her attitude and her team work too, because that is one of the characteristics that has made it possible to deliver these vaccines so fast.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between Philip Hollobone and Matt Hancock

Tuesday 2nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

No, on the contrary, we removed the travel corridors to ensure there is a self-isolation requirement that is mandatory for all those who are coming to this country. Protecting this country from new variants coming from abroad is important, hence we have taken the action swiftly, and we did that on the basis of the scientific evidence.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Could I commend the Health Secretary for the difficult and brave but correct decisions he made early on in the pandemic in relation to vaccines, which have led today to Britain having a world-leading vaccine roll-out? Could I also draw his attention to NHS Northamptonshire, which, thanks to the very hard work of all the local staff and volunteers, has one of the very best vaccine roll-out programmes in the whole country?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, I have been watching the progress of those at NHS Northamptonshire, who are going great guns, and I know they are working incredibly hard. This does not happen by magic; it happens by hard graft, especially of the GPs and the pharmacists, and the support teams and the volunteers, who are doing such a great job in Northants.

I am very grateful for what my hon. Friend has said. We did take decisions at risk early, before we knew whether they were going to come off, and knowing that we would be criticised if it did not work out. However, that meant we could get those contracts signed ahead of many other places, and it means that we will be able to deliver vaccines for UK citizens and then, of course, play our part in ensuring that everybody across the world can have access to this life-saving vaccine, too.

Covid-19

Debate between Philip Hollobone and Matt Hancock

Monday 16th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Because our advice to everybody is to reduce unnecessary social contact to protect themselves.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I commend the personal resilience of the Health Secretary during this crisis, and all the staff at Kettering General Hospital. Do we have any lessons to learn from the German experience, given that Germany has had five times as many confirmed cases, but only a quarter of the number of deaths?

[Matt Hancock]

I have discussed that point with my German counterpart, and I am afraid that I wish there was something we could learn because it is important. We think that the reason for the difference in ratio is that the early cases in Germany were largely people who had been skiing in northern Italy and therefore were more healthy, whereas the mortality of this disease is very strongly correlated with age.

Coronavirus

Debate between Philip Hollobone and Matt Hancock

Wednesday 11th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, absolutely; this is really important. We have some supplies of these sorts of things, in the supply chains and, in some cases, within the shops themselves, and we are working with the shops to ensure availability of things that can be critical to people’s care. We are working on that with DEFRA, the NHS and within the Department, particularly in relation to pharmacies, to make sure we get the right kit to the people who need it.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I commend the Health Secretary on doing a difficult job in trying circumstances extremely well. Likewise, I commend all the staff at Kettering General Hospital, who are working their socks off to ensure that the hospital is fully prepared. The only easily understandable benchmark our constituents have to judge the scale of this thing is seasonal flu, so can he tell the House, on average each year, how many people catch seasonal flu and how many people die from it?

[Matt Hancock]

That is a great question to which I do not have the answer in my head, but it is a matter of hundreds of thousands in the first instance and thousands in the second.

Coronavirus

Debate between Philip Hollobone and Matt Hancock

Monday 9th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The first question we must ask is, “How effective is this measure—is it effective?”, and the second is, “Are we going to get unintended consequences from people acting differently in a way that actually hinders the overall effort?” It is for the scientists best to explain the reason why they have scientifically come to this advice. But it is clear that there are other measures that we can take that are more effective and have fewer negative side-effects.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

My constituents in Kettering are struggling to understand why we are not banning flights from quarantined areas of north Italy.

[Matt Hancock]

The reason is that there are many UK citizens in that area who may want to come home. Also, crucially—this is very important—the evidence shows that banning flights from affected areas does very little to protect us. Indeed, Italy was the only country in Europe that banned flights from China earlier in the progress of this disease: it did not work, and now Italy is the epicentre of the European outbreak.

NHS Funding Bill

Debate between Philip Hollobone and Matt Hancock

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 27th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I will give way briefly before I conclude.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State both for his commitment to fund the new £46 million urgent care hub at Kettering General Hospital and for including the hospital on the list for HIP2 funding from 2025 onwards. When will the hospitals on that shortlist get the seed funding to develop their plans?

[Matt Hancock]

The funding will be paid to the hospitals imminently, but it is definitely coming, so they can get on with planning for it.