Covid-19 Update

Philippa Whitford Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The goal is that the steps in the road map are irreversible; that is the goal, and I am sure it is a goal that my right hon. Friend agrees with. We have demonstrated repeatedly during this crisis our willingness to take difficult decisions if they are necessary and if they are needed by the data, but it is also important to try to take steps when we can have a good degree of confidence that we will then be able to deliver that irreversible route, as opposed to moving faster than that, which might lead to a reversal. I hope that that explanation is one with which my right hon. Friend and indeed the House can concur in terms of what we mean when we say that we seek an irreversible approach to the road map.

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP) [V]]

While hospitalisations and ICU admissions are, thankfully, not increasing as fast as covid cases, they are both rising significantly, so this delay was inevitable. According to Public Health England, the delta variant appears to be about 50% more infectious and reduces the protection against infection from one vaccine dose to just 33%. As a single dose is therefore less effective, by what date does the Secretary of State expect all adults to be fully vaccinated with both doses and would that not be a more appropriate time for the removal of all restrictions, rather than setting another arbitrary date when younger adults will not be fully protected?

So how did we end up here? Having ignored the Scottish Government policy of all arrivals undergoing hotel quarantine, the Secretary of State then delayed adding India to the UK’s red list at the same time as Pakistan and Bangladesh. He previously claimed it was because of greater positivity rates among travellers from Bangladesh and Pakistan but that is not borne out by the published data. Between 25 March and 7 April the test positivity of arrivals from India was 5.1%, lower than Pakistan at 6.2% but significantly higher than Bangladesh at 3.7%. Was the delay not just because the Prime Minister was still clinging to his plan for a trade visit to India? The whole point of border quarantine is to protect the UK from variants that might be more infectious or show resistance to vaccine-induced immunity, so having allowed the delta variant to enter and become the dominant strain in the UK, does the Secretary of State not recognise that the Government’s border strategy has failed?

[Matt Hancock]

I thought that the right hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) on the Opposition Front Bench was Captain Hindsight, but, seriously, this argument is completely divorced from reality. The data that the hon. Lady has just recommended to the House is data about what happened between 25 March and 7 April, and she complains about a decision the Government took on 2 April because we did not know of the data up to 7 April; so she brings to this House information from after a decision was taken and asks why it was not taken into account for that decision, and the answer is because it had not happened yet.