Covid-19 Update

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Thursday 15th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, I would. In contrast to some of the comments from the Opposition, although sotto voce now, it is about teamwork between people in private businesses and people in the public sector working together in the national endeavour to defeat this disease. It is a big team effort and let us not divide people where they should be brought together.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab) [V]]

Serco is at the heart of an outsourced tracing system that is failing to contact one third of all the close contacts of those with coronavirus. That is clearly helping the virus to spread out of control. There is widespread public concern that the Government are in hock to giant outsourcing companies, and concern that Serco and the like are not just ripping off the public but putting lives in danger. Does the Secretary of State think that the public should be reassured or worried by the fact that Serco’s former chief spin doctor is now his Minister for Health?

[Matt Hancock]

I do not think the hon. Gentleman was listening. I pointed out just previously not only that the national system in the last week has more than doubled the number of contacts that it has reached—I pay tribute to it for that—but that it is teamwork between the national and local systems that works best. It is the combination of the large-scale private organisations and the public sector—people working together—that is able to deliver, and to deliver a better service. I will tell him this: there was a time in the last few days when we had requests from local systems to bring some of the contact tracing back into the national Serco system so that it could help to reach more people. That sort of teamwork is what I look for, instead of the negative, derisory, divisive approach of the hon. Gentleman up there.