Covid-19

Richard Graham Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con) [V]]

This is a good moment to highlight the great national and local effort to implement an extraordinary vaccination programme that I saw in action at the Rosebank Health surgery in Gloucester on Saturday. It is right that we highlight the great leadership and great staff from the NHS and GP networks who delivered this. I want to highlight the volunteers—the hairdresser, the beautician, the police civilian, the retired doctor, the optician and some Rotarians—who were involved that day. However, this evening, I also want to highlight the message from some of my BAME constituents from different communities —Gujarati Indian, Jamaican and west African—who have been vaccinated. All of them have highlighted to others in their communities the importance of being vaccinated, the fact that it was simple, quick, well organised and painless, and, above all, that it will make our city and country safer from future infections if everyone is vaccinated.

Today’s announcement had the great confirmation that almost all education will go back on 8 March. It is hard to tell whether the parents or the children are more excited about this, but thereafter, progress is slow. There are another three weeks, for example, before two people, even from the same household, can exercise outdoors with a golf club. Let me share this message from one mother about the importance of outdoor exercise. She wrote about her son who had come close to taking his life, about how important golf was for him. She said that it gave an area of light, hope and pleasure to help him out of a pit of despair. All over the country, there will be people fighting similar demons for whom some outdoor sport represents a lifeline, promoting good physical health while magically mending hearts and souls, which will also impact on their family—their partners, parents and children. I hope that the Government will hear that message and consider carefully whether restrictions on outdoor sport—as important for people who have left school as for those who are still at school—can be lifted earlier.

I supported the third lockdown because I knew how close our hospital was to being overwhelmed, but it is also right to recognise now what has changed. We have the same number with the virus in our hospital as in an average year from flu, so I hope that the Prime Minister, driven by the data, will consider carefully the possibility of unlocking earlier if the data shows that.