Debates between Rushanara Ali and Matt Hancock during the 2019 Parliament

Covid-19: Government Handling and Preparedness

Debate between Rushanara Ali and Matt Hancock
Thursday 27th May 2021

(2 years, 10 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.

Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.

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Matt Hancock Portrait Matt Hancock
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I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. I will continue to compliment him while I think of how to respond. The honest truth is that, from the start, I have been totally focused on how to get out of this pandemic. It is absolutely true that the operation and functioning of Government has got easier these last six months, and I think all the public can see that. We are laser focused on getting through this, getting this country out of it and delivering the vaccine programme that we have now been working on for almost a year and a half, which is remarkable. I pay tribute to all those who have been working on this effort. The way to fight a pandemic is by bringing people together and inspiring hope.

Rushanara Ali Portrait Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab) [V]
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Five hundred and nineteen residents in my borough of Tower Hamlets have lost their lives to covid—in my own family, we have lost five of our relatives—and their family members are grappling with that loss to this day. The hearings yesterday were incredibly distressing. Mr Cummings has admitted to Government failures in handling the pandemic, and said that it meant

“tens of thousands of people died who did not need to die”.

Out of respect for the over 128,000 families of people who have lost their lives, will the Secretary of State admit to the failures today and apologise? Will he, instead of his simple no to the earlier question, bring forward urgently the date of the inquiry, because families like ours, those of my constituents and all those who have lost loved ones up and down the country deserve answers now and deserve for lessons to be learned so that these mistakes are never made again?

Matt Hancock Portrait Matt Hancock
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The pandemic has taken far too many people away far too soon, and that has happened in the hon. Member’s family and it has happened in mine. She is absolutely right that we need to ensure that we learn as a country how to prepare as well as we possibly can for pandemics in the future—because it is likely that pandemics will become more frequent, not less—and it is vital that people have the opportunity to get answers. We must learn the lessons all the way through, not just wait until afterwards, and we must have a full inquiry afterwards, so that we can ensure that every detail is assessed and everybody has the opportunity to ask those questions. I think that is the right approach.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between Rushanara Ali and Matt Hancock
Tuesday 9th February 2021

(3 years, 1 month ago)

Commons Chamber
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Matt Hancock Portrait Matt Hancock
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What the public want to see, in Stourbridge and across the whole UK, is people working together to defeat this virus. Some of the measures have to be tough, and some are difficult, but it is all done with the goal of getting this country through this as well as we possibly can, so that we can lift as many of these measures as soon as we safely can. That balance between pace and safety is central to the judgments ahead. I want to thank everybody in Stourbridge and say to them that there is no politics in this; the only thing that is important is the safety of the people of Stourbridge.

Rushanara Ali Portrait Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab) [V]
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I am grateful to all those working together—the GPs, Queen Mary University of London, the Royal London Hospital, Tower Hamlets Council, the London Muslim Centre and others—in my constituency to make sure that people get vaccinated. As Members have heard, vaccine take-up is lower among minority communities and some other vulnerable groups. Some 77% of white residents are getting vaccinated, which is great, whereas only just over half of Asian residents and under 46% of black residents in our borough are getting vaccinated. Will the Secretary of State commit to increasing the supply of vaccines to our GP surgeries, as they are saying that this is where they can make a big difference with vaccine take-up? This would make a big difference to the death rates and the dangers that these minority communities face, in my constituency and elsewhere in the country.

Matt Hancock Portrait Matt Hancock
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I want to praise the hon. Lady for the leadership she is showing locally in driving up those vaccination rates. The fewer people who are left unprotected by the jab, the safer we will all be, both individually and in communities in London and across the country. My hon. Friend the Minister for Covid Vaccine Deployment is leading the efforts in this space, and I will make sure he gets in contact so that we can work together to reassure everybody that the vaccine is the right thing for you and the right thing for your community.

Covid-19

Debate between Rushanara Ali and Matt Hancock
Monday 2nd November 2020

(3 years, 4 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Matt Hancock Portrait Matt Hancock
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Yes, the button is coming; it is in development. The hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson), who made the previous intervention, also spoke about the app. There was an upgrade to the app towards the end of last week, and I want to put on record my thanks to the app team, who have done such a great job in improving the app by, as the hon. Member for Twickenham said, improving the targeting so that more people are targeted and more people get the message. The app is also now getting fewer false positives so people can have more confidence that if they are contacted by the app and told to isolate, they need to do so. The button will come.

Rushanara Ali Portrait Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
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People up and down the country made enormous sacrifices during the first lockdown, and they were promised a world-beating contact, test and trace system. Some £12 billion has been spent on Serco to provide that. In areas such as mine with high levels of deprivation, health inequalities and high numbers of vulnerable people, people are already dying, and we do not have an effective testing and tracing system. So, given where we are, may I appeal to the Secretary of State to make resources available to areas where we have the local capacity to do testing and tracing, to help improve the system as quickly as possible in this lockdown?

Matt Hancock Portrait Matt Hancock
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Yes, as we have discussed many times, that is happening—absolutely—and it is the link between the national and the local that is the solution here. I will come on to testing in more detail later because I have some new things to say about it. In the meantime, the other thing we need to do, of course, is make sure that for this second peak—the second wave—we do all we can to support those institutions that are helping us through it, and first among those is, of course, the NHS.

The NHS is better prepared for this second wave, and I want to thank the NHS and everybody who works in it for their efforts over the past few months to ensure that we are better prepared. We know infinitely more things about coronavirus now than we knew as the first wave hit. Our Nightingale hospitals, for instance, stand ready and are being restarted in the parts of the country that need them. The independent sector has stepped up to the mark to help us work through the backlog of the vital elective operations and to help keep going with elective operations, even through this second peak. We have hired more staff, with 13,700 more nurses and 7,800 more doctors. We have provided £3 billion of extra funding across health and social care. Personal protective equipment is widely and freely available, and infection control procedures have been significantly strengthened, based on better understanding of transmission of the virus, including aerosol as well as droplet and fomite transmission.

--- Later in debate ---
Matt Hancock Portrait Matt Hancock
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It was a fixed-term appointment in order to do that vital work, and was always due to come to a close. This comes back to the old thing that we have across these Dispatch Boxes: on the Government side of the House, we want to harness the capabilities of everybody; on the Opposition side of the House, unless a person is in the public sector, they do not seem to get the credit. I think we should welcome everybody who is willing to put their shoulder to the wheel to drive the action that is necessary to improve this country’s response.

Matt Hancock Portrait Matt Hancock
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This is probably about how we should not use the private sector in test and trace, despite the fact that we have hit our target of more than 500,000 tests a day on time, as we have each of the targets for testing. I am very proud of that.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between Rushanara Ali and Matt Hancock
Thursday 15th October 2020

(3 years, 5 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Matt Hancock Portrait Matt Hancock
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The localised data is very important so that we take the action that is needed as locally as possible, as we have in Kirklees over the past few months of the crisis. We are in constant dialogue with the leaders in West Yorkshire, but no decisions have been taken.

Rushanara Ali Portrait Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
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Tower Hamlets faced one of the highest death rates in the country in the first wave of the pandemic, including for those among black, Asian and minority ethnic communities. For weeks, the borough has been given the lowest testing capacity in the capital despite high incidences of positivity. Will the Secretary of State focus on the specifics and explain when he will get a grip on testing and tracing and localised resources for it; when he will get local authorities, businesses and communities the resources they need; and what action he will take to produce the action plan that was promised months ago after the disparities report was published by his Government?

Covid-19 Response

Debate between Rushanara Ali and Matt Hancock
Monday 18th May 2020

(3 years, 10 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Matt Hancock Portrait Matt Hancock
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Yes, it is very important that the scheduled vaccination programme continues wherever possible, and we have protected it as much as possible. We must remember that, with the hope of a vaccine for coronavirus, so, too, will we have to redouble efforts to vaccinate children for MMR and for flu this autumn. Everybody will need to get a flu jab if they possibly can, and we will have more to say on that soon. It is really important that people vaccinate and that anybody who hears messages from anti-vaxxers stands up to them and says that what they say is wrong and harmful.

Rushanara Ali Portrait Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
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There are reports that covid-19 test results are coming in some 96 hours after testing. In that time, health workers and their families are at risk of catching the virus. Will the Health Secretary confirm whether there are enough reagents, specifically in acute settings, to perform all covid-19 tests within 24 hours?

Matt Hancock Portrait Matt Hancock
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Obviously, being able to perform all tests within 24 hours would be a great success. We are trying, as much as possible, to shorten the amount of time it takes. The average time is much, much shorter than 96 hours, and I will write to the hon. Lady with an exact figure of the time that it takes in acute settings. It is much shorter than the time that she mentions. All test results under 24 hours would be great. Sometimes it is just a matter of minutes or hours depending on how busy the test centre is.

Covid-19

Debate between Rushanara Ali and Matt Hancock
Monday 16th March 2020

(4 years ago)

Commons Chamber
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Matt Hancock Portrait Matt Hancock
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We are making it constantly.

Rushanara Ali Portrait Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
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Coronavirus has already claimed the life of one of my constituents, and my thoughts are with his family. What action will the Secretary of State take to prevent the closure of the Mildmay Hospital in my constituency, which is much needed to relieve some of the pressure on the Royal London Hospital? Will the Secretary of State explain what action the Government will take to put restrictions on the increasing price hikes on the supply side of goods and on panic buying? Panic buying is understandable, given that the guidance is changing, but we need to get a grip on it to protect vulnerable and poor people in our constituencies.

Matt Hancock Portrait Matt Hancock
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We are looking at all those points. With respect to the last one, that is a matter that the Environment Secretary, who is responsible for the food supply, is looking at very closely. We are confident in the food supply of this country, even in the grip of this crisis, but we have to make sure that people behave responsibly in buying only what they need.