International Health Regulations

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Stephenson]

I thank my hon. Friend for his passionate and pertinent point. Throughout the negotiations the UK has made it clear—and we will continue to do so—that we will not sign up to any accord that fails to meet our global health and UK health security priorities. Likewise, the UK would not sign up to an accord that cedes sovereignty to the WHO over domestic decisions on national measures concerning public health, such as immunisation programmes or lockdowns. Any necessary or appropriate changes to domestic legislation or new domestic legislation would be made through the usual parliamentary process. However, because we do not yet know the exact details of the accord, I cannot be any clearer on how exactly Parliament will get to scrutinise the accord, if we get to an agreement.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

The treaty is not just about data sharing and information gathering; it is also about setting up a system of pandemic management under the leadership of the WHO. It has a poor history of management and decision making. Can the Minister give us an assurance that he will not accept any surrendering of UK powers to an international body that can interfere with decisions that will affect the lives of ordinary people here in the United Kingdom? I listened to his response about devolved Governments, and it seems there has not been much discussion with the devolved Administrations. He will not even guarantee a vote in this House on such an important issue. Can he guarantee that we will not undemocratically hand over democratic control to a non-democratic body?

[Andrew Stephenson]

We will not be handing over any kind of control over what we do domestically; national sovereignty is a clear red line, as I made clear in my opening remarks. It is important to recognise that there are challenges with these things, which are being negotiated within the existing international health regulations. The director general of the World Health Organisation already has the ability to declare a public health event of international concern and issue temporary recommendations that provide non-binding guidance to member states. We believe that we need to stay in a situation where the World Health Organisation has an important convening role internationally to discuss issues, but the domestic response to any future pandemic is for domestic Governments to make. Anything that impinges on UK national sovereignty will therefore be unacceptable to us.

Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

First, I want to put on record my thanks to the public health Minister the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom) and the chief medical officer Sir Chris Whitty, who spent time answering my questions and those of some of my colleagues. It was a very collegiate exercise and I am grateful to the right hon. Lady. It would be good to see more of that.

The Government proposals on vapes are an absolute no-brainer and are consistent with Liberal Democrat party policy that was adopted at our conference last year, including the ban on single-use vapes on environmental grounds. Parents and teachers in St Albans are particularly concerned about the insidious marketing of vapes to young people: the colours, flavours and packaging are designed to appeal to children. Earlier in the debate the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) talked about children gathering in toilets, desperate to use their vapes. I am aware, unfortunately, of one example in my constituency where children have gathered in toilets not just to use the vapes but to take them apart to use as containers for smuggling in more dangerous substances, thereby using the vapes as a new gateway drug. I therefore entirely support the Government’s proposals on the regulation of vapes.

The question of a so-called smoking ban on those aged 15 and younger, stopping them being sold cigarettes, is not so straightforward, however. For Liberal Democrats there will be a free vote on this Bill; there are some good liberal arguments to be made both for and against it. I will be supporting the measures in the Bill, but some of my colleagues have remaining liberal and practical concerns. For example, in 30 years’ time how does somebody prove they are 46 and not 45 without a driver’s licence or a passport? How can we prevent abuse at retailers, too? I hope the Government will be providing more reassurances to colleagues on these issues.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Does the hon. Member accept that that difficulty puts the onus on the retailer, who is meant to distinguish between a 45-year-old and a 46-year-old, and if they do not do that or they do so incorrectly, they could find themselves faced with a fine? Is that fair?

[Daisy Cooper]

Colleagues across the House have genuine concerns about that point. I know from engagements in my constituency that a number of retailers already suffer attacks when challenging people wishing to buy other age-related products, so I hope the Government will offer reassurances about what they intend to do to tackle that.

As I have said, I will be supporting the measures in this Bill, but coming to that decision was a bit of a journey for me. My first reaction on hearing of the Bill before it was published was indignation, because the measures are just a drop in the ocean in terms of what is needed to tackle cancer. One in two of us will get cancer at some point, yet the Government have missed their targets to provide fast cancer treatment every year since 2015 and have dropped their 10-year cancer plan. What we need is research in rare cancers, outdated cancer scanners updated, cancer nurses and efforts to tackle waiting times. It would perhaps have been better if the measures in this Bill had been a single clause in a much broader Bill. To be honest, I am frustrated that so much energy is going into this Bill, which could be described as low-hanging fruit, rather than into producing a much more ambitious plan to tackle cancer more broadly. We need to see more ambition in this area.

My second reaction was the raising of my liberal hackles. Liberals are not libertarians; we do not object to all bans. Liberals support bans as a last resort, but not as a first lever. The situation here is frustrating, however: it is a bit rich that the Government are bringing this Bill forward when they have simultaneously been slashing public health budgets, including for smoking cessation programmes, since 2015. Even with the new money the Government have put into smoking cessation programmes, the funds still fall far short of 2015 levels. We also know that smoking rates among young people have dropped very quickly; they are now down to 1% and continue to drop.

Liberals do sometimes back bans when a particular product or practice causes excessive harm, and that is why I have decided to back this ban. Fundamentally, I asked myself a simple question: is this going to help reduce the overwhelming harm caused by the significantly dangerous and addictive practice of smoking? The answer is yes, it is. We know that smoking is dangerous and highly addictive. We know that smoking is the UK’s biggest preventable killer, causing around one in four cancer deaths, including 64,000 in England alone. We know that 75,000 GP appointments each month are taken up by smoking-related illness. We know that smoking costs the economy £17 billion a year through smoking-related lost earnings, unemployment and early death. We know that it comes at enormous cost to our NHS, and we know that smoking rates in pregnancy vary hugely, with as many as 20% of pregnant women smoking in some parts of the country, increasing the chance of stillbirth by almost 50%. That is an incredibly stark health inequality.

Some people have suggested it could be contradictory for a liberal to support a ban on tobacco for 15-year-olds and younger while wanting to legalise cannabis, but let me say to them that they are wrong. It is entirely consistent for a liberal to want to make harmful products illegal—harmful products such as nicotine in cigarettes, skunk and products with high THC levels that can cause psychosis—while simultaneously wanting to have a legal regulated market for less harmful products such as vapes for nicotine and cannabis products with low and regulated THC levels.

In conclusion, do I think this measure is the first or best thing that the Government should be doing to tackle cancer? No. Do I think this measure is particularly ambitious? No. But do I think it is a useful step that will help us to tackle the dangerous health impacts of smoking addiction, to improve population health and to take pressure off the NHS? Personally, I do.

Cass Review

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Monday 15th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. We want to not just help with crisis support, but prevent our young people from getting into a position of crisis in the first place, so we are rolling out mental health support teams, ahead of our schedule, across schools. That is a really important piece of work that will help 44% of the student population, but we want to go even further. In the 12-month period ending in March 2021, we increased the number of children and young people aged under 18 who received NHS-funded mental health services to some 758,000. Of course, we want that support to be there in the community, but importantly we also want to help clinicians to understand that this is just one of several sets of conditions that they should have confidence to work on, in order to look after the child holistically.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Given the vile campaigns directed towards anyone who disagrees with the transgender lobby, we should congratulate Dr Cass and her team on having the courage to write their report, and the Secretary of State on her robust defence of it. In the light of the report, and given that it seems that the transgender lobby has infiltrated the NHS in England, what steps is she taking to purge that lobby from the NHS? What discussions has she had with Ministers in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales to ensure that the same policies and practices are not carried out in the public and private sectors there?

[Victoria Atkins]

The reason why I am able to be so robust on this issue is that I believe in it; on that, I may be different from others. The challenge that the right hon. Gentleman rightly puts forward is that we have to ensure that NHS England acts as an organisation, but also at the individual and local levels, to implement the reforms that the report recommends. I want to be fair to clinicians, medical professionals, managers and others who very much support the review. I want to support them in taking up the recommendations. What individual clinicians may or may not have done in the past will be a matter for both NHS England and the regulators going forward. The moral and professional expectation is that in future, clinicians, medical professionals and all of us will respect the evidence and the recommendations of this important report.

Vaccination Strategy

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Wednesday 12th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Maggie Throup]

As my hon. Friend said, to date over 93% of NHS staff have had their first jab. I want to put out a plea. We already have vaccination as a condition of deployment in the care sector and we did not see the cliff edge that so many people predicted. In terms of my own personal circumstances, my father was in a care home for over seven years and his carers became his family. We always do the best for our family and want to make sure that they are protected in the same way that we are protected, and that carries through to NHS staff as well, and to those in other Care Quality Commission-regulated organisations. It is about patient safety: at the end of the day, we are looking to make sure that every patient is kept safe.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

I must say that I am amazed at the Minister’s complacency about the potential loss of staff as a result of the vaccine mandate. The care sector has lost 54,000 people who refused to take the vaccine, with the result that hospital beds are blocked, care packages are not being given and care homes are under pressure. The social care sector is an indication that we cannot force people to take the vaccine, and the Minister’s own assessment is that up to 88,000 staff could resist taking it. In the past week, 40,000 people in the NHS have been off work because they had to isolate, and we have seen the chaos that has caused. How does she intend to deal with the chaos of 88,000 staff not being available because of the vaccine mandate?

[Maggie Throup]

I do not recognise the data given by the right hon. Gentleman. We have already invested £465 million in a recruitment and retention programme for care home staff. It is important to recognise that caring is a worthwhile career. The carers I have met are really dedicated and get a lot from it. I come back to the fact that it is important to keep the most vulnerable in our society safe, whether they are care home residents or patients who are acutely ill in hospital.

Public Health

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

We are, as the hon. Lady would imagine, working very closely with directors of public health throughout England, whether on testing or other areas. On PCR testing capacity specifically, capacity is usually roughly 600,000 a day, but it is already being expanded to about 800,000 a day, and it will be further expanded. It is important for hon. Members to know that testing is released at different times of day, so if someone checks the system and a test is not available, it might be available in their local area in the next couple of hours—it is not just a day-by-day process. As the process is surged, tests will become much more easily available. It is also important to remind people whenever one can that a PCR test should be used only if someone has symptoms; otherwise, lateral flow tests should be deployed.

Finally, I turn to measures to help keep the health and care system safe for the long term by making vaccination a condition of deployment for more health and social care settings. Across the UK, the overwhelming majority of us have made the positive choice to accept the offer of a vaccination against covid-19, and 91% of NHS staff have already had two doses, but we need that figure to go even higher. Uptake rates vary among health and care organisations and across the country; despite the incredible effort to boost uptake across the country, approximately 94,000 NHS staff are still unvaccinated. It is critical to patient safety that health and care staff get the jab to protect some of the most vulnerable people who are in their care and keep the NHS workforce strong in the wake of omicron.

We made vaccination against covid-19 a condition of deployment in care homes from 11 November this year. Contrary to what some people feared, we are not aware of any care home closures in which vaccination as a condition of deployment has been the primary cause. The regulations that we are putting before the House today will extend that requirement to health and other social care settings.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

The Secretary of State pointed out that the capacity of the health service is important and should not be breached. If 9% of staff to date have decided not to be vaccinated and will presumably stick with that decision, how does he expect that that will not reduce the capacity of the health service in future? Is it not a fact that there are already many people staying in hospital because a care home cannot be facilitated owing to lack of staff?

[Sajid Javid]

The right hon. Gentleman asks a fair question. I will answer precisely that question in just a moment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wes Streeting]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. Of course, in order for this measure to work as effectively as we would wish, there has to be an adequate supply of lateral flow tests. I heard what the Secretary of State said yesterday about the availability of testing, but it is no good if the tests are in the warehouse; they need to be available to people where they need them, when they need them. We have had supply issues and those really do need to be resolved, not least in the light of other measures, which I will come to shortly.

[Sammy Wilson]

Does the shadow Secretary of State not accept that rather than giving confidence to people, these measures, and the background against which they have been introduced, have actually reduced confidence? We have predictions of 75,000 deaths and we are telling people that they cannot go to venues unless they have certain tests; the experience in Northern Ireland is that the hospitality industry has already lost millions of pounds in orders coming up to the Christmas period because people are afraid to go out.

Public Health

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Steve Brine]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his comments, which will have been heard on the Treasury Bench.

I do not understand the timing here. What will we really know in three weeks’ time that we do not know now? This causes me to question the three-week rule. South Africa does not give us the insight into the progress of the virus, and of this variant, that we were able to take from, say, Italy—with a broadly similar European population—this time last year. South Africa has a much younger population, and, sadly, a greatly under-vaccinated population. As we heard from the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire, it was spreading like wildfire among students, who, of course, are younger and fitter and therefore less susceptible to serious illness as a result of this variant.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for being so generous in giving way. Does he accept that the evidence from South Africa so far suggests that there have been very few hospitalisations, while we in the United Kingdom are introducing regulations that are causing economic disruption, are causing people further anxiety, and will disrupt all of Christmas because of this variant when we do not even know whether it will have a severe impact on the UK in any event?

[Steve Brine]

I do accept that, and I also accept that the scientists who discovered the variant said on the media at the weekend that this was often a less serious disease than the delta variant. However, notwithstanding the point that I have just made about the people whom it has affected in South Africa—younger, unvaccinated people—given that numbers are so small in this country, I fail to see how we will be any the wiser in three weeks’ time. That may explain why the isolation regulations will apply until next March. Perhaps the Minister can enlighten me, through an intervention now or in winding up the debate.

Finally, let me return to the situation in my constituency. I have raised this matter twice in the House. This morning I spoke to the Winchester City primary care network, which is responsible for some 62,000 people who are on its roll. PCN patients will be contacted if they are in one of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation’s groups 1 to 9, if they are clinically extremely vulnerable or if they are over 50, and will have been offered a booster. The PCN expects that process to be complete by 17 December, and by the middle of January it will start to offer the booster to others. From that date onwards the booster will be offered to those aged 18 and over, following the welcome announcement from the Secretary of State during his statement yesterday.

Many of my constituents do not live in the area covered by the Winchester City PCN, but have access to vaccinations at the Badger Farm community centre. If they consult the NHS website, they are offered the opportunity to go to Salisbury, Portsmouth or Southampton. That is not easy access to the booster. In my constituency there is no easy walk-in access to it, and I am inundated by questions from constituents about why they cannot have such easy access in Winchester today. The difference between what is being said on television and by Ministers from the Dispatch Box and the reality of the access available on the frontline is growing, and it is a problem.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daisy Cooper]

The point that I am trying to make is that the Government are framing the introduction of these specific restrictions in terms of whether or not there is extra transmissibility from the new variant. My concern is that they are not talking about whether we need these restrictions, and perhaps others in the future, because of the pressures on the NHS in its broadest sense.

[Sammy Wilson]

The hon. Lady is making an important and relevant point. Would she not accept, however, that these restrictions place a burden on businesses, on people’s individual freedom and on the operation of the education system, all to deal with a problem that is not going to go away as long as we have patients going to accident and emergency because their GPs are not seeing them, and as long as we have patients taking up beds in hospitals because they are not going into care? This will not be solved simply by introducing more regulations that put the burden on private industry because of the failures of the health service.

[Daisy Cooper]

I disagree with some of those points. As a liberal, I believe fundamentally in giving people the most personal freedom they can have up to the point at which it interferes with the personal freedom of others. We hear a lot in this House about personal freedom, particularly from those on the Conservative Benches, but there is very little discussion about our broader responsibilities to others. That is the challenge that we as legislators have in this House: it is about getting the balance right. I do not think this is about putting restrictions on businesses because of the failures of our health service. GPs in particular are struggling with their workloads and with the abuse resulting from campaigns against them that are being led by national newspapers. If we had a stronger workforce to deal with these issues, and if the NHS had not been run into the ground, we would have more frontline health workers to deal with these problems right now. However, I am mindful of the Deputy Speaker’s entreaty to stick to the regulations, to which I now want to return.

As I said at the start, we will support these regulations. I agree with other Members that it is vital we have full scrutiny of any decision to repeal, extend or renew the regulations in any shape or form in the coming weeks. I implore the Government to take action and consider these restrictions in the light not only of this new variant but of the overall pressures across our NHS, whether on GPs, ambulance services or elsewhere.

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[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

It is pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper). I thank them for their fantastic leadership on this issue.

I want to develop one point specifically: I believe that Government must take a balanced view. I accept the argument made by various people, including the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), that the precautionary principle is good. I think we can be criticised for potentially not acting quickly enough at the beginning of the pandemic two years ago, but overreaction is not good. We have had a damaging obsession with a very narrow view of what we perceive to be health. The poorer you are and the younger you are in this society, the higher the price you have paid, and that is not acceptable.

I look at this debate and this motion in the context of some dreadful forecasts and dreadful assessments that have driven Government’s nervousness. I want to explore them and put them on record because I believe it is in the public interest, but I do so within the terms of the motion. I want to look particularly at Imperial College and Professor Ferguson. I have a great deal of respect for them and I will be careful how I phrase this, but I am concerned that some of the forecasting we have had has had a track record in, frankly, getting it wrong repeatedly. In 2001, Professor Ferguson predicted 150,000 human deaths from foot-and-mouth; under 200 died. In 2002, he predicted between 50 and 50,000 deaths from BSE; in the end, 177 died. In 2005, he said that 150 million people could be killed by bird flu; 282 died. In 2009, a Government estimate based on his advice said that a “reasonable worst-case scenario” for swine flu would lead to 65,000 British deaths; in the end, 457 people died. I am happy to be corrected on any of those points, but that is the publicly available information.

Moving forward to covid, Ferguson predicted 85,000 deaths in Sweden; in fact, 6,000 Swedes have died. Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s chief epidemiologist, said in September 2020:

“We looked at the”

Imperial

“model and we could see that the variables that were put into the model were quite extreme...Why did you choose the variables that gave extreme results?

I love experts—don’t get me wrong; I know we sometimes have our issues with them—but it is helpful if they are right, if only very occasionally. Johan Giesecke, Sweden’s former chief epidemiologist, said that Ferguson’s models were “not very good”. The Washington Post quoted Giesecke as saying that Imperial’s forecasts were “almost hysterical”. This is the forecasting that has been, in part, driving Government action.

In this country, oncology professor Angus Dalgleish, in this country, described Ferguson’s modelling as “lurid predictions”. He said that Ferguson and his colleagues were getting it “spectacularly wrong”. He said:

“Unfortunately, we have a Sage committee advising a government that is devoid of any scientific expertise, on speculative concepts such as the R number”—

which we now all know is the reproductive rate—

“and the need for everyone to stay indoors, even though the evidence strongly suggests that people are less likely to catch Covid-19 outside.”

So some of the scientific evidence may have actually driven the rising covid rates in the same way that going into hospital may have been the place that people caught covid and died from it.

Viscount Ridley has criticised Ferguson’s modelling. Lund University has applied Ferguson’s models and found a massive difference between his predictions and what actually happened. Professor Michael Thrusfield from Edinburgh University said that Ferguson’s previous modelling of foot-and-mouth was “severely flawed”.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right in highlighting the predictions that are wrong, but the unfortunate thing is that politicians then jump on to them and quote them. For example, the Health Minister in Northern Ireland, on the basis of Mr Ferguson’s predictions, talked about deaths “of biblical proportions” and scared the life out of people.

[Bob Seely]

The hon. Gentleman makes the point most eloquently. Politicians then become fearful. They think, “What if the worst-case scenario is right?”, and lose faith in more balanced predictions.

John Ioannides from Stanford University said of Ferguson’s modelling that

“major assumptions and estimates that are built in the calculations seem to be substantially inflated”.

He is a serious customer, Professor Ferguson, and Imperial has an impeccable reputation. I pay respect, overall, to their work, and I do not seek to criticise for the sake of it; I want to highlight that bad forecasting and bad modelling drives bad Government decisions that then become illiberal and intolerant of other people who have more balanced views.

More recently, in July 2021, Ferguson predicted 100,000 cases, saying that it was “almost inevitable”. Yet we got nowhere near there. The US forecaster Nate Silver, who is very good at predicting US elections, said:

“I don’t care that the prediction is wrong, I’m sure this stuff is hard to predict. It’s that he’s consistently so overconfident.”



The political scientist Professor Philip Tetlock agreed with Nate Silver, adding:

“Expect even top forecasters to make lots of mistakes…When smart forecasters are consistently over-confident, start suspecting”

other factors in play, such as

“publicity or policy-advocacy games”.

I make no such allegations.

More recently, I understand that this summer Professor Ferguson predicted upwards of 100,000 cases. They topped at just over 30,000. In an interview with The Times, the good professor said that his prediction was off because the football messed up his modelling. That for me comes to the essence of the problem with forecasting. When someone can predict 100 million deaths and no one dies but someone gets a sore thumb, they can say mitigations were taken by Government. When a forecaster’s work becomes verifiable, we can see when he predicts and gets it wrong. When that forecast comes up against reality, reality kicks in and makes a fool of the forecast and sometimes, sadly, a fool of the forecaster. Every time Professor Ferguson’s forecasts have been verifiable, they have been seen to be very badly flawed, and this is a serious man and a serious university.

To sum up, if we look at the forecasts made about covid, just like the forecasts for so many other things, reality changes those forecasts and very often undermines their credibility, so we need another set of factors to guide us. Members on the Opposition Benches and on this side have said we need principles. We need a precautionary principle, but we need a sense of balance so that we do not overstep the mark, damage our society, damage our young people and damage poorer people by seeking to control when we need to learn to live with this. My final question to the Minister is: will the Government look into forecasting and perhaps hold an inquiry into the success of forecasting and what we can learn from it, so that we do it less badly in future?

Finally, going from the theoretical to the very practicable, and on a point related to the Isle of Wight, we are not getting the boosters in the Riverside Centre. My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) raised a specific point about his constituency, and in the same way, will the Minister please look at getting more booster jabs to the Isle of Wight and our Riverside Centre?

Covid-19 Vaccinations: 12 to 15-year-olds

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call Sammy Wilson.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

rose—

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I have great sympathy for the Minister for having to come here to try to respond to the latest musings from the Prime Minister’s mind. I believe he is saying that when this morning the Prime Minister said that the programme was going ahead, the final advice had not been received and, indeed, while preparations are ongoing, there may be subsequent advice that once again changes everything. Is that what the Minister is saying? How does he expect people to have confidence when the information coming from the Government appears to be so arbitrary and constantly changing, with no real clarity or medical robustness to it at all?

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[Sammy Wilson]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Not too many people pretend to be me—not even in my own party.

I find the Minister’s statement rather bizarre. First, the main medical reason given for the decision is not to protect young people from covid but to protect their mental health, their educational wellbeing and their ability to associate in society. Does he accept, first, that the way this measure will be rolled out could lead to children being bullied, stigmatised and named on Instagram, Twitter and so on, because the whole school will know whether they go for a vaccine or not, and secondly, given that school principals can make the decision whether a group of individuals, a class or a year group is closed down if people are found to have tested positive in the school, that this is no guarantee that educational disadvantage will not be attacked either?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful for the right hon. Member’s question. Actually, quite the opposite is the case. First, he will know that school bubbles have gone. The school-age vaccination programme and those clinicians are really very well equipped and very well versed in dealing with vaccines in schools, so this will not be a new thing for them. Their ability to gain consent and communicate exactly why the chief medical officers have gone ahead is, in my view, an important element of the decision to accept the recommendation tonight. So I would say quite the opposite: it is right that we accept the recommendation tonight.

As I said in my statement, no one—no parent or child—should be stigmatised for making a decision. We have been transparent all the way through this process, and we have been incredibly careful, as we have demonstrated. Many other countries now boast that their vaccination programmes have reached far higher numbers than ours. I have always said that this is not a race; it is about doing the right thing for children and adults to transition this virus from pandemic to endemic.

Coronavirus

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I would dearly love that, and I will talk to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, who, as I well know, is an enthusiast. I would love it if we could make that so—let us see.

Finally, I want to tell the House about the results of our consultation on vaccination as a condition of deployment in care homes. After careful consultation, we have decided to take this proposal forward, to protect residents. The vast majority of staff in care homes are already vaccinated, but not all of them are. We know that the vaccine protects not only you, but those around you. Therefore we will be taking forward the measures to ensure the “mandation” as a condition of deployment for staff in care homes, and we will consult on the same approach in the NHS, in order to save lives and protect patients from disease.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Will the Secretary of State then explain to the House whether visitors to care homes or to hospitals will also require proof of vaccination? Will delivery drivers require it? Will others who provide other services to those care homes and hospitals require the same? Is he not now walking down the road of requiring mandatory vaccination for almost everyone?

[Matt Hancock]

No, I do not agree with mandatory vaccination of the public, but for those who have a duty to care, in an environment that includes some of the most vulnerable people in the country, I think this is a sensible and reasonable step in order to save lives.

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[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Like the right hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley) I will not support the Government this evening, but it will not be with a heavy heart; it will be because I have a real conviction that what is being done and the approach that the Government have taken on this issue is wrong. We have heard again today, as we heard yesterday from the Prime Minister, that the very basis of pushing and promoting the policy is to instil fear into the hearts of people across the United Kingdom.

The Prime Minister yesterday said that we have to delay because the new variant could kill people in ways that we cannot foresee, or do not understand. It is the same old message: “If you do not obey the restrictions, you are in danger—either of dying yourself or of your relatives dying. You can’t put your nose out the door. You can’t do the things you want to do in normal life, because there’s a real danger you’ll die.” Of course, the statistics show that of those who contract coronavirus a very small proportion, less than 0.3%, actually die. Even the World Health Organisation has said that many of those deaths may not even be attributable to coronavirus anyway. If someone has been tested for coronavirus 28 days before they die in a car accident they still qualify as a coronavirus death. So the statistics themselves have even been used in a way to try to reinforce the message of fear.

I wish to make two points today. The first is that if we follow the logic of what we have heard from the Minister and the Prime Minister in the past two days, we will never get away from the restrictions we are living with at present, because the Minister has admitted that we will have to live with coronavirus, and we know that it will mutate, so we will get different versions of it. If we get different versions, we will be told, “This version is different from the last version. It is more dangerous. It is more contagious. It leads to more deaths. It leads to higher infection rates.” And so on and so on. We will be told that there is therefore a justification for keeping the restrictions in place.

Indeed, we heard from the Minister today not only about the current restrictions; we know that we are going to have further restrictions in the future. Those who work in the care sector are going to be forced to have a vaccination. He did not answer the question, but I assume that people visiting anybody in a hospital or care home are going to have to prove they have had a vaccination. Are peripheral workers going to have to have the vaccination? We can see already that the Government are thinking that people have accepted these restrictions and there will be other things in the future that are going to be forced on them.

Let me come to my second point. The Minister said he was going to follow the data, so let me tell him about some data: unemployment in my constituency has gone up by more than 100% as a result of restrictions. Businesses are going under. Between now and “terminus day” many people will find their employment terminated, their business terminated, their livelihoods terminated, and for those reasons, I will not be voting for these restrictions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sammy Wilson]

Does the hon. Gentleman find rather odd not only the absence of Opposition Members, but the fact that the Government are comfortable about getting the restrictions through only because they have the support of the Labour party, and yet most Labour Members who have spoken today have condemned the Government for their actions?

[Mr Bone]

I could not agree more with the right hon. Gentleman—may I call him my right hon. Friend from across the aisle? He has, of course, been here for the whole debate.

This debate is about the liberty of the British people. We are taking away something that is our right. For instance, I am due to go to a wedding, but I cannot have a group of friends round to my house beforehand because there would be too many of us. When I get to church, I cannot sing. I cannot sing anyway, but I am not allowed to sing. Then I cannot dance at the wedding—[Interruption.] I cannot dance, either. More importantly, as the evening drags out, I cannot then go to a nightclub to boogie the night away in celebration. The following day, I cannot go for a park run to run all these problems off, so I might need to call a doctor, but I cannot go and see a doctor because they will not do face-to-face appointments. This is withdrawing our very liberty.

I am a great fan of the Prime Minister, and I think most Conservative Members are. He came to lead the Conservative party at the end of the Bercow Parliament, when Parliament was in chaos. He took us through a general election, he won a mandate, he delivered Brexit, he dealt with the awful covid pandemic and he has led the world with the vaccine programme, yet tonight, unfortunately, I cannot support him. I think every Member has to put their country first, their constituency second and their party third. On very many—indeed, most—occasions, all those three are in line, but this time I do not think the Government have made the case for putting off unlocking.

With apologies to Mark Twain, there are lies, damned lies and covid statistics, and the Government have been using an extraordinary propaganda machine to take certain statistics to try to prove their case, but if we look at other statistics, we can see that the total number of deaths at the moment is running below the five-year average. My hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle said that he had very few cases in his area. In Northamptonshire, thankfully, our two hospitals have zero covid patients and we have not had a death due to covid for five weeks. The Government made their own original forecasts for what would happen on 17 May when we did the major unlocking, but we have done better than their best prediction of the situation, so why have we now gone into this doom and gloom?

I have no doubt that if we were in opposition, our Benches would now be packed and there would be this blond guy, fairly chubby and a bit scruffy—well, as scruffy as me—jumping up and down and making the case for getting rid of these restrictions. I know it is a balance and I know people have to make a choice, but we, as Conservatives, believe in personal responsibility and common sense. Going back to my original example, of course I would not go into a busy nightclub, and of course I would not have 100 friends round, but that would be my decision, not the decision of the state. So unfortunately, as much as I like the Prime Minister, I think he has got this wrong, and I will vote against the regulations tonight.

Covid-19 Update

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right about the figure for transmissibility reduction from the first dose. The figures for the reduction in serious disease and death are, as he says, higher than that, but since I do not have the precise figures in my head, what I propose to do is set them out tomorrow at the Dispatch Box at Health questions.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP) [V]]

The Secretary of State seems to be the master of mixed messages. Today, he tells us that the vaccination programme is going well, cases are down and hospital admissions have fallen, yet at the weekend, he was telling us that he is still open to removing the date for freedom day—21 June—and keeping restrictions in place. A few weeks ago, he was telling people that they could go to Portugal, yet, despite Portugal having lower infection rates than we do and only 1.5% of people being tested positive on return from Portugal, he has now put it on the amber list, costing the airline industry millions of pounds and putting holidaymakers to great expense. Does he understand the frustration that businesses and individuals have at the way in which, acting on his advice, they take precautions, spend money and take actions that they think are right, yet find that, when he changes his message, they are placed at a disadvantage?

[Matt Hancock]

Of course I understand those frustrations—of course I do—and that is why we would all like to be out of this pandemic, but John Maynard Keynes’ famous dictum comes to mind, which is: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?” A pandemic is a hard thing to manage and communicating uncertainty in the public sphere is difficult. When answering questions about uncertainty, I think the fairest thing that any of us at the Government Dispatch Box can do is answer fully and frankly to the best of our knowledge and understanding, and that does include things where there is evidence on one side and evidence on the other. We had a question from the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) that described only the negative side of what we are seeing in the data, but on the positive side we are seeing the impact of vaccinations that the right hon. Gentleman just mentioned. There are two sides to the story, and that is why some of the judgments are difficult. That is why we will wait until we have the most data possible, with a week to spare, so that people can implement the decisions we make regarding 21 June.

Public Health

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Wednesday 6th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Millions of citizens will be watching helplessly as the Government plod towards another damaging lockdown and respond to the pied piper advisers in SAGE and their mournful dirge of fear and terror. That is where we are going with these restrictions today. Unlike the poor children of the town of Hamelin, at least we know what the destination is, because we have been there before. We have seen the economic damage that lockdowns do. We have seen the damage they do to people’s mental health. We have seen the damage they do to education. We know what lockdown is doing to our country’s finances, yet, despite what the Government tell us, we are doing this lockdown to achieve the aims we were told would be achieved by the first lockdown. We had suppressed the virus. We had put our foot on its neck. That was the term the Prime Minister used, yet once, twice and now for the third time we are doing exactly the same thing.

I understand that the Government have tried to support industry and people who have been affected, and that is to be welcomed. Coming from Northern Ireland as a Unionist, I know that the support measures introduced by the Assembly in Northern Ireland could not have been done had we not been part of the Union and not had the resources that the Union makes available to devolved Administrations. Those who cry after a break-up of the Union ought to remember that. It is only by being part of a bigger unit that we can ensure we at least have the support measures.

We have this lockdown, and I am fairly sure that the 31 March date is there because the Government intend it to last for that period.

[Jim Shannon]

Does my right hon. Friend share the concern that I and many others have about the mental health of children? It has been strained like never before. Does he feel it is time for there to be online counselling services in every school, to ensure that young people have the help they need as a matter of urgency?

[Sammy Wilson]

That is one of the points I was going to come on to. If we are in for this long lockdown, the Government first of all cannot continue to abandon the self-employed who have been affected by previous lockdowns and still find themselves penniless and without any support.

Secondly, the Government cannot allow children’s education to be disrupted for that length of time. As a former teacher, I know how long periods—even summer holidays—can disrupt children’s education, and it is the poorest people who are affected by that, because very often they do not have the resources and the children do not have the space. The parents do not have the ability to help their children through the time off school. It is important that schools get back. Despite the impression given by some trade unions, I know that most teachers do want to get teaching their children in school. Indeed, some of them have been on to me this weekend, saying, “We want to get back to school, but we fear for our safety”—because there is an atmosphere of fear. Some priority must be given to ensuring that teachers are treated as frontline workers and are vaccinated quickly, so that they can continue to have face-to-face education with children.

Northern Ireland depends very much on aviation, because of the sea barrier between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. There needs to be a package of support for the aviation industry. There is no strategy there, and a package of support needs to be made available.

The one thing I would say is that these restrictions, if they are going to be in place until 31 March, have to be examined regularly by this Parliament, and there needs to be a commitment by the Minister to bring them back on a regular basis, so that they can be voted on.