Covid-19 Update Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateSteve Baker
Main Page: Steve Baker (Conservative - Wycombe)Department Debates - View all Steve Baker's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(2 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberAmong other things, my right hon. Friend is keeping covid status certification in reserve, and he is leaving mass asymptomatic testing in place, together with contact tracing. As my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) said, the public health powers are still there, of course allowing the Secretary of State to lock us down at the stroke of his pen without prior votes or any formal way of justifying the proportionality of those powers. When can we expect all those things to be dealt with, so that we can all have the certainty that will come from knowing that, thanks to the vaccine, we are living with an endemic disease, in the way that we live with the endemic disease flu, and we can all get on with our lives?
I know that my hon. Friend may not agree with every measure that the Government are keeping in place or have set out, but I hope that he agrees that at least the measures that I have set out—around making sure that we are vaccinating the public, offering vaccines to as many people as possible, having some kind of testing regime, and having some surveillance of the results of those tests to look out for any new variants—are the right measures and the kinds of things that need to be done as we live with covid-19.