Covid-19 Update

Steve Brine Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

This is an issue I have discussed with my clinical advisers, because it is very sensitive. I am sure that the hon. Lady would join me in urging all pregnant women to come forward and discuss vaccination with their clinician, because that is important, and she set out some of the reasons why. Of course, we have opened up, from tomorrow, vaccination to all those aged 23 and over, so vaccination will soon be available to every adult, which means that questions of prioritisation will be for the past—other than the question of the vaccination of children, which is separate in many ways and an important question that we will address in the coming weeks.

To anybody who is pregnant, I say: as soon as you are eligible for a vaccine, please discuss it with your doctor, because for the vast majority of people who are pregnant the right thing to do is to get the jab as soon as possible and get both jabs as soon as is practicable. I think that is something on which the hon. Lady and I would agree.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

Last week, the Secretary of State told me:

“Our goal…is not a covid-free world…the goal is to live with covid”.—[Official Report, 7 June 2021; Vol. 696, c. 678.]

Well, you could have fooled me, and many of our constituents. There is dismay out there tonight. The reopening of the wedding industry is not a meaningful reopening and I think it is cruel the way some are being misled. The Prime Minister and my right hon. Friend have been very clear today that 19 July is not a new “not before” date but an end to all this, so will the Secretary of State tell the country his assessment of risk and personal responsibility and whether he feels that as a country we remotely have that right at this time?

[Matt Hancock]

In a pandemic, the balance between risk and personal responsibility is different, because someone can affect somebody else in a life-threatening manner even without knowing it. If we go to the philosophy of this, the first duty—in fact, the legitimate duty—of the state for any liberal is to prevent harm by individuals to others. Unfortunately, in a pandemic that is what people do if they have the disease, especially asymptomatically—they could be harming others without even knowing it.

Once we have the offer of a vaccine to everybody, and once we have protected and mitigated the large part of that risk, we do need to move back to a world based on personal responsibility. That is right, and that is where we intend to go. I think that we have made steps already in that direction in steps 1, 2 and 3. This country is freer than almost any other in Europe in terms of our economy and of our society. That is partly because of the very rapid vaccination effort here, but I hope that my hon. Friend can take from that the direction we intend to go.