Oral Answers to Questions

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Unfortunately, we do finish at quarter past 12, so I will start topical questions, slightly late, with Steve McCabe.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Matt Hancock)]

We are seeing major scientific advances that will help to get things back to normal. We are expanding mass testing with the two mega labs that will add another 600,000 to our daily testing capacity and, on vaccines, we have secured an initial agreement for 5 million doses of the very promising Moderna vaccine and begun clinical trials of the Janssen vaccine.

[Steve McCabe]

It is now 41 days since I asked the Secretary of State whether he would stop the clock so that no one seeking access to fertility treatment loses out because of delays due to the pandemic. When does he hope that his Department will get around to answering?

[Matt Hancock]

The provision of fertility services is happening in the normal way in as many places as possible across England, but it is not happening everywhere because of the huge pressures on the NHS from the second wave of covid. As my hon. Friend the Minister of State was saying a moment ago, there are pressures on the NHS. There are now 15,000 people in hospital with covid across the UK, but the NHS is doing far more normal services that it was not able to do in the first wave.