Covid-19 Update and Hospitality Curfew

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Thursday 1st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I am always happy to look at, as my right hon. and learned Friend calls them, imaginative ideas like that. He will know that there is a tension between the clarity of the rules and bringing additional nuances into the rules. He will have seen how, as a society, we have struggled with that balance all the way through this, because we are in novel circumstances. I am happy to talk to him about his proposal.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

The imposition of a 10 pm curfew on the hospitality industry was entirely avoidable, but became an inevitability because of the Government’s shambolic handling of their privatised test and trace system. Last month, I highlighted to the Health Secretary that locals in Slough were being forced to drive hundreds of miles, including catching a ferry to the Isle of Wight, just to access a test, but he retorted:

“On the contrary, the fact is that we are working hard with the local authority in Slough”.—[Official Report, 17 September 2020; Vol. 680, c. 520.]

Well, Mr Speaker, the council has informed me that it has not heard a dickie bird from either the Health Secretary or his team, so perhaps he can advise us this time when the test centre in Slough will go back to being a drive-through and walk-in test centre, so that locals can actually access a test when they desperately need one.

[Matt Hancock]

We have got this record testing capacity and I am incredibly grateful for all the people who work to deliver it. I will not have this divisive language; I just won’t have it.