Public Health

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

The decision facing us today has big implications for how we will recover from this pandemic and how we take people with us, and I am pleased that we are at least having a vote on it. I have kept an open mind and listened to the debate, and I know that the Government have a difficult balance to make. They have to make a judgment call based on clinical advice, on what the economy is saying and on what people are saying is sustainable for their compliance.

Let us be clear: there is no risk-free option. This is all about balancing and managing risk, but too often the advice from clinical experts is confusing and contradictory. Why is SAGE using predictions of 4,000 fatalities per day, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) said, when the actual figure turns out to be 1,000 at most? Why can projections from a couple of weeks or 10 days ago turn out to be so wrong that they need to be revised so sharply? Is the problem that too often we seem to conflate scenarios with forecasts? Where is the clarity over how many of those deaths might reasonably be expected as seasonal flu deaths if covid was not a thing?

What weighting is being given to the rise in non-covid deaths at home because people with cancer, heart disease and other conventional killers are not getting treatment in hospitals that have been reconfigured almost exclusively to deal with covid, let alone the impact on suicide, on rates of stillbirth and on babies? We are now talking about a third wave. How many more will we have? Clearly, the science is not black and white, and we must consider the impact of all the measures holistically and not look just at what one set of scientists is telling us.

The impact on business is of greatest concern, as many hon. Members have said, and the hospitality industry has been hit hugely. The service industry that relies on the hospitality industry has almost been forgotten, and already struggling small and apparently non-essential shops that have just stocked up for Christmas are losing their trade to supermarkets and garden centres up the road. In the aviation and international tourism industry, travel agents cannot be furloughed because they need to process refunds, for which they get no payment at all. For many, this is economic death by 1,000 cuts. It is a salami-slicing of business, and the resulting redundancies, bankruptcies and reduced wages will affect the livelihoods and lives of many of our constituents. At the very least, we should have an economic audit of the impact of lockdown, which feeds into and challenges the scientific advice.

The other crucial factor is what people are prepared to accept and follow, and that is linked to confidence and the explanations they are given. People see apparent contradictions such as, “Go and exercise, but you can’t play golf. You can’t play tennis and children cannot exercise outside. You can’t go to church,” and if logic is not being applied, people’s confidence is trashed. National lockdown is a big step. The science for it is questionable, and the business case against it overwhelming. Why are we doing it at this stage before seeing the effects of regional lockdowns? For me, the case is not proven, the proposed measures are not proportionate, and I cannot vote for them.