Covid-19 Update

Debate between William Wragg and Matt Hancock

Monday 7th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Of course I understand those frustrations—of course I do—and that is why we would all like to be out of this pandemic, but John Maynard Keynes’ famous dictum comes to mind, which is: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?” A pandemic is a hard thing to manage and communicating uncertainty in the public sphere is difficult. When answering questions about uncertainty, I think the fairest thing that any of us at the Government Dispatch Box can do is answer fully and frankly to the best of our knowledge and understanding, and that does include things where there is evidence on one side and evidence on the other. We had a question from the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) that described only the negative side of what we are seeing in the data, but on the positive side we are seeing the impact of vaccinations that the right hon. Gentleman just mentioned. There are two sides to the story, and that is why some of the judgments are difficult. That is why we will wait until we have the most data possible, with a week to spare, so that people can implement the decisions we make regarding 21 June.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

I reassure my right hon. Friend that, since last we spoke in this Chamber, I have received my first jab. As the age limit lowers, the more youthful of us in this House benefit—although the years have not been kind. His announcement that the limit is to go down still further, to 25, is excellent news. I thank everyone in the vaccination centres in Hazel Grove, Woodley and Offerton and other places in my constituency for their tremendous work. Will my right hon. Friend go further with his surge of vaccinations? That is how we will end this pandemic. Will he commit to reducing the time between first and second jabs and do all he can to secure greater supply? Give us the jabs and we will finish the job.

[Matt Hancock]

A propos my previous answer, there is again a balance here. Obviously, we want to go as fast as possible, but, on the other hand, the strength of overall protection people get grows, on the latest clinical advice, up to an eight-week gap. So a longer gap gives them better overall long-term protection. That is why we have reduced the gap from the 12 weeks we had at the start, because we wanted to get as many first jabs done with the early doses we had, to eight weeks; but the clinical recommendation is not to go below eight weeks, because people would end up with weaker overall protection from both jabs. That is the reason for our approach, but ultimately we want to go as fast as we clinically safely can with the programme. For that, we need all the good folk of Hazel Grove who are doing so much to make this happen and to deliver jabs in arms, and I thank them all.

Covid-19: Government Handling and Preparedness

Debate between William Wragg and Matt Hancock

Thursday 27th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

My right hon. Friend is quite right on both points. Not only have we been transparent and accountable to this House, and straight with this House about the challenges, but we have welcomed the National Audit Office into Government throughout the pandemic, and it has published repeatedly. For instance, it published on personal protective equipment, showing that we successfully avoided a national outage of PPE. It has reported on every aspect of the pandemic, and we have learned the lessons that are in those reports. I recommend to the House the National Audit Office’s latest publication, which summarises all these lessons and learnings. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that one of those is making sure that we have high-quality workforce planning for the future.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

Has my right hon. Friend noted the various ironies of yesterday’s Committee? It must be personally difficult for him and others who needlessly defended someone so willing to throw them into the road—presumably a road full of those behind the wheel testing their eyesight. But is not the greater irony the strange epiphany in many who have gone from regarding the Prime Minister’s former adviser as a latter-day King Herod whose words and deeds could not be trusted, to regarding him as a prophet who, fresh from the wilderness, brings with him supposed truths written on tablets of stone? Irony of ironies, all is irony.

[Matt Hancock]

I think what the constituents we serve are looking for is a Government who are focused four-square on delivering for them, getting us out of this pandemic and building back better. Observations on ironies I will leave to my hon. Friend.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between William Wragg and Matt Hancock

Monday 17th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The most important difference between now and then is, of course, that the vast majority of those who are vulnerable to ending up in hospital or dying of covid have had two vaccines. The vaccination uptake rates have been spectacularly high and the uptake rate of the second vaccine has also been incredibly high. That means that the protection afforded to those who have chosen to take up the vaccine is very high. The latest estimates show that having two jabs and waiting a fortnight or so after the second jab leads to around a 97% reduction in mortality. Of course, we will continue to drive and to open up access in order to find the final few per cent. of people, but the lesson of the last few days is that people who have not taken up the opportunity to be vaccinated should do so, because it is those people who have sadly ended up in hospital, and we do not want that.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

The Health Secretary can be proud of his role in the vaccination programme, and I welcome the further reduction in the age of eligibility. It may surprise my right hon. Friend, and indeed the House, that despite my appearance and general manner, there are still a few years yet to go, but I will be there, seized of the importance of taking up my vaccine. May I urge him to favour a surge in vaccination, rather than to flirt even momentarily with the idea of imposing local restrictions, which are not helpful and create a great deal of resentment?

[Matt Hancock]

I am glad to say that we will get to my hon. Friend before the end of July, no matter how young he is. I am pretty sure he is an adult in both actuality and attitude—crikey, I am getting myself into more trouble than I anticipated.

I understand my hon. Friend’s broader point, which is a call against local lockdowns, and we have had differences of view on that in the past. It is not where we want to go, though of course we do not rule it out. We have seen our approach work—it worked in south London —and we have this huge testing capacity, which we did not have in the autumn, of hundreds of thousands of tests a day. That capacity is expanding, as the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) articulated. We also have millions of lateral flow tests, which are simple and easy to use, and people get the result fast. With surge testing plus the vaccine, we have many more tools in our armoury than we did before.

Coronavirus

Debate between William Wragg and Matt Hancock

Thursday 25th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I am not quite sure what point the hon. Member is making, but this is what I was going on to say. The critical point where I ended the exchange with my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) is that we must restore the freedoms that we all cherish, but in a way that does not put the NHS at risk. Throughout the crisis, we have successfully protected the NHS, and I am delighted to be able to inform the House that there are now record numbers of NHS doctors and NHS nurses in England. New data published this morning show that there are over 300,000 nurses in the NHS in England for the first time in its history. So we have protected our NHS and we are delivering our commitments to it. Nobody wants to have to reimpose measures, as we have sadly seen elsewhere in Europe only this week, so we must follow this cautious and, we hope, irreversible road map.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend mentions data on occurrences within the NHS. Does the NHS have data to suggest how many people have, sadly, died from covid in NHS hospitals three weeks after receiving their first dose of a covid vaccine?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, the data on the impact of the vaccine—including side effects from the vaccine and the rare occasions when, sadly, people die after having had the vaccine—are published by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. If there are any data in this area that are not published but my hon. Friend would like to be published, he can write to me and I would be very happy to look into publishing them. Essentially, we take an attitude of being as transparent as possible, because there are side effects to the vaccine as there are to all pharmaceutical drugs and we want to be completely open and transparent about those side effects—essentially to reassure people that the risks are extremely low.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between William Wragg and Matt Hancock

Tuesday 9th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

We announced in the spending review significant extra funding to tackle the backlog. I am very proud of cancer services throughout the country, which have kept up the work during this second wave in a quite remarkable way, owing to tenacity, working together, flexibility and, of course, very strong infection prevention and control.

Last week I was at the Royal Marsden Hospital, where they are doing 100% of their normal-time operations. That is not true everywhere—the Royal Marsden has the advantage of being, in essence, a cancer-only site, which makes things easier. The thrust of the hon. Lady’s question is right—we absolutely must catch up on the cancer backlog—but I am optimistic because people have worked so hard in oncology to keep cancer services going. As the number of covid patients comes down, so we must ensure that the backlog is worked through.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

I pay tribute to everybody in Stockport who is part of the massive vaccination effort that is going so well, as it is throughout the rest of country. The original purpose of lockdown was to reduce hospitalisations and keep hospitals from falling over; if that is achieved through a vaccination programme, is it now the Government’s intention to use the level of virus in circulation—the number of cases in the population—to determine when to ease lockdown?

[Matt Hancock]

No. The Prime Minister has set out the four conditions that need to be met and will be saying more about that on 22 February.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between William Wragg and Matt Hancock

Thursday 17th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The Secretary of State for Education will be setting out these plans. We need to get them out as soon as possible so that people have the last couple of days of term to work on them, and he will be doing that. Testing in schools is incredibly important, and it is going to become more important as we roll it out more broadly. I am really glad to hear some of the statements from the teaching unions about how enthusiastic they are for testing, especially in secondary schools. I am sure that the Education Secretary will want to work with the hon. Gentleman and others right across the country to roll out this programme as effectively as possible and to make sure that we have high-quality testing in schools, so that we can keep kids in education as much as possible and get the infection rate down by finding the positive cases and having them isolate.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

It being Christmas, and given the circumstances that we are in, covid-compliant carol singers in Stockport have been heard singing the words of that well-known epidemiologist Mariah Carey, “All I want for Christmas is tier 2”, but sadly their entreating that outcome has not been successful at all. Can my right hon. Friend explain, further to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady), precisely what more residents in Stockport need to do in order to regain some relative freedom?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes. We have to keep getting the case rate down. In Stockport it is still over 100. There is further to go. Right across Greater Manchester and the surrounding areas, I would urge people to do as they have been doing, because the case rates have come down really quite significantly. Right across Greater Manchester and in Stockport, people have been doing the right thing, but the pressures on the NHS remain, partly from people who are in hospital with covid from when the rates were really high. I hope that we can make the move as soon as possible, and in the meantime I hope that everybody has a happy, safe and careful Christmas in Stockport.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between William Wragg and Matt Hancock

Monday 14th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I got the gist of it, Madam Deputy Speaker. My hon. Friend is right to express the concerns about the hospitality industry. This will be a significant blow to the hospitality industry, and we only take this action because it is absolutely necessary, because of the rates of increase of this virus right across London, and especially in Kent. Therefore it is necessary, and the best thing we can do is all work together to try to get London out of tier 3.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

rose—

Covid-19 Vaccine Roll-out

Debate between William Wragg and Matt Hancock

Tuesday 8th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I have a huge amount of sympathy with what the hon. Lady says, and we have looked into this. We are not proposing to extend the Christmas bubbles, but we hope that NHS trusts and employers across the NHS can look compassionately at exactly this situation for all those brilliant colleagues who are working so hard and have had such a tough year.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

I always enjoy my exchanges with my right hon. Friend, and this time I mean that when I say it, because this is incredibly welcome news, particularly given Stepping Hill Hospital’s role in the administration of the vaccine. I will certainly encourage all my constituents, when they receive the invitation, to have the vaccine, take it and dispel some of the more eccentric views that are circulating on the internet. Can my right hon. Friend tell me specifically when those with particular vulnerabilities, such as cancer patients, can expect the call for vaccination?

[Matt Hancock]

The plan is, according to clinical priority, to vaccinate those in care homes and their carers; NHS and social care staff, and the over-80s; then the over-75s; and then, at that point, we will turn to ensuring that all those who are on the clinically extremely vulnerable list get vaccinated along with the over-70-year-olds. That is the assessment of the JCVI, which looked into the relative risk that people face and found that age is the No. 1 risk factor.

Covid-19

Debate between William Wragg and Matt Hancock

Monday 2nd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Unfortunately, in Liverpool the overall case rate includes a very high peak among students. The over-60s case rate, which is also published on the same website, shows a flattening, but a flattening at a very high level, such that Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has already had to cancel non-urgent, non-cancer elective activity.

The danger of a plateauing at a high level, as the chief medical officer set out, is that if the rate starts to go up again, we are already under significant pressure in the NHS in Liverpool. The same argument goes for Tyneside, where again the overall case rate appears to be coming down, which is good news. The number among the over-60s, however, is flattening, again at a very high level, and in other parts of the country, including areas in tier 3, the numbers were going up.

It is not good enough just to control R and keep it lower than its natural rate; we have to get it below 1 to be able to change from a doubling time to a halving time of this virus. Even I—the most enthusiastic supporter of the tier system—can see that, unfortunately, cases were rising and the cases among the over-60s are rising, including in the areas with tier 3 restrictions. It is important to strip out from those data the outbreak among students. I have talked before about there being two overlapping epidemics: one among students and one among the wider community.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend lists the many commendable achievements of the national health service in the period since the first wave, but the main contention is that this policy is for ICU capacity issues. What specifically has been done over the summer to increase that capacity?

[Matt Hancock]

There has been a significant capacity increase in critical care, which includes ICU but is not only ICU. We have a wider definition of critical care, which is important. Many people with covid do not need formal ICU intubation; they need critical care, including oxygenation, when they are not anaesthetised but on oxygen treatment. On that measure of critical care, which is the care required for covid, there has been a significant increase, including significant investment in the NHS around the country. I should have had that on my list.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between William Wragg and Matt Hancock

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I think it is time to put aside short-term political point scoring. The deal on the table that the Mayor of Greater Manchester walked away from was a fair deal that had been agreed, proportionate to the deal that had been agreed with leaders in Liverpool and in Lancashire. I know I keep repeating this point, but it is absolutely at the centre of what it is to be fair, which is about treating people in similar situations in a similar way. I think that the British people understand that. Hence we enter into these local discussions in good faith, and everywhere else they have been engaged with in good faith. I hope that is the way that they can continue in Greater Manchester in future.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

I want to be fair to my right hon. Friend, who is motivated at all times by the best of intentions, but I gently say that those of us who have a contrary view to all of the Government’s policies are not in immediate tow with the Mayor of Greater Manchester, nor are we in tow with the Labour Opposition. I feel a deep sense of disappointment at this collective failure that we have seen today and, quite frankly, my constituents in Hazel Grove deserve better. I shall resist the urge to lose my temper—tempting though it may be—because these exchanges deserve a greater elevation of tone, but I say this: the definition of insanity is to continue to do the same thing over and over again in the hope that it will turn good. We have had three months of interventions in Greater Manchester, which have yielded very little results indeed. I cannot help but fear that the medicine is worse than the disease.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between William Wragg and Matt Hancock

Programme motion
Monday 19th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, because the isolation of people and their staying isolated is important. The right hon. Gentleman can complain that we are doing too much, but that is not normally the complaint I get from the Opposition.

The second point is that that must be, in the right hon. Gentleman’s words, handed over to local authorities. No, no, no; there has got to be teamwork with local authorities. It is teamwork that will help us get through this, not this attempt to separate people and say, “One side’s good, one side’s bad.” We are all on the same side in this fight against the virus.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

Further to this consensual statement, we are all keen to be guided by the science, so what scientific behavioural assessment has been made of the effects of closing covid-secure venues on the likelihood of people meeting in one another’s homes instead, thus spreading the illness further? If my right hon. Friend has not got the information immediately to hand, perhaps he would care to write to me, as is the fashion.

[Matt Hancock]

I can answer the question. My hon. Friend makes an important point. The indirect evidence is that the number of hospital admissions due to people being over-inebriated has reduced since we brought those measures in, which is one indication that people are generally following the rules and, as I did, going home at 10 o’clock to make sure. The vast majority of people are following the rules.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between William Wragg and Matt Hancock

Thursday 15th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

First, yes, we want to work more closely with Ealing to make sure we get that national and local link-up in the test and trace system—I can give the hon. Gentleman that assurance. [Interruption.] And in Enfield as well. Just to be clear, no decisions have yet been taken on Greater Manchester, and I want to reassure colleagues from Greater Manchester who are in the Chamber of that. Finally, having this targeted approach is clear for people to understand. There are three levels. Everyone knows what is in each of the three levels, and it is very easy for someone to know which level their area is in.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

I bring news from Greater Manchester, where the impossible has been achieved: all the Members of Parliament, the leaders of the councils and indeed the Mayor are surprisingly in agreement with one another; but the meeting that we had earlier today was entirely pointless. I might as well have been talking to the wall. When are we going to be properly consulted, and learn about measures through the right channels rather than via the media?

May I put to the Secretary of State a question that I posed to the Prime Minister? The closure of hospitality will drive people into private dwellings, where they will mix. We do not, thank goodness, live in a police state, which would be the only way to police it. Will they please listen to common sense and think again?

[Matt Hancock]

Some of the evidence for the approach that we are taking is not only because we see that approach in other countries in the world, but because even within Greater Manchester, in Bolton, where cases were rising sharply, they were flattened when hospitality was closed except for takeaways; albeit that they have started to go up again since that measure was released. So, although I understand my hon. Friend’s urge for a consultation—I am happy to talk to him about these issues at any moment of the day or night—we are seeking to work with the local area and with all the elected representatives to get a solution that we can commend to the people of Greater Manchester. But a solution we must have. We cannot see cases inexorably rising, because we know the consequences that that brings.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between William Wragg and Matt Hancock

Monday 21st September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I implore the hon. Gentleman to support all those who are working so hard to deliver the tests that people need. Every other question on testing is, “Can we have more tests, please?” and we hear stories about just how much these tests are needed. I think we should be there supporting the people who are doing the testing.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend has many invidious choices to continue to make, but, further to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady), the wider health implications of covid-19 cannot be overstated. They include delayed cancer diagnosis, missed stroke and heart attack treatments, and the cancellation of elective surgery. Will my right hon. Friend therefore confirm that the Nightingale hospitals will be brought back online to minimise impacts on wider healthcare?

[Matt Hancock]

The Nightingale hospitals are there, ready to go if they are needed. They are currently mothballed and can be reopened very rapidly. We are working incredibly hard with the NHS to ensure that this time around there is the absolute minimum disruption to other treatments, but of course the first, best minimisation of impacts on other treatments is not to have a sharp rise in the number of people going to hospital with covid. Our plan learns from what happened before. Of course there is the much more widespread capability for testing, both in the NHS and outside, thanks to the hard work of companies such as Randox and others. That means that we will be better placed than last time around to keep the rest of the NHS running, but it does not mean that we can rest easy in terms of rising cases, because of course the easiest way for the NHS to operate is to keep covid cases low.

Covid-19: R Rate and Lockdown Measures

Debate between William Wragg and Matt Hancock

Monday 8th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I will talk to the Chancellor about that. It is obviously a question for a Department other than mine.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

It is essential that the spread of covid-19 is understood in different settings, such as hospitals and care homes, so will my right hon. Friend confirm that the R rate can be unduly distorted at a regional level by these figures and that local lockdown measures should be used very carefully?

[Matt Hancock]

In the first instance, where we have taken local action, it can often be in a care home or in a hospital. That would be the action that is needed, and it has been successful, in many cases, in ensuring that an outbreak where we see a rise in the number of new cases does not then transmit into the community. So in the first instance, local action is very local: it is in a single hospital or in a care home. I think understanding that as the starting point for local action is important in thinking about how we take this forward.