Covid-19 Update

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

Wednesday 5th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Yes indeed. I really think that she should withdraw that because it is not—[Interruption.] She did say that. [Interruption.] She did, and it was totally untrue. It is because we are the most boosted and the most tested, and because we have the most antivirals of any European country, that we are able also to be the most open. That is thanks to the efforts of this Government, but also hundreds of thousands of people up and down the country—millions of people—who are doing the right thing.

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

NHS workers say that they are broken—overworked, exhausted and undervalued, pushed to the brink before the pandemic and now abandoned by the Government. So will the Prime Minister listen to workers and trade unions and support NHS staff by protecting doctors and nurses who treat covid patients by giving them FFP3 masks and properly rewarding them not with cuts or pay rises that are actually pay cuts when you take inflation above 5% into account, but with a genuine pay rise of 15%, making up for a decade of falling pay? If he asks how we are going to pay for it, he could look at the £37 billion put towards the privatised test and trace budget.

[The Prime Minister]

I really think that the hon. Lady should listen to what is actually going on this country today. We are investing record sums in the NHS. There are 5,000 more doctors and 10,000 more nurses now than there were last year. There are record numbers of people in the NHS. That, in my experience, is what NHS staff want to see, in addition to the extra money we have put into pay rises. That has been made possible through the £36 billion that we have voted through and that she opposed. [Interruption.] Maybe she did not, but I think the record will show that she voted against it.