Covid-19

Aaron Bell Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

Further to my right hon. Friend’s answers to my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker), it has been a fact for a long time that the three figures that are reported most often are the number of tests, the number of cases and, regrettably, the number of deaths. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the media and we should focus much more on the data on NHS capacity? That, rather than tests and cases, should be the message.

[Matt Hancock]

They are all important. Often, people focus on the cases, because they are one of the earliest indicators of the direction. The case rate among the over-60s is highly correlated with what happens to hospital admissions a week or 10 days later. That is why we focus on the over-60s case rate and now publish that data too, because looking at that as well as the overall case rate is important.

Nevertheless, my hon. Friend is absolutely right that although the translation of cases into hospitalisations and poor health outcomes is harder to estimate, the number of hospital admissions with covid is a concrete fact that we cannot get away from. We cannot escape the fact that that is rising and has been rising sharply. Even if we expanded the NHS enormously—we have, both in critical care and in terms of the potential capacity in the Nightingales, should it be needed, but even if we doubled the size of the NHS—once we are on an exponential growth curve, it would still be too small to cope if the virus were to run riot.

--- Later in debate ---

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore); indeed, many of my hon. Friends have made fine speeches.

Like my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton), I had a different speech in mind today. Newcastle-under-Lyme was put into tier 2 on Saturday, but that is not going to be for very long; we are facing a much darker future from Thursday. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates), I do not envy the Secretary of State, the Prime Minister or anyone who is making these decisions; they are very serious decisions indeed, and they must weigh very heavily on people’s shoulders.

The Government have set out the case for a national lockdown, and in that, NHS capacity is key. I obviously completely agree that this should be the overriding objective of our policies and, as I said in my intervention on the Secretary of State earlier, this now needs to become the focus of our daily data, rather than cases and tests—although I am very pleased we have now got capacity for over half a million tests. We need to explain to people what is going on in our hospitals—what is happening day by day, what pressure they are coming under.



I am keen to interrogate the data and the models. In particular, I have concerns about some of the data we have been shown, including what we saw on our television screens on Saturday. The Cambridge/PHE model—the scariest line on the graph presented—implied that there would be more than 1,000 deaths a day by yesterday, which is bizarre, because there were not. The reasonable worst-case scenario, which has been leaked, apparently has an “odd plateau” in October—not my words, but those of David Spiegelhalter, who has done such a good job of communicating scientific uncertainty and statistical uncertainty. Why is there a plateau? On 21 September, SAGE suggested that there would be 3,000 hospital admissions a day by the end of October. The figure reported on 28 October was 1,442, and yet we are supposed to be above the reasonable worst-case scenario. Either somebody does not understand what “reasonable” means, or they do not understand what “worst-case” means.

In the light of all that, I am extraordinarily grateful that Sir Patrick Vallance and Professor Chris Whitty have agreed to come to the Science and Technology Committee tomorrow at very short notice. They are both incredibly fine public servants. They have been very keen to present to all the Select Committees throughout this time, and I pay tribute to them.

No Conservative wants to restrict free enterprise. No Conservative wants to curtail individual liberties, and no Conservative would ever want to put people at greater risk from other illnesses, such as cancer, heart disease or mental health concerns. It goes against all my instincts to do so, but if the case is made that that is the right thing to do, I will, with a heavy heart, have to vote for it.

I think it is unlikely that we will be in the position we hope to be in on 2 December, and I say that about not only the UK but all the countries of western Europe. Germany, France, Belgium and Italy are all entering lockdown. It seems unlikely that we will get the R and the overall rate down to such a level that it is reasonable to start taking the brakes off in what will be a colder, darker and traditionally more convivial month. I have grave concerns about that. If it is the right strategy now, it may regrettably be the right strategy then, and we have to take that very seriously, so I will listen carefully to Vallance and Whitty tomorrow.

I share the disquiet of my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) that we will have only 90 minutes to discuss the legislation on Wednesday, and it will be unamendable. There are reasonable amendments that the House might wish to make—for example, on golf. I understand the closure of clubhouses, but I find it bizarre that two people cannot walk around a golf course and take their exercise in that way. I also do not know why takeaway and delivery from pubs, and rural pubs in particular, was banned this time but not the first time. Ultimately, it is for the Government to propose and not for Parliament to micro-manage.

Finally, I pay tribute to everyone in Newcastle-under-Lyme, especially those on the frontline in the NHS, care homes and social care. We will get through this winter, however tough it is, and we will do that by looking after each other in every sense.