Alex Sobel
Main Page: Alex Sobel (Labour (Co-op) - Leeds North West)Department Debates - View all Alex Sobel's debates with the Cabinet Office
(2 years, 3 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
What we are doing is supporting the NHS, supporting staff and making sure that we have as much capacity as possible, and absenteeism, although high, is not as high as it has been at some other points during the pandemic, although that is no cause for complacency. What we will do is keep the period of isolation under constant review, and if we think we can bring it down without increasing infection, of course we will do so.
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
The Prime Minister is right to laud our life science industry, as British universities and British scientists have helped us to get through covid; so why, after developing the UK’s Vaccine Manufacturing and Innovation Centre with taxpayer money alongside British universities, have the Government decided to sell it off so that in future pandemics future vaccines will be held not in public for all of us, but in a few private hands?
The Prime Minister
What we are doing is investing hundreds of millions to make sure that we have a dynamic vaccine industry. Clearly the Government need to work hand in glove with the private sector, as we have done. No matter how deep the abhorrence of the private sector on the Opposition Benches, it was private-sector private capital that produced the vaccine success.