Debates between Alex Sobel and Matt Hancock during the 2019 Parliament

Tue 5th May 2020
Mon 16th Mar 2020
Wed 26th Feb 2020

Covid-19 Update

Debate between Alex Sobel and Matt Hancock
Tuesday 5th May 2020

(3 years, 10 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.

Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.

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Matt Hancock Portrait Matt Hancock
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Yes, of course; if I get the details, I am very happy to do that. I would also be very happy to know where my right hon. Friend had his hair cut, because it is extraordinary. No one else has such smart hair. Everyone is looking increasingly bushy.

Alex Sobel Portrait Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op) [V]
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Dozens of dentists have got in touch with me, saying that the measures put in place are not protecting them and their practices. They take on a combination of private and NHS patients. Many are fearing bankruptcy and, ultimately, closure. This will leave NHS dentistry in an existential crisis. What steps is the Secretary of State taking to ensure that NHS dentistry survives the current crisis?

Covid-19

Debate between Alex Sobel and Matt Hancock
Monday 16th March 2020

(4 years ago)

Commons Chamber
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Matt Hancock Portrait Matt Hancock
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We are trying to address the precise point of the supply of medicinal cannabis products through a change to the Home Office regulations anyway. The advice is against unnecessary travel, and the sort of travel that the hon. Gentleman describes sounds very necessary to me.

Alex Sobel Portrait Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
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Later, at the height of the crisis, the Secretary of State will be judged on the answers he gives today. At the beginning of the crisis, there were estimated to be only 5,000 ventilators in the NHS. Can he tell us exactly how many ventilators he has purchased, what the modelling says about how many ventilators will be needed at the height of the crisis, and whether we will be able to get everybody on a ventilator at that point?

Matt Hancock Portrait Matt Hancock
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As the hon. Gentleman knows from my previous answers, that is not the way we are addressing this question. The way we are addressing it is that we will buy as many ventilators as are made. It is not a question of putting a target on it. We are just going after as many as we possibly can.

Coronavirus

Debate between Alex Sobel and Matt Hancock
Wednesday 26th February 2020

(4 years, 1 month ago)

Commons Chamber
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Matt Hancock Portrait Matt Hancock
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I thank my hon. Friend; I will certainly do that. I agree with him on the importance of mitigation. The mitigation strand is really about what would happen should this become a full-scale pandemic, and the very significant impact that that would have on the country— including, of course, on the NHS. On the purpose of the delay strand of this work, even if we do not succeed in containing the virus, we want to delay its arrival so that it does not all arrive in one big peak, but arrives over time so that we can better cope with it. Of course, the contain strand is about trying to stop that from happening at all.

Alex Sobel Portrait Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
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As the House knows, I was in self-isolation last week because Harry Horton of ITV alerted me to the fact that there had been a confirmed case at the UK bus summit, which I attended. I rang 111 and the advice was that, if I had been in contact with the person who had coronavirus, I should self-isolate, but if I had not, I need not. Yet no agency could confirm or deny whether I had been in contact. So more work on tracking needs to be done. Will the Secretary of State consider developing, like the Chinese Government, a tracking app to help people in that situation?

Matt Hancock Portrait Matt Hancock
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I am very happy, subject to consent, to look at that. I would also say that the way that contact tracing works is that, once the positive case is identified, you trace out from the positive case, rather than starting from the wider population—including attendees at the bus conference—and focusing in. Contact tracing was undertaken in the correct way. Indeed, the majority of cases that we have found in the UK have been found through the proactive contact tracing undertaken by Public Health England; that commends its approach.