Covid-19 Update

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

My hon. Friend makes a strong and important point. I get the impact on business—of course I do—and especially on international cruises. I am glad we were able to work with the cruise industry to get some domestic cruise trips going again, admittedly in a small way, essentially to pilot it. It is more difficult on an international front. I am very happy to work with her and my right hon. Friend the Transport Secretary on what more we can do.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green) [V]]

Does the Secretary of State feel any shame that the reason we need to delay the easing of restrictions is entirely down to the incompetence of his Government—not only the three-week delay in putting India on the red list, but the utter failure to supress the virus through basic infection control, tracing and effective isolation? This is the fourth time the Government have let the virus spread. That might be great news for Serco, whose profits are up today, but it is a disaster for everyone else.

Does the Secretary of State recognise that, to protect people at home, we also have to do much more to vaccinate people in poorer countries, both because it is a moral imperative but also so that we reduce the chance of new variants being imported here? Will he therefore adopt a jab-matching policy so that, for every single dose administered in the UK from now on, we donate another dose to COVAX, as well as scaling up the UK’s vaccine production? The UK’s pledge of 100 million doses includes only 5 million by the end of September, and that is too little, too late.

[Matt Hancock]

No, I do not agree with most of that. In particular, I think the hon. Lady and the whole House should welcome the Prime Minister’s announcement that we will be ensuring that when we have excess supplies —I stress when we have excess supplies—we will donate 100 million doses around the world. I am not going to do that before we have excess supplies because we want to make sure people are vaccinated here at home.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas]

indicated dissent.

[Matt Hancock]

The hon. Lady shakes her head, but my first duty is to protect people here in this country, while at the same time making sure that people get access around the world, as we have done, for instance, with the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab—half a billion jabs have been done around the world. That is my order of priorities; I am very, very clear about it. We will help the rest of the world to get vaccinated, but we also need to look out for and vaccinate the British population. As for the first half of the hon. Lady’s statement, it was completely wrong.