G20 and COP26 World Leaders Summit
Desmond Swayne Excerpts(4 years, 4 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
First, on climate finance for the world, the right hon. Gentleman makes a valid point, because it is essential that the developed world supports the developing world on the path to decarbonisation. That is why the $100 billion per year is so important. Contributions such as the one we saw from the Japanese yesterday, what the French have done, what the Germans have done and what Joe Biden did the other day are important steps, but there is much more to be done. But be in no doubt: the right hon. Gentleman should be very proud of what the UK is committing—the £11.6 billion that we committed two years ago, plus another billion the day before yesterday. These are big sums now that the UK is giving, and we are way out in front.
The right hon. Gentleman is right to raise Afghanistan. We had sad but good discussions about Afghanistan, and we are determined to work together to concert our humanitarian relief to do what we can, notwithstanding the difficulties that there are obviously going to be with our relations with the Taliban.
On the global vaccine roll-out, the right hon. Gentleman will have heard the commitments made by countries around the world. I think the UK can be very proud of what we are doing on top of the 1.5 billion AstraZeneca doses, with another 100 million doses by June next year.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
To what extent does the success of the entire enterprise depend upon the promised finance to the developing world?
Afghanistan
Desmond Swayne Excerpts(4 years, 7 months ago)
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Keir Starmer
There is huge concern, as all hon. Members will know, about our line of sight beyond Kabul at the moment. Again, that calls into question where the 5,000 number comes from, because at the moment we are not even in a position to assess the position outside Kabul. We cannot betray our friends. We must lead.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
Were the Government of this kingdom to be overthrown by a wicked and brutal regime, I venture that the right hon. and learned Gentleman would want a leading role in the resistance. He would not be queuing at the airport, would he?
Keir Starmer
When I was Director of Public Prosecutions, some of my prosecutors in Afghanistan were at huge risk, working on counter-terrorism with other brave souls there, so I will not take that from the right hon. Gentleman or from anybody else.
Once the immediate challenges are addressed, we face an uncertain and difficult future. The Taliban are back in control and we cannot be naive about the consequences. We have lost our primary source of leverage in political discussions, and everything that we have achieved in the past 20 years is now under threat.
Covid-19: Road Map
Desmond Swayne Excerpts(5 years, 1 month ago)
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The Prime Minister
We are making as much data available as we possibly can. Clearly, we cannot make people’s medical records available because that would breach patient confidentiality. The hon. Gentleman is right to raise the question of take-up among some groups and care home staff. That has been increasing, but we all need to work together to ensure that we encourage everybody to come forward and take the vaccine.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
The Prime Minister raised the possibility of new variants having an impact on the plan. Ordinarily, the laws of natural selection will favour more benign variants. However, lockdown reverses that, favouring the more potent. Therefore, in addition to an urgency on the basis of the economic and social costs of lockdown, there is indeed also a scientific urgency to lift it, isn’t there?
The Prime Minister
I defer to my right hon. Friend’s doubtless superior understanding of the biology of the variants, but I have a couple of reassuring points for him. First, we have no reason to think that our vaccines are ineffective in preventing death or serious illness against all the variants of which we are currently aware. Secondly, our scientists are getting ever better at evolving new vaccines to tackle the new variants.
Covid-19 Update
Desmond Swayne Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
The hon. Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) and I share an ambition. We want to unite and level up across the whole UK, and that is the mission of this Government. I am afraid he is totally wrong in what he says about the roll-out of the vaccines. We are making sure that everywhere gets what they need for JCVI groups 1 to 4 by 15 February. That is what we are doing and will continue to do. I am delighted by his conversion to the vaccine. I seem to have read somewhere that he seemed a bit sceptical. There he goes smirking away. It is not a smirking matter. It is absolutely crucial. He should tell his constituents to get a vaccination.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
To lift lockdown, will my right hon. Friend focus exclusively on the progress of vaccinations of those who are most likely to be hospitalised if infected? Is it not the case that mission creep beyond hospitalisations would inevitably lead to the diminution of our sense of urgency to lift the restrictions?
The Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend is completely right and he gets to the heart of the problem in the pretend policy that has been announced by the Opposition party. If we were to interfere with the JCVI 1 to 9 list, which is intended to target those most vulnerable and those most at risk of dying or of hospitalisation, we would, of course, interpolate it with other people appointed by politicians, taking vaccines away from the more vulnerable groups and, as he has rightly said, delay our ability to move forward out of lockdown. He is spot on.
Covid-19
Desmond Swayne Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I thank the right hon. Gentleman, who seems to recapitulate what the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras has already asked me, as though he were still doing his old job. I do not want to repeat all the points that I made. Obviously, we are investing heavily to support jobs and livelihoods throughout the country. On mental health, the right hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the risk of increased suffering caused by the privations of lockdown. That is why we are investing hugely in mental health provision—another £13 billion, plus £18 million in support for our wonderful mental health charities across the country.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
Pubs cannot compete with supermarkets for off-sales. Even within a household, people cannot play tennis or golf. Notwithstanding the assault on liberty and livelihoods, why are the regulations pervaded by a pettifogging malice?
The Prime Minister
Pettifogging, yes; malicious, no. I am going to have to take the hit here. The intention is to stop the virus, protect the NHS and save lives. To do that, we have to engage in restricting transmission between human beings. I know that my right hon. Friend and other right hon. and hon. Members will find all sorts of reasons to oppose all sorts of restrictions, but in the end, we have to look at the overall budget of risk caused by transmission between members of the human race, and that is what we are trying to restrict.
EU Withdrawal Agreement
Desmond Swayne Excerpts(5 years, 3 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
We are only halfway through the call list. It would be best if I can manage to get everybody who wants to ask a question on this very important subject in to ask such a question.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I see that I have some agreement from the right hon. Gentleman, who is quite far down the list. I must therefore insist on having questions—just short questions—and not great big statements. We all know what has already happened. Let us just have questions for the Minister, so that we can then just have answers from the Minister.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for suggesting the lucrative opportunity of exporting conflict diamonds, but just how burdensome will the additional paperwork of which he spoke be?
Michael Gove
Given that there is very little trade that I am aware of in conflict diamonds from Northern Ireland to Great Britain—if anything, it is an even smaller trade than, for example, endangered species products such as tiger skins—I suspect that the bureaucratic burden will be so small as to be almost naked—sorry, I mean invisible to the naked eye. [Laughter.]
Public Health
Desmond Swayne Excerpts(5 years, 3 months ago)
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Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
Why will you be able to buy a pint in a sports venue without getting anything to eat, but if you order a pint in a pub, you will have to have a substantial meal? I will leave that hanging as the great existential question of the day.
Suppression in anticipation of vaccination is the reason for the measures before us today, but people have been writing to me for months terrified that a vaccine will be compulsory. I have responded by saying, “Don’t be so absolutely ridiculous—that could never possibly happen. We are a Conservative Government, after all.” Yet now we discover that vaccination may be a passport to the acquisition of your civil liberties, without which you will have all sorts of things that you would otherwise be able to do denied to you. That would be absolutely disproportionate to a virus with a mortality rate verging on 1%. It would equally be a terrible precedent to set for other vaccines and medicines. I therefore hope that we can get away from that.
The way to persuade people to have a vaccine is, of course, to line up the entire Government and their Ministers, and their loved ones, let them take it first, and then get all the luvvies—the icons of popular culture—out on the airwaves singing its praises. To have any kind of suggestion of coercion absolutely feeds the conspiracy theory that we are being cowed and our liberty is being taken away.
Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is not enough for the Government merely to refrain from coercing people—they also have to pay attention to implicit coercion whereby they turn a blind eye to allowing businesses like airlines and restaurants to refuse to let people in unless they have had the vaccination? The Government have to decide whether they are willing to allow people to discriminate on that basis.
Sir Desmond Swayne
That would be discrimination. It would be vaccinationism, which we must of course resist.
The other thing that any kind of coercion would do is to set the seal on this Government’s reputation as the most authoritarian since the Commonwealth of the 1650s; but it is as nothing to the enthusiasm that we have seen from the Opposition Front Bench for even more coercive and restrictive measures.
Covid-19: Winter Plan
Desmond Swayne Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
With great respect to the hon. Gentleman, perhaps that was one of the answers I gave that was mysteriously truncated in the course of my giving it. I think I said pretty clearly that the criteria we would use to decide who went into which tier would be case detection rates in all groups, case detection rates in the over-60s, the rate at which cases are rising or falling, positivity rates, and pressure on the NHS. Those are some of the criteria that we will use.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
“He loved Big Brother.” The last ruler that told us how we may or may not celebrate Christmas was Oliver Cromwell. It didn’t well, did it?
The Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend is completely right in his basic instincts, which I share, and his fundamental libertarian yearnings, which I also share. I love Christmas; I love a big get-together. The trouble is that the people of this country can see that there is a real risk that if we blow it with a big, blowout at Christmas, we will pay for it in the new year. They want a cautious and balanced approach, and that is what we will deliver for the whole UK.
Covid-19 Update
Desmond Swayne Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I repeat the point that I have made about the self-employed: £13.5 billion has been given to support them, and where there is more we can do, we will obviously look at it. The hon. Lady makes an interesting point about whether a local approach would have been better throughout this than a national approach. All the evidence is that we need both. That is what we have supplied, and that is what we will continue to supply. That is why we are expanding our support for the local approach. The experience of other countries shows that we need a national approach, because otherwise the local test and trace operations simply do not join up. Plenty of countries have had that experience, and that is why we are taking an approach that joins up local test and trace with national test and trace.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
What does the Prime Minister make of the special envoy’s statement that
“We in the World Health Organisation do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus”?
The Prime Minister
I totally agree with what David Nabarro had to say—I think he is completely right. I think that the best way to control this virus is common-sensical restrictions on person-to-person contact, because it is that person-to-person contact that spreads the virus. That is what we all need to do.
Oral Answers to Questions
Desmond Swayne Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Michael Gove)
We and the devolved Administrations recently published a joint statement showing our commitment to work together to protect the health of our citizens, to protect our communities, and to enhance our economic recovery. Ministers from all the devolved Administrations attended Cobra on 22 September following bilateral discussions with the Prime Minister the day before. Of course I have regular meetings with the First Ministers of all the Administrations.
Sir Desmond Swayne
If the effort against covid is a war, then the first principles are the selection and maintenance of the aim. In March, the aim was to flatten the curve and protect the NHS. Has it changed?
Michael Gove
No. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, as a distinguished Territorial Army officer as well as a very successful former Defence Minister. Yes, our aim is to flatten the curve, to protect the NHS and to save lives.