Health and Care Bill

Greg Smith Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 30th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

A lot of people want to contribute to this debate, and this first group must come to an end at 10 minutes past 5. Those who make long contributions really are doing other people out of an opportunity to speak.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

I will be as quick as I can, Mr Deputy Speaker. The point underlying my amendments to Lords amendments 123 to 127 is relatively straightforward and simple. I heard what the Minister said in his opening remarks, but I feel that if we act in a way that impacts an industry—in this case, UK broadcasters—as severely as the advertising restrictions will, and we are talking about a £200 million a year loss to our great British broadcasters, it is a matter of fairness and equity that we should give them enough of a lead-in time, enough notice and enough ability to adapt, remodel their services and find a way of surviving, to put it bluntly.

I have spoken before in the House about the fact that I do not agree with the nanny state and telling advertisers what they can and cannot advertise. The Lords amendments that we are considering, and my amendments to them, are very much about the implementation of a policy, and about giving British broadcasters—public service and fully commercial ones alike—a fighting chance. It would be much fairer to give broadcasters at least a year to comply from the point at which Ofcom publishes its guidance and puts it in the public domain. Broadcasters and advertisers will have to go through a lot of processes once this Bill receives Royal Assent, and that cuts the time that they have to put in place new policies, compliance checks and mechanisms to comply with the legislation. Two months on from Royal Assent, Ofcom will not even have got its statutory powers in this regard, and so will not even be able to start work with the Advertising Standards Authority and other bodies on the detail, and the ways and means of implementation.

[Alun Cairns]

I strongly support the amendments that my hon. Friend has tabled. Does he agree that the definition of some of the products, and the work that needs to be done, needs to undergo significant consultation, because of the way in which the efficacy, strength and merits of the policy will be judged?

[Greg Smith]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that point, as the argument that I am making is very much that these things take time. Two months on from Royal Assent, Ofcom gets its statutory powers. Only then can it start the consultation, and the work of defining the restrictions on advertising that come under the broad categories in the Bill. Let us assume that two months on from Royal Assent is some time in the next couple of months. There would then be 10-week or perhaps three-month consultations to get the detail right, for a go-live date of 1 January 2023. That does not give our broadcasters sufficient time to put in place their processes, remodel their whole service, and find a way of working when they are so many hundreds of millions of pounds down on their operating models.

[Steve Brine]

I am listening carefully to my hon. Friend. I joined the Department of Health and Social Care in 2017 and we made it very clear that this was our direction of travel. Our child obesity plan part 2 made it very clear that this was our intention. The truth is that broadcasters have known for a long time that this is the Government’s intention. My fear is that what lies behind what he is proposing is not questions of practical implementation, but argument with the principle.

[Greg Smith]

I make no secret of the fact that I am against the principle of these restrictions. The Government’s own data shows that the restrictions will save only 1.74 calories a day, which is less than what is in a Tic Tac. However, that is not the place we find ourselves in today; these amendments are specifically about implementation. Given that it is clearly the will of this House and the other place to push the legislation through, I want us to give our broadcasters a fighting chance to survive, adapt and continue being successful, great broadcasters.

Oral Answers to Questions

Greg Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Maria Caulfield]

The hon. Lady raises an important point. She is right that women are under-represented in clinical research and are waiting far too long for diagnoses of conditions such as endometriosis. The women’s health strategy will be published very shortly and I think that she will be pleased with some of its recommendations to drive improvements forward.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister for Health for giving his time over recent months to hear the case for an exciting and innovative new health centre for the village of Long Crendon in my constituency, as proposed by the parish council and action group. Will he update the House on where we are with finding funding to help the construction of the project?

[Edward Argar]

My hon. Friend is, as ever, persistent and tenacious in his advocacy of Long Crendon’s surgery plans; not only at the Dispatch Box but whenever he runs into me around this place, it is often the first thing on his lips. I will continue to work with him on the surgery bid and I encourage him to continue to work with his local NHS systems.

Covid-19: Forecasting and Modelling

Greg Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Fleur Anderson]

I am going to move on. I do not want another speech from the hon. Member, given the time constraints. I am waiting for the Minister to answer my questions.

The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee also had problems with the communication of the modelling. It is there that I might have some common ground with the hon. Members who have spoken earlier. The Committee said in its report last March that communication has not always been transparent enough, and accountabilities have been unclear. I agree with this. If the time is not taken carefully to explain what modelling actually is to the public and media, and instead room is allowed for scenarios to be interpreted as predictions, inevitably the practice of modelling and forecasting will be rubbished and scoffed at and Government scientists blamed as doom-mongers. Not communicating the data and models properly creates more uncertainty and misery for small businesses, who have been asked enough as it is, as we saw over the Christmas period.

[Greg Smith]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Fleur Anderson]

No. The PACAC report makes it clear that no one in Government has taken responsibility for communicating the data. The report states:

“Ministerial accountability for ensuring decisions are underpinned by data has not been clear. Ministers have passed responsibility between the Cabinet Office and Department of Health and Social Care,”.

That is why, as a member of the shadow Cabinet, I am responding to this debate. There are questions about the use and communication of the data.

I want to come to why we needed to rely on modelling and forecasting. Significant mistakes made throughout the last 10 years of Conservative government are the problem. There could have been much better information, and we could have been much better informed, if there had been better pandemic and emergency preparedness.

[Bob Seely]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Greg Smith]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Fleur Anderson]

I will give way—

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maggie Throup)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) for introducing today’s debate, and all hon. Members for their thoughtful and wide-ranging contributions.

Throughout the pandemic, we have been supported by world-leading scientists, epidemiologists and modellers, many of whom have worked around the clock, often without being paid for their contributions. During the fast-moving and uncertain pandemic, that support has been critical to ensuring that the Government have access to the latest and most reliable scientific advice.

The UK is very fortunate to have such strong academic expertise to drawn upon. Without the tireless work of our country’s scientists both within and outside SAGE, the UK would have been left in the dark at many key moments over the past two years. Scientific advice from disciplines ranging from immunology through to behavioural science have all played a role. Virologists have helped us to understand how different variants behave in the body, while clinicians have advised on higher risks to different patient groups. Similarly, epidemiology and infection disease modelling help us to understand the spread of covid-19 across the population, and the impact it might have.

It is important, however, to remember that such modelling is a tool to enable Ministers to make evidence-based decisions. Modelling provides a good way of understanding the range of possible futures that the pandemic might have in store for us; a good way of identifying what will determine which of those future we could face; and a good way of exploring how different policies, rules and guidance could determine which of those futures we could face.

[Greg Smith]

Will the Minister give way?

[Maggie Throup]

I am conscious that I need to leave time at the end, but I will endeavour to get through my speech and take interventions.

It is not, however, and never can be, a crystal ball, regardless of who is doing the modelling. Models cannot perfectly predict the future, and modellers would not claim they do so. Contrary to how they may be presented in the media, modelling outputs are not forecasts, nor do they focus only on the most pessimistic outcomes. Model advice to Government is not simply a single line on a graph.

There is always uncertainty when looking into the future: uncertainty from potential policy changes, the emergence of new variants, or people’s behaviour and mixing and the changes that that brings. Central to modelling advice is an assessment of this uncertainty, what factors drive the uncertainty and how the results might change if the model’s inputs and assumptions change as new evidence emerges. As such, the modellers look at a wide range of possibilities and assumptions in order to advise policy makers on principles, not to attempt to say exactly what will happen..

Public Health

Greg Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell). He was absolutely right in the way he concluded his speech: boosters are the answer to this. Boosters, and the vaccine programme at large, give us hope and a path out of covid and back to normal life.

I congratulate the Government on stepping up the booster programme and aiming to get those jabs into people’s arms by the end of the year. Making that happen will require a lot of focus and attention, and planning of the detail and the logistics. On the basis of my experience yesterday of trying to bring forward my own booster, which is booked for 31 December—I jumped from 7,000 in the queue to 3,000, then curiously to 10,000, before eventually being offered a date in mid-January—there is clearly a lot of work to be done to ensure that we can get those boosters into people’s arms.

I also welcome the Government’s move to get rid of the 10-day isolation period for anyone who happens to have come near someone who has tested positive for omicron, and to replace that with daily testing. That is a sensible measure. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), I feel vindicated in having voted against the 10-day isolation measure two weeks ago.

However, let me set out why I will not be voting for the extended mask mandate, for covid passes or for mandatory vaccination in the national health service. I very much agree with my constituency neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom), that this is a slippery slope. This is going to change the way we operate as a country, not just in December 2021 but whenever another variant—perhaps not of covid but of another virus—emerges. It is a fundamental change in the relationship between citizen and state, and one to be resisted.

I have argued throughout this pandemic—at times I have then reluctantly voted with the Government, as I did last Christmas, and at other times, such as a couple of weeks ago, I have voted against extending measures—that all restrictions are not without harm in themselves. Even on masks, it may be an easy thing for many of us to do to put one on, but as others have mentioned, to the dementia patient petrified at the masked figure approaching them, to the child with autism, or to the person who is hard of hearing or deaf and cannot read our lips, it has consequences; it does bring harm. Likewise, I have been scared by reports in my constituency of the rise in mental health challenges, particularly among young people—there has been a rise in self-harm in secondary schools. We cannot stand idly by and just ignore that.

Of course, there is also the damage to our economy. We may not have shut hospitality down, or propose to do so, but I am already hearing from pubs right across my constituency that are losing 20%, 30% or 40%—in some cases 50%—of their Christmas bookings. People are now too scared to go out, and I am afraid that correlates directly with what the Government are saying and how they portray this virus. I took a lot of heart from the news coming out of South Africa this morning that people there were finding it to be a more mild variant and that the vaccines do work. I therefore come back to where I started: let us focus on the boosters and, otherwise, give people back their freedom to choose.

Covid-19 Update

Greg Smith Excerpts

Friday 26th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

The decision to ban the flights—it is obviously a temporary ban—was taken to allow us the time to stand up the red-list managed quarantine system. Once that system starts and we are comfortable that it is functioning as we would like, we will review the decision on those flights. We will consider banning flights from any other country if it is necessary for reasons similar to those taken in respect of this decision.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to take the new variants as seriously as he does. Given the critical importance of the need to avoid damage to children’s education and development and the economic havoc that more lockdowns would bring, if the news from our world-class scientists who are analysing the effectiveness of our existing vaccines against the new variants is positive, what assessment has my right hon. Friend made of the ability to stretch the booster programme to bring it down through the age categories as we head into winter, thereby getting boosters into more arms sooner than the six-month gap?

[Sajid Javid]

Regardless of the news about this variant, the booster programme remains crucial. In fact, as I said earlier, it is even more important because of this news. My hon. Friend asked about whether the programme can be extended to lower age categories; as he knows, boosters were extended to the 40-to-49 age group on Monday, and the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation is already considering whether the programme can be extended further. I await its advice.

Health and Care Bill

Greg Smith Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 22nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

I rise to speak in this debate to outline the case behind amendments 106 to 109 in my name, and to speak in favour of those in the names of my hon. Friends the Members for Carlisle (John Stevenson) and for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller). I am also grateful from the outset for the time that my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Health and Social Care and for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport have afforded me in recent weeks to discuss these matters.

First and foremost, I want to set out that in principle I am opposed to the expansion of the nanny state. I did not get into politics to tell people what they should or should not eat, or businesses how they should go about advertising their products and wares. However, I equally do not doubt for one moment that obesity is a serious health concern for this country. It is a question of the detail and the manner in which we go about tackling it as a country—principally, that we go about it through education and ensuring people are able to make choices for themselves, rather than using blunt tools that I fear will not work. As I highlighted in a Backbench Business debate on the obesity strategy some months ago, the Government’s own research shows that the measures in the Bill will reduce calorie intake among children by only 1.74 calories a day. If that is the outcome, we must seriously question the measures before us.

The amendments in my name, however, seek to rectify an unfairness that will exist if the Government push ahead with these advertising restrictions, which have businesses in my constituency very concerned. For example, farmers such as Morris of Hoggeston, who grow oats, are concerned that within the categories under the HFSS, or high in fat, sugar or salt, measures, products such as porridge and granola, which are hardly the choice of most children—certainly not my children—are in scope. We need to do something to sort that out. Great British broadcasters, both public service and fully commercial, also stand to lose some £200 million a year from the restrictions we have before us.

My amendments are about fundamental fairness, and seek to treat broadcasters the same way as online platforms. In the first place, research shows that children, who these measures are most prominently aimed at, do not watch broadcast television as much as they used to. They look more and more to YouTube, on-demand services and online; I can testify to that from my own home, where my five-year-old much prefers YouTube to watching CBeebies or other children’s television programmes, and I think that is the same for most children. [Interruption.] I am not sure what is causing amusement on the Opposition Benches.

In fact, 95% of viewing of broadcast television before the 9 pm watershed is by adults, not children, and there are already regulations in place during scheduled children’s programming. So I fear the measures in this Bill will not work, and the fundamental unfairness that I spoke of earlier is the manner in which broadcasters will be treated compared with the online platforms.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I have listened carefully to what the hon. Gentleman has said. Given that there is this disparity between the online advertiser and the broadcaster advertiser, and if we are seeking to restrict broadcasting advertisement to children so that they do not become unhealthy, would not the logic follow that we should equally restrict the online advertiser, rather than saying, “Let’s allow more of a free for all because this is more difficult to do for the online”?

[Greg Smith]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. If he will let me make a little more progress, I think he will find that my amendments seek to put a harsher perspective of this on the online platforms, rather than letting anyone off anything whatsoever. I repeat that my fundamental position is one of opposition to the nanny state and restrictions, but recognising that if the Government are going to push these restrictions forward, we have to have fairness and parity across broadcast and online sectors, otherwise there will be loopholes, things will fall through the cracks and the Government will not achieve their objectives.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

I certainly support the argument that my hon. Friend is putting forward. Does he feel that the Government have found themselves in a position where they feel they need to react because of the genuine obesity crisis among young people and this would seem to be the highest-profile publicity effort, but that really we should be focusing on the evidence of the case and the argument, so that we can actually have an impact on it, rather than steal the headline that might just last a couple of days?

[Greg Smith]

My right hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head: if we are to tackle obesity as a country, we have to look at the most successful outcomes. Fundamentally, I believe those to be ones of education, ensuring that parents are empowered to be able to make the best decisions for their children and ensuring that people are empowered to come to the right choices for themselves. The point about these amendments is to ensure that we are not giving a green light to one side while harshly penalising another for hosting these adverts.

The nub of the point is that the broadcasters will, in effect, have to pre-clear any advertising that is put on to their platform and there will be very harsh penalties, leading right up to the point of revocation of their broadcast licence, if they fail to do this. By contrast, although the Bill puts significant restrictions on the online platforms, they are not put through that same test. They are not put through the same harsh restrictions and requirements that are broadcasters are. This is especially important when we consider recent evidence that has been put into the public domain. The Advertising Standards Authority recently drew considerable attention to the mass flouting of the rules by online influencers across many sectors. This House’s Select Committee on Work and Pensions made an important point about online regulation in a report in March this year on protecting pension savers. It said:

“Regulators appear powerless to hold online firms to account”—

for online advertisements—

“in the same way they would be able to for traditional media.”

We need to bear that in mind as we consider this Bill, because if current regulations do not work in that field, I fear that the regulations on online providers proposed in this Bill will not either.

I offer these amendments as a call to those on the Treasury Bench, including the Minister for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar)—an excellent Minister who will consider these points carefully—to rethink the practicalities of what we are saying to the broadcast and online sectors. If the Government are intent on pushing this forward, I ask them to find that parity that ensures that broadcasters are not unfairly penalised. Great British broadcasters—ITV, Channel 4, Channel Five, Sky—already produce some incredible educational programming about diet, cooking, wellbeing and lifestyle. It would be horrendous for us to cut off their lifeline of funding.

[Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)]

I have put my name to my hon. Friend’s amendments because I agree with the points that he makes.

It is surely vital that those responsible broadcasters should not be penalised when they are doing the right thing—and yet there is effectively a wild west on the internet, where we are simply not able to manage the issue. I recognise that the Minister will be concerned that the online harms Bill will also deal with some of these matters, but we need to find a cross-Government way of dealing with this.

[Greg Smith]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right and speaks with great experience from her time as Secretary of State at DCMS. That is the fundamental point of the amendments; it is not a complex or difficult case, but purely one of fairness and treating the different platforms—the diverse media of 2021—the same, rather than pretending that the media from the old analogue age can somehow be treated differently from those of the digital age.

Let us not cut off the lifeline that funds so many good educational programmes. Let us think again about restrictions on advertisers, move forward in a way that can enable people to make the right and healthy choices about what they and their children eat without this level of restriction, and ensure that, when restriction is brought in, it is fair.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to speak for the Opposition in this first part of the debate on the Bill.

A decade ago, virtually to the day, I was a young activist taking part in marches, protests, online campaigns, letter writing campaigns, petitions and much more in opposition to what would become the Health and Social Care Act 2012. We argued that it would lead to more fragmentation, less integration, confused decision making and more privatisation and that it would not make anybody any healthier.

Despite significant opposition to the legislation, the Government pushed on. But as campaigners, we were right, weren’t we? The 2012 Act created a fragmented system that did not promote health and care integration. Performance against NHS targets, even pre-pandemic, was dismal and now it is even worse. Waiting lists have grown extraordinarily, and staff vacancies have grown to crisis proportions.

We are here today and tomorrow to consign that legislation to history—perhaps less the end of an era and more the end of an error. But the same Government who broke the system now offer a new package of reforms, and that should really scare us. These are the wrong reforms at the wrong time. There are no answers in them to the waiting times crisis, no answers to the capacity issues in accident and emergency or our ambulance services, no answers to access issues for our GPs or dentists, and no answers to the environmental factors that make a country with so many assets so unhealthy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Edward Argar]

I hope I can reassure my right hon. Friend, and other Members, that I always seek to maintain an open mind, and always seek to reflect carefully on the contributions made by Members. I will turn shortly to the challenges posed by television, which is essentially a linear broadcasting medium, in comparison with those posed by online broadcasting. I am conscious that I must conclude my speech before 7 pm.

There is evidence to suggest that the targeting of online adverts does not account for the use of shared devices and profiles between parents and children, the communal viewing of content or false reporting of children’s ages. This, combined with concerns about the accuracy of interest-based targeting and other behavioural data as a way of guessing a user’s age and a lack of transparency and reporting data online, shows why the Government believe that we need to introduce strong advertising restrictions online. Any alternative proposals would therefore need to meet a high bar in terms of protecting children online, and we consider alternatives that rely on a targeting approach to be—currently—potentially insufficient to meet the policy objectives.

Amendments 106 to 109 are relevant to the point that my right hon. Friend has just made. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) for raising these matters. His amendments mean that liability for online advertisements found to be in breach of the restrictions included in the Bill would shift to become the responsibility of the platforms rather than the advertisers, which some may see as providing parity with the enforcement mechanisms for broadcast television.

During the 2020 consultation, we considered whether other actors in the online advertising sphere should have responsibility for breaches, alongside those of advertisers. However, we concluded that this was not the right place to consider that broader issue.

The online advertising ecosystem is complex and dynamic. The scale and speed of advertising online, as well as the personalised nature of advertising and the lack of transparency in this system, makes it difficult for platforms to have control over what is placed on them. The approach that we are taking in the Bill best aligns with the current enforcement frameworks across TV, online and on-demand programme services advertising, and is familiar to industry. It will ensure that there is limited confusion for broadcasters, platforms or advertisers, as the liable parties for less-healthy food and drink product advertising breaches will be the same as those for any other advertising breaches. The Government intend to consider this issue as part of the wider online advertising programme, on which the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport will consult in the coming months.

[Greg Smith]

I am grateful to the Minister for that commitment to consider the points in my amendments, and with that commitment in place, I will not seek to push them to vote. However, may I ask him, as he makes these considerations along with colleagues in the DCMS, to ensure that broadcasters are fully consulted so that they can point out the loopholes that any online provisions could throw up?

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s confirmation that he does not intend to press his amendments to a Division, and I will ensure that his point will be heard not only in the Department of Health and Social Care but in DCMS as well.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson) for his amendments 111 to 113 and for bringing this debate before the House. I would like to reassure him that small and medium-sized enterprises—businesses with 249 employees or fewer—that pay to advertise less healthy food and drink products that they manufacture and/or sell will be exempt from the less healthy food and drink restrictions and can continue to advertise. The definition of SMEs will be provided in secondary legislation and not on the face of the Bill, which will enable Ministers to act promptly in future years if new or emerging evidence suggests that amendments are needed. We will conduct a short consultation as soon as possible on the SME definition to be included in the draft regulations. The Government want to ensure consistency with other definitions for size of business that have been used for other obesity policies, such as the out-of-home calorie labelling policy, to create a level playing field. Our preferred definition, therefore, is a standard definition used by Government across other policies.

Covid-19 Vaccinations: 12 to 15-year-olds

Greg Smith Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The Government have taken copious legal advice on this issue. I remind the House that on the rare occasions when there is a difference of opinion and a parent withholds consent when their child wants to be vaccinated, the clinician will bring together in consultation the child and the parents to try to reach consensus before they move on to the question of Gillick competence.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

Following the answer that my hon. Friend the Minister gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) earlier, could he outline the concrete steps that the Government will be taking, particularly within educational settings but also in wider society, to guarantee that no unvaccinated child will be treated any differently from a vaccinated one?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

There will be no question of discriminating in any way between vaccinated and unvaccinated children. Vaccinations are voluntary and will remain so.

Covid Vaccine Passports

Greg Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 8th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I hope that when my hon. Friend pauses and reflects on what we will be bringing forward, she will see that it is that it is much better for the nightclub industry to be able to open sustainably while we get through the next few months. The winter months are going to be tough and challenging not just for covid but also for flu. It is a far better option to listen to the clinical advice of the CMOs and implement something that is difficult for me to do, and goes against everything I believe in, but nevertheless is the right thing to do.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

We have a whole summer’s worth of data from the events research programme that shows how organisers of events such as the British grand prix at Silverstone in my constituency had to meet extreme costs to put in the planning and the checking of vaccine passports at the gate. Before this policy is put to a vote in this House, will my hon. Friend commit to publishing the data on the cost to business of vaccine passport checks through the events research programme, so that we can be fully apprised of the cost of this policy?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My hon. Friend’s question is important and is one that we will be looking at. Suffice to say, as I mentioned earlier, the events research programme certainly gave us the confidence that people can deal with this measure relatively easily. In the way that a nightclub bouncer can check ID, they can check covid vaccination status.

Covid-19 Update

Greg Smith Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I thought that the right hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) on the Opposition Front Bench was Captain Hindsight, but, seriously, this argument is completely divorced from reality. The data that the hon. Lady has just recommended to the House is data about what happened between 25 March and 7 April, and she complains about a decision the Government took on 2 April because we did not know of the data up to 7 April; so she brings to this House information from after a decision was taken and asks why it was not taken into account for that decision, and the answer is because it had not happened yet.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

Virtually everybody in the most vulnerable category, which made up 95% of hospitalisations and deaths, is protected by both jabs, the vaccines work against all variants thus far, and the latest Office for National Statistics data estimate that eight in 10 of us have antibodies. So will my right hon. Friend tell the House precisely how much better these metrics need to be in order for full freedom to be restored?

[Matt Hancock]

Our goal is that, by 19 July, two thirds of adults—around two thirds—will be double vaccinated. The data published today shows that the protection from transmission of this disease from a single jab is quite a lot lower for the delta variant, but the protection from hospitalisation from both jabs is that bit higher. That means that we do have to take a bit more time to get the protection from the double dose, whereas previously the single dose got a very significant proportion of the protection, but it does mean that once we get there, we have confidence in the effectiveness of the jab at keeping this virus at bay.

Oral Answers to Questions

Greg Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

Macmillan estimates that the current backlog of people awaiting a first cancer treatment across England stands at 39,000 people. What plans can my right hon. Friend outline to bolster cancer services so that those people get the treatment they need?

[Matt Hancock]

Recovering the backlog that has been caused by the pandemic is a huge task for the NHS, and was raised by the right hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) from the Opposition Front Bench, quite rightly. The backlog has unfortunately been increased as a consequence of the pandemic. We have put in extra money—an extra £1 billion this year—and we are seeing cancer services running at 100% of their pre-pandemic levels, and in some cases above 100%, in order to get through the backlog. The most important thing for the public watching this and for my hon. Friend’s constituents is to make sure the message gets out loud and clear that the NHS is open, and that if they have a problem, they should please come forward.