Covid-19 Update

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Monday 5th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comments. First, I think he started by asking for reassurance on whether the final decision on go or no go for 19 July, which we will make on 12 July, will be informed by the very best expert data. Of course it will be, just as every decision has been informed in that way. I am only about a week into the job, but I must say that I am incredibly impressed by our scientists, medical advisers and Public health England. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to all they have been doing.

Turning to the right hon. Gentleman’s second point about the link between cases and hospitalisation and death, that is absolutely central to the next step we are taking. Case numbers are high. As I said, they will go significantly higher and we need to be ready for that, but what is far more important is how many people are ending up in hospital and how many, sadly, are dying. That is where the vaccines have worked, alongside the treatments we now have that we did not have a year or so ago. That has meant that the link between cases and deaths has been severely weakened. The last time we had 25,000 new cases a day, we had around 500 deaths a day. The level now is a thirtieth of that. I know the right hon. Gentleman will welcome that and understand that there is no absolutely risk-free way to move forward, but we need to start returning things back towards normal and learning to live with covid.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about masks. Again, we have taken the best public health advice. He will know from what I have said that, although we will remove all legal requirements for anyone to wear a mask in any setting, we expect people to behave sensibly and think about others around them. The guidance will be there. If one is on public transport—let us say on a very crowded tube—it would be sensible to wear a mask, not least to show respect for others. However, if you are the only person in a carriage late at night on the east coast main line, then you can choose much more easily not to wear a mask because there is hardly anyone else around. We expect and trust people to make sensible decisions. That is the way we should move ahead.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about compensation and sick pay. He knows that many measures are in place and we will continue to keep them under review.

[Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con)]

I support the approach the Secretary of State is taking for the simple reason that two doses of the vaccine work against the delta variant, but with 350,000 new cases daily across the world the battle against this pandemic is far from over. Does he agree that if we want to prevent another lockdown in the run-up to winter, apart from the booster jab programme the most important thing we can do is to improve the way test and trace works? In Korea, they managed to use it to stop any lockdowns. Here, it failed to stop three lockdowns. The head of test and trace told my Health and Social Care Committee that between 20% and 40% of people were not isolating when they were asked to. With his fresh eyes in the job, will he ask officials for new advice on what we can do to improve test and trace to stop further lockdowns?

[Sajid Javid]

First, may I thank my right hon. Friend for his support for the measures? He speaks with great experience and I want to thank him for that. Regarding test, trace and isolate, he is right. There are many successes over the past year that we can be proud of, but there are also many improvements that can be made. I have already asked for such advice and I look forward to talking to him about that in future.