Jonathan Ashworth
Main Page: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)Department Debates - View all Jonathan Ashworth's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Matt Hancock
With this action, I am confident that we can make that happen, but it is one of the reasons and justifications for this action that we are taking. The action is serious, and I do not deny or demur from the consequences that the action will bring. My argument is not that this action is good or anything other than regrettable; it is that the action is necessary because the alternative is worse.
I would like to address the specific point made about mental health. It is good to be here next to my hon. Friend the Mental Health Minister. There were a number of questions about mental health addressed to the Prime Minister earlier. Restrictions such as these do have implications for people’s mental health—of course they do—and we are expanding mental health support to address that. However, we also know that coronavirus itself, and the impact of high levels of covid on the NHS, has a significant impact on mental health too. The Royal College of Psychiatrists has said:
“Stricter measures to control the virus are needed to minimise Covid-related mental illness as much as possible.”
Today it said:
“The new lockdown will significantly impact mental health but allowing COVID to go unchecked would also have serious consequences for mental illness. We must ensure that people get the support they need.”
So yes, I am worried about mental health, but in my book that is another reason to bring this virus under control.
Turning to physical health, in the worst-hit areas we have already seen the cancellation of some non-urgent, non-cancer treatments, such as hip operations and cataracts. Without action to bring R below 1, the NHS would be overwhelmed, no matter what we did to expand the NHS and protect the vulnerable, and then we could no longer guarantee that solemn promise to every citizen that our NHS will be there for you when you need it. We must not let that happen.
I want to say this very directly to all those who need NHS services this winter: help us to help you. If you are asked to go to hospital, that is because it is the best place for you. I want to say this to all the staff working in the NHS: we will support you this winter. We are grateful for the sacrifices you are making and we will get through this together.
As we have learned more about this virus, we have been able to strengthen social care, too, and our winter plan sets out the work done to improve those protections, including free PPE, regular testing and the systems for safe discharge that will be so important over the coming months.
Finally, to escape the clutches of the pandemic, we must harness ingenuity and scientific prowess to make the breakthroughs that will help us turn the corner. Testing technologies are improving all the time. We are expanding our existing technologies, and since the pandemic hit we have been putting everything behind our mission to expand our testing capacity. In April, on schedule, we delivered the target of 100,000 tests a day. The Prime Minister then set the goal of testing capacity of half a million a day by the end of October, and I can tell the House that thanks to an enormous effort under the leadership of Baroness Harding and Sarah-Jane Marsh, to whom I give heartfelt thanks, we have hit our target. Testing capacity across the whole UK is now 519,770 a day—a phenomenal national achievement. We now have the largest testing capacity in Europe.
It has been a hard road. As with any new technology, there have been ups and downs, but I always knew we would get there. I am very proud of the team. The next stage is to harness the new technologies—the lateral flow tests that can take a matter of minutes, the high-throughput tests and the point-of-care tests, which are now bringing capacity into the hotspots and on the spot in our NHS hospitals. That is all part of a mass testing capacity that we are building right now, which, alongside the work on vaccines—that is progressing well—will give us so much greater protection from this disease in the months to come.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)
Before the Secretary of State moves on, just on the point about vaccines, it was reported yesterday in The Sunday Times that Kate Bingham, the chair of the taskforce, spoke at a commercial conference where attendees paid $200 to attend and revealed commercially confidential information. Certainly at the least she apparently revealed information about a vaccine being ready by Easter, which is welcome, and that the Government have done a rehearsal to get the vaccine distributed—again, that is welcome—but why has she revealed that information there? Why has the Secretary of State not revealed that information here? Members may want to take some of those things into account before they vote on Wednesday. Did he authorise her speaking at this event, and can he update us on what she said?
Matt Hancock
The covid vaccine taskforce is about the procurement of the vaccines. That is a matter for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. The Department has put out a statement and made clear the circumstances around that conference. What I would say is that I am very happy to answer any questions on vaccines. As the hon. Member says, we have procured a number of vaccines. We have procured six in total, two of which are the two leading vaccines in the world. The taskforce has done an excellent job of making sure that we have one of the strongest procurement pipelines for vaccines in the world.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)
I appreciate that there are Members who applied for the previous debate and could not get in, so if Members will forgive me, I will take very few interventions. It would be a shame if Members could not get into this debate, as happened last time.
On 21 September, SAGE advised the Prime Minister to adopt a time-limited circuit breaker, and warned that
“not acting now to reduce cases will result in a very large epidemic with catastrophic consequences”.
On 13 October, when we debated the tiered approach, I warned that
“the embers are burning brightly”
nationwide, and that
“further action is going to be needed.”—[Official Report, 13 October 2020; Vol. 682, c. 205.]
Later that day, the Leader of the Opposition proposed to work with the Prime Minister in the national interest and help to introduce a time-limited, two-week circuit break across the school half term.
What was Downing Street’s response to our offer to work together? Downing Street branded us opportunistic. The Chancellor criticised us, describing the proposal as
“a damaging, blunt, national lockdown”
that would cause
“unnecessary pain and suffering”.—[Official Report, 22 October 2020; Vol. 682, c. 1252.].
Even though this morning he defended the decision to go into lockdown, there are now briefings—I am sure the whole House will be shocked by this—that the Chancellor does not really support this lockdown after all. I have been around for a long time, and I know that when a Chancellor tells a Prime Minister that he supports him, while simultaneously letting Tory Back Benchers think that he backs them, that is definitely a man on manoeuvres.
Then we have the Foreign Secretary, who said that
“the idea of a short, sharp circuit breaker is, frankly, something of an enigma. No one can say, if you go into a national lockdown at what point you get out of it.”
Well, quite.
That brings me to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office—a man renowned for his long-standing loyalty to the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson)—who, in recent days, performed a pirouette with great panache. Two weeks ago on “Sophie Ridge on Sunday”, when asked whether a circuit break could be introduced, he gave an emphatic “No!” But yesterday, when asked on “Sophie Ridge on Sunday” whether the Prime Minister’s lockdown could extend beyond four weeks, he said yes. No wonder the Foreign Secretary is confused with that level of consistency from his Cabinet colleagues.
Then, of course, we have the Prime Minister. Two weeks ago, he said a lockdown would be the “height of absurdity” and he said that a lockdown would “turn the lights out”, yet here we are on the eve of a longer, deeper and more restrictive lockdown than we proposed. Fundamentally, this is about the Prime Minister’s judgment. Since SAGE advised a lockdown in September, over 4,000 lives have been lost. Infections have increased from 4,000 a day to over 20,000 a day. The numbers in critical care on ventilation have increased from 154 to 815. Deaths have been doubling roughly every two weeks since the beginning of September.
Thousands more, sadly, are likely to die over the next fortnight. Tragically, this lockdown is too late for them. Andrew Hayward from SAGE said earlier today on the radio that
“if we had chosen a two-week circuit break…we would definitely have saved thousands of lives and we would clearly have inflicted substantially less damage on our economy than the proposed four-week lockdown will do.”
On Wednesday, Labour Members will, in the national interest, vote in support of the necessary measures, but the House should be clear that this lockdown will be longer and more damaging because the warnings from SAGE in September and then from the Opposition in October were dismissed by the Prime Minister. There is a sorry pattern to this Prime Minister’s handling of the crisis.
Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)
The shadow Health Secretary risks inadvertently misleading the House in suggesting that SAGE was recommending a two-week circuit-breaking lockdown. As he knows, it has strongly suggested that what it was talking about was a series of lockdowns. Is that still Labour’s position?
Jonathan Ashworth
I am sure the hon. Gentleman is familiar with the minutes from SAGE, which read:
“The shortlist of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) that should be considered for immediate introduction includes:...A circuit-breaker (short period of lockdown) to return incidence to low levels.”
That is the proposal that we endorsed, and it is the proposal that was rejected on 21 September by the Prime Minister. Now the Prime Minister is putting the country into a four-week lockdown, which the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster conceded yesterday could last beyond four weeks. This is fundamentally about the judgment of the Prime Minister, and indeed the Chancellor, who, we know from briefings, blocked the Government from making the choice to go for lockdown earlier.
Throughout this crisis, we have seen mistake after mistake. The preparations for this pandemic were poor and insufficient. The lessons of Exercise Cygnus were not taken on board. The country’s stockpile of PPE was allowed to dwindle, leaving frontline health and care workers unprotected and placed in harm’s way. I hope we can get a cast-iron guarantee that the same will not happen again this winter. Instead of putting the public health teams in charge of tracing, Ministers turned to outsourcing companies, with management consultants paid more in one day than care workers would be paid over four months. Week by week, the numbers followed up by the test and trace system fall. Directors of public health, who want to get on with contact tracing, complain that it takes days for them to receive the information on cases.
The app was months too late, and yesterday we learned that it has an not even been alerting people properly. The Secretary of State is supposed to be the digital whizz kid, and he could not deliver the app on time, and it has not been working sufficiently. Far too many test results are still not turned around in 24 hours, even though we know that we need speed when dealing with a virus that spreads with such severity. There have been 1,300 outbreaks in care homes since the end of August, and care staff still wait more than two days for results.
As we have heard, there is still inadequate financial support for people who need to isolate. It should be no surprise that there were reports of less than 20% of people isolating, given that they are expected to make a choice between feeding their families and their health. Rather than giving people proper, decent sick pay, the Chancellor spent hundreds of millions subsidising meals in restaurants through the summer. There is now evidence from academics to suggest that that led to the spread of the virus and seeded the virus in the early stages of this second wave. We welcome the announcement of the 80% furlough, but furloughed workers in the midlands and the north will conclude that their jobs were worth 13% less than those elsewhere.
The experiences of other countries were needlessly ignored, warnings were downplayed, and the precious advantage of time was squandered. Tragically, that has been as true in September and October as it was in February and March. The Government did not learn. It does not require a crystal ball to listen to scientists and make timely decisions in the national interest, so lessons must be learned, and this lockdown must be used wisely.
I welcome what the Secretary of State said about expanding testing capacity, but we also need to turn around the PCR—polymerase chain reaction—tests quickly for those with symptoms. They are still not turned around in 24 hours. If we are going to have extra capacity in the system, I hope there will be a commitment to turn those tests around in 24 hours for those who need them. We need to expand access to testing to more people, to rebuild confidence across society. UK universities are leading the way in piloting regular saliva testing for students, and some have extended that to the wider community. Rolling out these saliva tests across communities paves the way for weekly testing of key workers such as transport staff, care staff and, especially, NHS staff.
We have been calling for months for the Government to roll out a programme of regular, routine testing of frontline NHS staff. Surely, as we move into winter, that should be a priority. The saliva testing innovation should be brought on stream quickly to do that routine testing of all frontline NHS staff. If we could roll that out—I know that the Secretary of State agrees with me on this, and I do not disagree with him on the objective; I am urging him to use these four weeks to get a move on with it—it would allow us to identify asymptomatic carriers and protect the most vulnerable in society. Will he come forward with a plan to work with our universities on saliva testing, which he knows is very exciting and could make a huge difference?
Contact tracing has to be fixed. It has not been working properly through the call centre approach. The local directors of public health would do a more effective job, but they need to get the contacts within 24 hours, not within days. If they get those contacts within 24 hours, they can introduce as a matter of routine retrospective contact tracing, which finds where people got the virus from and identifies super-spreading cluster events. That approach has been taken in countries such as Japan, and we know that it is more effective. I know that it is happening in some hotspots, but it should be routine across the country.
As I said, we need reassurance that people will get support for isolation. In this lockdown, we will have a spending review, and the test of that spending review is how it will support our national health service and social care sector for the rest of this covid period. We entered this crisis after years of underfunding in the national health service, with capital budgets repeatedly raided—[Interruption.] There were years of underfunding in the national health service—of course there were. The national health service used to get a funding increase of around 4% to 5%. It got something like 6% to 7% a year under Labour Governments. Under this Government, for 10 years, it has got around 1%. Everybody knows that the NHS went into this crisis after years of underfunding. Everybody knows that the NHS went into this crisis with capital budgets having been repeatedly raided, which has left hospitals with a £6 billion repair bill. The NHS entered this crisis with around 15,000 beds having been cut since 2010.
Matt Hancock
We cannot let this stand—what a load of nonsense. The NHS went into this crisis with the highest funding level in its history, with more doctors than at any time in its history, with more nurses than at any time in its history and with the biggest hospital building programme in its history. The investment from this Government in this NHS is the highest that has ever been made by any British Government in history, and that is why it is only we who are the party of the NHS.
Jonathan Ashworth
The national health service has been systematically underfunded for years under this Tory Government. The NHS went into this crisis without adequate levels of PPE for frontline staff, with nurses using curtains and plastic bags to protect themselves on the wards in the face of this horrific virus. [Interruption.] They are sighing, but they sent our staff into the face of danger without the proper protection; that is what happened going into this crisis, because of years of cutbacks and underfunding of the national health service. The cutbacks and underfunding mean that we have lost 15,000 beds in the national health service since 2010, and that our public health budgets have been cut by £800 million under this Tory Government and because of years of austerity for the NHS. There are people with serious mental health problems who will be spending this lockdown in Victorian-style mental health dormitory wards because of the cutbacks in the capital funding for the NHS.
Matt Hancock
The hon. Gentleman mentions dormitories in mental health services. Dormitories have plagued mental health services for years and years and years—and who are the first Government to not only commit, but to put the funding in to end dormitories in mental health services? It is this Conservative Government. It is not only that this Government are the Government for the NHS and that we are the party of the NHS; we are also the party investing record sums in mental health services, with the biggest increase of all the increases in funding going into mental health services, including to end the dormitories in mental health services that have existed ever since the NHS was created.
Jonathan Ashworth
The Government have been cutting capital budgets in the NHS, which is why we have still got those horrendous dormitory wards, including at Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust and Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. Years of Tory cutbacks have meant that clinical commissioning groups have been raiding child and adolescent mental health budgets in order to fix the wider revenue gaps in the NHS. That is because of 10 years of underfunding in the national health service. We went into this crisis with an NHS that did not have enough staff—short of 80,000. It has seen 15,000 beds cut and public health budgets cut by £800 million. Hospitals have been left with £6 billion of repair bills and with these Victorian dormitory wards that have not been updated for years. The Secretary of State cannot stand there and say that the NHS had enough investment going into this crisis, because if it had we would not have had staff without PPE.
Stephen Doughty
Perhaps my hon. Friend will take a look at the situation in Wales. Thanks to investment from the Welsh Government, I have a brand-new mental health facility at Llandough Hospital in Cardiff South and Penarth, with state-of-the-art facilities to deal with mental health issues in Wales.
Jonathan Ashworth
Wales also has a much better test, trace and protect system because the Welsh Government did not outsource it to Serco. Of course, the Welsh First Minister showed some leadership and actually imposed his short firebreaker, when the Secretary of State’s leader was running away from the difficult decisions that were needed and was not following the advice of the scientists.
The spending review is due towards the end of November. The test will be whether the NHS and the social care system are given the funding they need. One matter that the Secretary of State did not go into in great detail—perhaps the Minister for Patient Safety, Mental Health and Suicide Prevention, the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries), could respond when she sums up—is what protection will be in place for the social care sector. We understand why we need to have a lockdown, but we know that a lockdown is going to be particularly devastating for those in receipt of social care. Many people have made great sacrifices, not being able to see their loved ones in social care throughout this period. There is a great worry that many loved ones are literally fading away in social care, not able to see their daughters, granddaughters, sons and grandsons.
We really need a system in place so that loved ones can see their families in social care. Some of the testing innovations that the Secretary of State has spoken of, which we welcome, should be used so that relatives can see their loved ones in social care regularly. He did not mention that today, but this is going to be a real issue in the coming weeks. I hope that the Minister of State can reassure the House that there will be a sufficient plan in place for those in receipt of social care to be fully protected throughout the four-week lockdown and the winter more generally.
Rushanara Ali
Does my hon. Friend agree that not only do those in care need additional protection, but the black and minority ethnic death rates in the first lockdown were unprecedented? The Government published the disparities report, yet they do not have an action plan as we go into a second wave. We can see the numbers already; BAME deaths have already happened in my constituency in this wave. What are the Government going to do to protect those from BAME backgrounds who are particularly at risk?
Jonathan Ashworth
This is a really important point, which my hon. Friend has raised many times in the House. We know that covid particularly thrives on inequalities in society and is particularly brutal with respect to socioeconomic inequities. We have seen the disproportionate impact on those from BAME backgrounds, particularly those who live in constituencies such as hers and mine, in overcrowded housing or in low-paid, public-facing roles. The Public Health England report and other reports published in recent weeks by think tanks all make welcome and sensible recommendations about targeted testing and particular protections in the workplace. Those need to be implemented because we know that this virus is particularly cruel when it comes to inequalities. That is why I have always made the broader point that getting through this virus in the end not only relies on mass testing—we agree on that—and the wider distribution of a vaccine, but fundamentally relies on a wider health inequalities strategy. We went into this crisis with inequalities getting wider, life expectancy going backwards and child mortality rates worsening. That is the result of 10 years of austerity, as Sir Michael Marmot says. If we want to get on top of this virus, which is now endemic, we are going to need a fully resourced and wider health inequalities strategy.
Jonathan Edwards
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I invite him to agree that the Treasury needs to up its game on its co-ordination with the devolved Administrations because, when Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland wanted to go into lockdown there was no extension to the furlough, yet there is when the policy comes to England. The Treasury needs to be working with the devolved Administrations so that they can pursue their chosen public health policy.
Jonathan Ashworth
The hon. Gentleman makes a completely valid point, although it is not just about the devolved Administrations; the Chancellor should work more closely with the various civic leaderships across the country. When it was the north being locked down, they simply did not get the economic support for the jobs and livelihoods in their areas. If the Government are moving to a tiered system post this lockdown, whenever it ends, I hope that they will not make that mistake again.
If this pandemic has taught us anything, it is surely that our NHS and social care service, and the staff who care for all of us, need to be fully funded and supported in the months ahead. We will support this lockdown on Wednesday—we will vote for it—but the British people are again being asked to make huge sacrifices, so, in return, Ministers must not waste this lockdown. They must take action to improve the test and tracing system, they should expand the new testing techniques and we must give the NHS and our social care system the support they need to get through the months ahead.
Jeremy Hunt
I would be very grateful, and I know that staff everywhere would be grateful, if my right hon. Friend could give some indication of when all NHS staff can be confident that they will be tested, but I thank him very much for that answer.
Secondly, I hope the Secretary of State will not mind me saying that this is the moment when we have to fix contact tracing. To be reaching only 60% of people’s known contacts is not good enough. He knows that, and he does not try to defend it—
Jeremy Hunt
No, no. This is the point: when we have 50,000 people being infected every single day, it is a massive logistical task, but if we are honest, we still had problems when it was a tenth of that number being infected every day. This is the moment to recognise the uncomfortable truth that this would be better done locally, with local authorities taking the ultimate responsibility. While we are making these changes to the contact tracing regime, to have only 20% of people who are infected and told to self-isolate actually complying suggests only one answer, which is that we as the state should pay their wages for the period that they have been asked to isolate. That is expensive, but it is less expensive than the cost of them not complying with the important direction to isolate.
On a more technical matter, I ask the Health Secretary to consider whether there is a way we can speed up the approval of the new therapeutic drugs that are coming online. As he knows, we generally wait until both safety and efficacy are proved before approval is given to a new drug. However, in a pandemic, would it not be right to allow the mass marketing of drugs to go ahead as soon as they are deemed safe, even though we cannot guarantee their efficacy? That could save lives, and any delay might mean that people could not get the benefits of those new drugs.
I want to finish on the issue of population testing. My right hon. Friend and I have had many discussions about this and again I know that he is sympathetic. We are in an immensely stronger position because of the huge improvements in testing capacity that he rightly celebrated in his earlier comments. However grave the situation we are in now, it would be a whole lot graver if we had not increased testing capacity from 10,000 a day to 100,000 a day, and then to 500,000 a day last week and potentially 1 million a day by Christmas. We are not far off the 2 million a day that would be needed to test the whole population every month.
Now is the time for us to tell the public how we are going to chart a course to that destination, because this is the only true light at the end of the tunnel. Charting a course to that destination means charting a course through the incredibly complex logistics and through the technology that will be necessary to record who has or has not had their positive test on time, but if we can show people that there is a date next spring by which the whole population will be tested on a regular basis, we will also be showing people that there is a way through this pandemic. In that way, our national depression would be lifted and we would be able to give the hope to our constituents that is now in such desperately short supply.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Guildford (Angela Richardson); I thank her for her speech.
I, as much as anyone here, know at first hand that there is no way of understanding this virus—how it takes one and leaves another, or how it spreads in one room in 15 minutes, yet in other rooms people sit for hours with no transmission. I recognise, as others do, the incomprehensible aspect of this disease, so I also recognise that it is difficult to strategise. Looking forward, what should our next steps be? We have the benefit in this second wave of not being as unsure as we were. Our NHS has equipment and more medical knowledge. There are plasma trials, which appear to make a difference. We know which interventions are the better ones. I am pleased that we have the Nightingale hospitals.
I was also pleased to hear the Prime Minister and the NHS reiterating the need for people to attend appointments if they need screenings and tests, because my abiding concern has been and will be whether we are saving people from covid at the expense of allowing people to die from cancer—a point that other Members have mentioned. One of my constituents said to me, “Is my husband’s death meaningless because it was cancer and not covid that took him?” It is imperative that we protect the NHS by doing the right thing, and the NHS has to be open for day-to-day business; it is so important to ensure that that happens.
If hon. Members look at my head, they will know that I do not go to a barber very often. I just use a shammy; I do not even use a comb. But that is by the by. I say that in jest, but I do want to make a plea for barbers and hairdressers, who have got the R rate to 0.02. I ask myself, why on earth are they subject to rules and regulations when their R rate is the one that the whole nation wants to get to? We want to get it to 1; they have got it to 0.02. Those people could end up having had six months of reduced wages. Just how can we let them down? Those people have bought houses and have been buying gifts on the high street—it just so happens that Newtownards High Street in my constituency is the Northern Ireland high street of the year. How do we let those retailers down?
Simon Hamilton, the chief executive officer of Belfast Chamber of Trade and Commerce, has said:
“COVID-19 has created an interlinked health and economic emergency. This pandemic has cost lives and already has driven numerous businesses to closure causing a huge number of job losses which are reflected in the latest labour market statistics which show the second highest number of redundancies ever during a period when the furlough scheme was meant to protect jobs… Businesses have invested millions of pounds in making their stores, their restaurants, their pubs, their hotels and their factories safe for staff and safe for customers.”
Without the willing co-operation of those businesses, where would we be? He continued:
“It has been an unprecedented period of uncertainty and challenge. After finding the fortitude to keep going after months of lockdown, restrictions and closure earlier this year, many believed that they were starting to see light at the end of the tunnel only for that to now be extinguished.”
That is what really worries me about where we are. It is about finding a balance for health and for business.
The Minister is not here, but there is a good understudy—the Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty’s Treasury, the hon. Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris)—in her place taking notes. I ask the Government to reconsider the closure of churches. My email inbox has been full of requests on their behalf. Our lockdown in Northern Ireland has been successful and we have been able to give people a place to go once a week to meet in unity and pray for the future of this nation—to seek God for strength, peace, comfort, hope, wisdom, forgiveness and even joy at this difficult time.
Jonathan Ashworth
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is as pleased as I am that Leicester are winning 2-0 against Leeds.
On the hon. Gentleman’s point about places of worship, a lot of my own constituents have got in touch about our gurdwaras, temples, mosques and churches, and are deeply concerned about this. I hope that before the vote on Wednesday—we will be supporting the lockdown regulations—Ministers can come to the Dispatch Box and give us some reassurances around places of worship. It is a very important issue and I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman has raised it.
Jim Shannon
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. I already knew the score because my hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) had told me. I said, “I am pleased we are winning 2-0, but there’s still 70 minutes to go.” I really want Leicester to win, as my wife supports Leeds United and it is really important we win tonight.
I tabled an early-day motion asking for a National Day of Prayer. It states:
“That this House notes the unprecedented position that the covid-19 pandemic has brought the nation to; further notes that in this time of economic and societal uncertainty the country should follow the lead of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and recognise the importance of prayer when Her Majesty said in her 2013 address that prayer helps us to renew ourselves; and calls on the Prime Minister to initiate a National Day of Prayer to enable those for whom this is important to seek God”.
We need wisdom, and the call for a National Day of Prayer is for those of Christian faith and others to unite together and pray for the help we so desperately need. We need support for the NHS, businesses and the vulnerable, but we also need to humble ourselves and ask God to make the path straight as we work together to come through this covid winter ahead of us. We must trust God and we must pray for the help we need. I think every one of us here should adhere to that.