Lord Allan of Hallam
Main Page: Lord Allan of Hallam (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Allan of Hallam's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(1 year ago)
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Lord Markham (Con)
I thank the noble Lord and applaud the research work that has been done. As I said, we have invested £50 million on top of the £118 million for Covid research. Just as we were one of the front-runners in developing the Covid vaccine, with AstraZeneca, it is very much our ambition to be a front-runner in developing cures for long Covid.
Lord Dobbs (Con)
It is this side. Thank you for giving way; I appreciate it. So far, 223,738 people have died from Covid and it has cost this country between £310 billion and £410 billion. Last month, in a Written Question, I asked the Government what they thought were the origins of Covid. The Answer that came back, which was not a reply at all, was that they fully supported the World Health Organization’s study into its origins. But that is an organisation that once speculated that Covid might have come into China on a package of frozen food. The World Health Organization has achieved very little since, and Nature magazine has just revealed that it has “quietly shelved” its second scientific investigation into Covid’s origins. Why do the Government appear so uninterested in the origins of a disease that has cost us so much? Why did it happen, where is it going and how are we going to prevent a second epidemic causing the same sort of chaos that came from Covid?