Covid-19 Update

Debate between Matt Hancock and Jeremy Wright

Thursday 26th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I am delighted that we have a significant increase in the number of NHS staff. The figures published this morning show that there are 14,800 more nurses than there were this time last year in the NHS. I am really pleased about that. The right hon. Lady will no doubt have seen yesterday that the pause on pay increases across the public sector announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor does not apply to nurses and doctors. That is, in part, in recognition of the incredible work that they have done during this pandemic.

[Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)]

As the economic damage the pandemic is doing becomes increasingly apparent, it is clearly right that businesses of all types are reopened as soon as it is safe to do so. This will take longer than it needs to if the restrictions on those businesses are calculated on the basis of virus information for places a long way away or as a geographical average for a wide area encompassing urban and rural parts. That is exactly what is going to happen to the businesses in my constituency, which will not be able to open next week if they are hospitality businesses, not because of the rates where they are, but because of the rates somewhere else. Surely it is more sensible to calculate restrictions on the smallest geographical area where data is reliable, which is largely boroughs and districts. Will my right hon. Friend commit in his review in two weeks’ time to look not just at whether individual areas are in the right tier but at whether the areas are properly constructed?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, absolutely. My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right about the importance of this. We have to balance the need for an area to reflect the human geography in which people live and effectively communicate the tiering decisions across that geography, with precisely the concerns that he mentions. For instance, Slough is in tier 3, despite the fact that Berkshire, of which it is a part, is in tier 2, so we are prepared to take those decisions at a lower-tier local authority area level. That is the exception rather than the norm, but we look at this every single week.

Covid-19 Update and Hospitality Curfew

Debate between Matt Hancock and Jeremy Wright

Thursday 1st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

It is constantly under review. We have shown that we are willing to change the measures to follow what works. This is an unprecedented crisis. I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s support for the measures across West Yorkshire. It has been a pleasure to work with him and to hear his voice in this Chamber on what is needed. My message to his constituents in Huddersfield and those across West Yorkshire is that these measures are necessary—we would not have them in place unless they were—and the more that people can abide by them, the quicker we will be able to lift them. I look forward to working with the hon. Gentleman on supporting people in Huddersfield and those throughout the country to keep this situation under control.

[Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)]

I recognise, of course, the value of simplicity on issues such as the curfew for the hospitality industry, but will my right hon. Friend accept that we should allow economic activity where it does not cut across public health objectives? Will he therefore apply an imaginative approach to doing that—for example, looking at how we might be able to allow hotel guests to stay in hotel bars where they are resident in the hotel later than 10 o’clock, recognising that some hotels depend substantially on that income?

[Matt Hancock]

I am always happy to look at, as my right hon. and learned Friend calls them, imaginative ideas like that. He will know that there is a tension between the clarity of the rules and bringing additional nuances into the rules. He will have seen how, as a society, we have struggled with that balance all the way through this, because we are in novel circumstances. I am happy to talk to him about his proposal.

Covid-19 Response

Debate between Matt Hancock and Jeremy Wright

Monday 18th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right; this is an incredibly important subject, both, as she says, during the crisis and thereafter. We have a study under way, which Public Health England is conducting, on the impact of all sorts of different conditions on the likelihood that covid-19 will hit someone hard. It is true that there is a link to levels of deprivation, in the same way as one of the strongest factors, other than age, is obesity—that needs to be investigated. We have also seen a bigger impact on people from minority ethnic backgrounds. All these things need to be studied. Levelling up and closing that health inequality gap is an incredibly important part of the Government’s agenda for recovering from this terrible disease.

[Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con) [V]]

As my right hon. Friend has said, due to the hard work of the entire health and social care system we can now look beyond this crisis. As we do that, may I ask him to say more today, and in the coming days, about how we intend to balance the need to address a substantial backlog of more routine and elective work, which, as he says, has been understandably pushed aside by covid-19, with the need to make sure that NHS staff, who have been through an extremely stressful period, have the time to recover?

[Matt Hancock]

That is one of the many balances we will have to strike in the months and years to come as we recover from covid-19. There are, immediately, three things we are doing on that. The first is that we have brought in more staff, especially retired staff, and we want to keep them. They have been absolutely brilliant and a huge help to the NHS during the crisis. The second is providing more support to staff. I mentioned the mental health support, but this involves all sorts of other, wider support to staff right across health and social care. The third thing is making sure that we rebuild the NHS, gaining from the improvements that have been made in the eye of this storm, because there have been improvements to ways of working. Huge strides forward have been taken on the use of technology, and we have found areas where that has made a very big positive impact. Although there are, of course, parts of this crisis response that we want to roll back, there are other parts we want to pick up and take forward.