Covid-19

Matt Western Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is generous in giving way and is making such important points. Does she agree that the immediacy —the urgency—that has been lacking in this country was evidenced in countries such as Australia and New Zealand? They got on top of it really quickly and acted hard and fast, which is why Australia had zero cases over the weekend.

[Rushanara Ali]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. Our Government could have learned from many other countries and got a grip on contact tracing and testing. Instead, what we have seen is chaos—false promises, over-promising and under-delivering. That has damaged public confidence. The public confidence that we all worked to build, across party, at the beginning of the crisis during the first wave, has been squandered by the failures of this Government.

There are now four times as many people catching covid than anticipated. The delay in introducing restrictions has already cost lives in constituencies such as mine, and we are already seeing a high prevalence of death rates among those from black and minority ethnic communities and those from poorer backgrounds—the patterns are very similar to what happened before. This time the Government know where the problems are, and their failure is completely unacceptable and inexcusable.

Given the scientific advisers’ own projections in the graphs that they showed the country last week, we are expecting even greater human cost and even more lives being lost because of the delay and the failures to act. That is why it is an absolute scandal that the Government have spent £12 billion on a private contractor, Serco. They call it “the NHS app”, but they did not use the public sector. They should have formed a proper alliance between the public and private sectors—nobody is saying that it should be one or the other. We should be pragmatic, but we should get value for money.

It seems that organisations and companies that have shown complete incompetence are being rewarded with contracts. It seems as if there is a contracts programme for Conservative party donors. I raised the issue of the PPE contracts with the Prime Minister, and he has still failed to answer—it has been weeks now. There have been £1 billion of contracts without proper due diligence.

The rate of death among certain communities was very high, and it continues to be in this crisis. The Government also need to act now to provide support to the 3 million who were excluded during the first crisis and continue to get very little support as we head towards to the lockdown. They are being left out. When children go hungry in our constituencies and public money is being wasted on some contracts on which contractors are failing to deliver, the Government need to act to ensure that we get value for taxpayers’ money.

Finally, local authorities and local public services desperately need help if they are to provide support to get the contract tracing done and get a grip on the virus. I call on the Government to work with them, support them and provide the funding that they need to protect us all.