Public Health

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Wednesday 6th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con) [V]]

Well, covid has outwitted us again. It has come back with a vengeance and it is hitting many people. It is affecting the hospitals to such a degree that the tired nurses and the tired doctors, who have been working relentlessly, are struggling. We have to do something about it, but is lockdown the answer? We have locked down before and the figures have gone up.

The answer is vaccinations, as we have been told by many people. Vaccinations are the cavalry, but this cavalry needs to come fast and with great ambition. We need people to be out there vaccinating. I am delighted to say that one of the volunteers who could not get through the form has now been accepted because she is a recently retired nurse. She, like many other people, wants to help the vaccination programme. We can ramp up those vaccinations once we have the vaccine in place. I accept that it will take a while with a new vaccine, but it needs to be ramped up. We need big ambition. We need not 2 million a week, but at least 4 million a week.

I am worried, however, that the Secretary of State and his opposite number on the Labour Front Bench both seem to think that, even though we will be vaccinated, we might not be able to go out. I asked a question yesterday about an 82-year-old couple who have not seen a brother for at least nine months and want to go to see him. They are going to be vaccinated on Saturday. They want to wait the requisite three weeks and then visit the brother, who is also in his 80s and will also have had the vaccine and will have waited the requisite time. I am told, however, that they cannot do that.

If we are told that we have to lockdown and the cavalry is coming in the form of the vaccine, we have to have some hope that we will able to go out and resume some sort of normality, that schools can go back and that businesses can operate normally; otherwise, we are just going to be in lockdown for months and months. That might be what some people want, but it is not what I want and it is not what my constituents want. They want some freedoms, and we have to have those.

Let us get vaccinations out, let us use every community pharmacy we have, every single St John Ambulance person there is and everyone qualified and able to give that vaccine, and let us get those vaccines out fast. Let us get people moving so that we can make the most vulnerable safe, so that they will not block up the hospitals and we can relieve the health service for what it needs to do, which is routine work.