Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between William Wragg and Nigel Adams(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Nigel Adams
We have published brief summaries of the evidence in the autumn and winter plan, which is publicly available on gov.uk. As I said earlier, we are keeping vaccine certification in reserve in case it is required to help prevent pressure on the NHS. We hope that it will be unnecessary, but the responsible thing to do is prepare for all eventualities.
Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)
I welcome the new ministerial team, and look forward to working with them constructively in the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. I am sure that they share that enthusiasm ahead of any forthcoming appearances.
May I reiterate to my right hon. Friend—whom I congratulate on his appointment—that vaccine certification is useless now and will no doubt be useless then? We have fresh pairs of eyes in the Department, and fresh perspectives. Can we please just bin it now?
Nigel Adams
I thank my hon. Friend for his supportive tone! What I can say to him is that in the light of the growing voluntary uptake of certification and the latest data on the state of the epidemic, we do not expect mandatory certification to be needed from the end of September.
Covid-19: Repatriation of UK Nationals
Debate between William Wragg and Nigel Adams(4 years ago)
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Nigel Adams
At the risk of repeating myself, it is actually the case that the permanent secretary issued his reaction to the Foreign Affairs Committee and made it clear that a political decision was not taken on whether we should participate in the scheme. Again, to reiterate the answer I gave to the SNP, the Health Secretary has confirmed that we will participate in a joint procurement scheme on therapeutics that is soon to launch. We have also made it clear that we will consider our participation in other future schemes on the basis of public health requirements, and that includes PPE.
Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)
Following on from the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), will the Minister further elaborate on the work done by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to source PPE supplies for our frontline health and social care workers? Are pre-existing supply lines working? That will be crucial in the Government assessing their key pillar— to have an adequate supply of PPE—for any decisions on loosening the lockdown.
Nigel Adams
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. As I said in the statement, the Foreign Office is an addition to the domestic work we are doing on PPE. I have had conversations with our posts in China and from China alone we have had over a third of a billion pieces of equipment. That work is continuous. All our posts are on the hunt for equipment—that is one of their tasks—and they are doing a pretty fine job.