Public Health: Coronavirus Regulations

Yes, as the hon. Lady will know, three Nightingale hospitals were put on alert yesterday to be reopened. The closest Nightingale is in Manchester, but we keep that under review because expanding the capacity of the NHS is one of the things that we can do. Nevertheless, no matter how big the NHS is, if the virus is not under control it will make more people need hospital treatment than there could possibly be hospital treatment available for. While we are, of course, restarting the Nightingales, which have been mothballed for months, that is only a precaution; it cannot be the full answer to the question. We had a very good discussion yesterday about the measures in Liverpool city region, which I will come on to in some detail.