It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi), and I share very much her frustration at the impossibility of getting clear answers from the Government on so many of these important questions.
“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves”—
those words from William Pitt were included in an email from one of my constituents complaining about the way in which this Government are treating the constituents in Christchurch and so many other people in this country. What is the necessity for what the Government are bringing forward today? I asked on 8 October whether the Government would publish the evidence in support of the Secretary of State’s statement on 1 October that
“hundreds of thousands of deaths…would follow”—[Official Report, 1 October 2020; Vol. 681, c. 503.]—
if the Government just let the virus rip. There has been no answer to that question—no attempt to answer it—nor has there been any justification for the arbitrary introduction of a 10 o’clock curfew.