Thirty-four years ago, as an otherwise fit and healthy 24-year-old, I was carried out of my home by an ambulance crew with a collapsed lung. I had an emergency operation in the middle of the night. I was frightened, worried and concerned about many things. Would I live? What would be the impact on my health for the rest of my life? The one thing that I was not worried about was whether there would be a hospital bed for me. Yesterday, in England, there were 10,971 covid patients in our hospitals, which was an increase of 2,376 on the previous week, or an increase of over a fifth. My own local hospital, Luton and Dunstable University Hospital, has told me that it now has much less spare capacity than it did in April and May, during the first lockdown, so the margin for error is very small.
There are no good choices before any of us. We are being asked to do a horrendous thing today. The impact on jobs, businesses and the loss of our freedoms, which every one of us who will support the Government tonight cherishes just as much as those who will not, are awful things for us to have to do. Against that, however,
we must set lives lost, hospitals turning people away, and a lack of treatment for people who are ill or have had terrible accidents. I cannot in all conscience not support a measure to prevent that happening.
I wish the motion was amendable, because I think there are things that we could do on safe care home visits. As the Second Church Estates Commissioner, I am of course concerned about the lack of collective worship, and I think that churches are some of the safest places I have been in recent weeks. I am concerned about businesses with bills they cannot pay. I am concerned about the events industry, which seems to have fallen outside so many of the support packages. Whipsnade zoo in my constituency, which has a full 600 acres, cannot open, but Kew can. Why not just close the indoor elements of zoos and allow the outdoor parts to welcome people? Let us make sure that we have click and collect for small independent shops, so that they do not lose out and so that people can shop safely come 3 December, rather than standing in long queues. Let us make sure that we do not have huge crowds celebrating on new year’s eve.
The most important thing I want to say is about enforcement. It is not just about explaining and educating; the police, councils and shops themselves must do more about people not wearing masks in shops. People should wear masks at work. It is terrible that only eight out of 10 people are self-isolating properly. This is a shared responsibility for all of us.
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