I do not know whether it is with pleasure or huge difficulty that I follow the powerful speeches from my neighbours in the south-east my hon. Friends the Members for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) and for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton). As for most hon. Members, this has been an agonising decision, and it has not been made easier by the Government and those on the Front Bench putting forward data that contains inconsistencies or inflated projections. In constituencies such as mine, which only rarely gets near the R rate of 1, it has been hard to explain why we need to go into a national lockdown.
Many of us fought for the right to have this debate and vote, and those on the Front Bench should have shared with us the data that enabled them to make those decisions. We could have used that data to argue in our constituencies up and down the country, instead of spending time arguing with the Government and trying to get hold of it in the first place. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle laid out, it is a very different picture in the south-east. We do not have a huge infection rate or a huge number of beds taken up
with covid patients, and all our local health practitioners have explained that such things will not be the case for many months down the line. I would have preferred the tier system to have played out for a period, to see how it was working. I keep being told, however, that we need a national decision and a national endeavour, that it is one national health service, and that the Prime Minister has no choice but to put us into a national lockdown.
I will be reluctantly supporting the Government tonight, but with a caveat. I am putting the Secretary of State and the Government on 28 days’ notice. They have had many months, but over this short period, they need to put in place a public health strategy that works for the whole country—not just the north and the midlands, but me in Wealden. That means taking care of the most vulnerable people in my care homes. If we can test, track and trace in Liverpool, the same should be applied to people who wish to visit their family members in care homes. I am still hearing from my care home staff that they cannot get hold of tests and, when they do, they are never returned within a decent time.
We also need a real financial analysis of the decisions that we are taking. When people lose their jobs, they lose their security and their homes and it has an impact on their mental health. It is more than just the job; it is everything else.
In the short time I have remaining, I will make a point that has been made by many hon. Members already. We are overstepping the mark as a country, as a Government and as the Conservative party by making legislation about how people live their lives in their private homes. That is not a space that we should enter easily. In my experience, when men, institutions and Governments get hold of that power, they give it up very reluctantly.
3.31 pm