My hon. Friend makes a fair point, and that data clearly has to be available, because it is gathered locally. That would be very useful, particularly for constituency Members of Parliament.
The thing that worries me most is the exit strategy. The Secretary of State, perfectly reasonably, said that we have a sort of exit strategy in that we now have a vaccine, which we clearly did not have at the beginning of last year. However, we need to decide—this is a political decision, ultimately—what constitutes the criteria for coming out of this lockdown. Generally, it has been suggested, that will happen when we have vaccinated everyone up to group 4 in the JCVI’s list of priorities—that is perfectly reasonable—so when everyone over the age of 70 has been jabbed, as opposed to everyone over the age of 70 being offered a jab. The two, as I said, are quite different.
We need to challenge and push back on that, however, because notwithstanding the remarks made by the hon. Gentleman who speaks for the Opposition, the hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth), long covid, awful though it is for those who are afflicted by it, does not constitute a reason for continued lockdown and the penalty that this country is paying societally, medically and economically for what we are about to vote on this evening. That does not stack up; what stacks up is the awful grisly calculus of lives saved.
We have a benchmark, which is the number of lives that, tragically, we are compelled to accept every year are lost to seasonal flu deaths. That gives a reasonable benchmark of what, politically, in society we might be capable of accepting and, because we can project how many deaths will happen—Ministers are keen to do that in recommending to the House, correctly, that we vote in support this evening—they must have an idea, given the number of people who have been vaccinated in key groups, how many deaths there will be in the ensuing month, or two months or whatever one might choose.
I will just push back, very finally, on one other issue: the people in group 4. It is reasonable, perhaps, for those who can be expected to remain safe through shielding to be considered part of group 5, because that will enable many of people over 65 to be vaccinated, which will enable us potentially to come out of this awful lockdown just a little bit sooner and to meet the challenging targets that have been set by the Prime Minister.
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