Public Health

With this we shall take the following motion:

That the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Rest...

In September, the Government set out their autumn and winter plan for fighting the virus, which c...

Will the Minister deprecate those public appointees who, notwithstanding the clear proportionate ...

I am sure the people my right hon. Friend is referring to will have heard him loud and clear. We ...

The Minister mentioned the UK Health Security Agency, the head of which my right hon. Friend the ...

As my right hon. Friend said, the Prime Minister said that we are putting these measures in place...

Dr Harries is a public health professional who therefore understands what public health measures ...

I reassure the hon. Lady that we listen to the advice of health professionals all the time, but t...

Is the Minister seriously saying that it is not for Ministers to have any particular view on offi...

I reiterate that I cannot speak for other people. I am setting out the measures today that we imp...

I support what the Minister is putting forward. What happens here will happen in Northern Ireland...

I speak for myself in saying that I have changed my habits with regard to hand washing since the ...

The Minister is being incredibly generous. Can I clear up something for the travel industry and t...

Today, we are debating some travel restrictions about self-isolation, but the other restrictions ...

The Minister mentioned hand hygiene. Is she aware of a study published in The BMJ on 20 November ...

My right hon. Friend, with his medical background, makes a good point that I will take away and l...

Will the Minister give way ?

Will the Minister give way?

I must make some progress.

It is on that point.

I give way to the hon. Lady.

I thank the Minister for giving way. On the point of immunity, many people who are immunosuppress...

I have heard the hon. Lady talk about that before and I take the point seriously. It is partly ab...

Will the Minister give way?

I will give way once more and then I must make progress.

My hon. Friend is the kindest of Ministers. On the question of the new variant�s severity, I wond...

I am not aware of that, and it may not be in the public domain due to confidentiality. I must mak...

I must continue.

They became mandatory in transport hubs, including taxis and private hire ...

The word �mandatory� was used but is that not just a word in the statutory instrument? In practic...

I find it quite intriguing that the Labour party has been calling for this measure for some time ...

Will the Minister give way?

I must make some progress.

In July, when we lifted most of the remaining restrictions at st...

Will the Minister give way on the timing?

I know I keep saying I will take one last intervention, but I give way.

I am very grateful. I listened carefully to what the Minister said about the timing. The Governme...

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point. I would like to reassure him that we will continue ...

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I give way to the hon. Lady, who has been trying to intervene.

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. The hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts)...

As I said earlier, we are mandating the use of face coverings. I think we are in a different situ...

Will the Minister give way?

I will allow one more intervention and then I will move on.

The Minister is really being most generous and I thank her very much indeed. Our right hon. Frien...

I have listened to my right hon. Friend very carefully, as I did to my right hon. Friend the Memb...

On that point, will the Minister give way?

I must make progress.

Given the potential severity of the consequences of not responding sw...

On that point�

I will continue.

The requirement to wear face coverings is not new. We have asked people to...

Will the Minister give way?

No, I must make progress. I have been very generous with my time up until now.

However, any...

I must make progress.

Scientific evidence also shows that all types of face coverings are t...

Will the Minister give way on the point of exemptions?

No, I must make progress.

The self-isolation regulations were introduced to provide a legal...

Will the Minister give way on that one point ?

No; I have been very generous up until now.

Anyone who has been notified as testing positiv...

Will the Minister give way?

I really must make progress.

The model estimated the impact of testing and tracing and self...

Order. In fairness, I think the Minister has been very generous with her time, and I would say th...

Together, the impacts of these regulations should combine to help slow down the spread of the omi...

It is a pleasure to speak for the Opposition in this important debate.

The omicron variant ...

I am very pleased to hear the hon. Gentleman say that about parliamentary scrutiny. He will know ...

My predecessor as Member of Parliament for Nottingham North had a strong record on recall of Parl...

On that point, does the shadow Minister therefore think we should come back before Christmas, or ...

The hon. Gentleman�s question makes me think he has some plans to book; if he is trying to book a...

I am slightly confused by these measures, because the risks are the same in any indoor setting; w...

My hon. Friend makes a good point that I will cover shortly. Of course the measure should apply t...

Last night I walked past the shadow Cabinet room and there was quite a party going on inside, and...

If the hon. Gentleman is seeking to redress grievances as to what Labour party parties he has and...

Like the hon. Gentleman, I have travelled on the tube in recent months and seen a lack of complia...

We will now start to see how effective these regulations are�they have only been going for nine a...

The issue is that enforcement is impossible when people can just claim an exemption and we are no...

We are after the fact now on that, but I think we have to protect the principle that we do not ex...

I am very pleased that compulsory mask wearing has not been extended to the hospitality sector, a...

It is hard to answer given that this is not on the face of these regulations, so I have asked the...

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I have given way to the hon. Gentleman before; I do not rule out doing it again, but will not do ...

Have the Opposition done any analysis of how much it would cost to implement ventilation en masse...

The hon. Member goes slightly further than I did in saying that ventilation should be rolled out ...

Can the shadow Minister cast his mind back to the debates we had on smoking in public places? If ...

I cannot cast my mind back to that debate�I believe I had just started secondary school when it t...

I raised the issue of ventilation last summer�we have known for a long time that covid is airborn...

I am grateful to the hon. Member for that intervention, which gets to the root of the matter. We ...

I shall be brief, but I have a number of concerns about the regulations, the first of which is ab...

It is also worth saying that one of the things we get from Ministers when we press them on these ...

Absolutely. As a former Chief Whip, my right hon. Friend knows very well that there is always par...

If my hon. Friend recalls, the reason for lockdown was to reduce a potential impact on the nation...

I am grateful to my medically qualified right hon. Friend for that intervention. He is of course ...

We are about to have another pingdemic as we approach Christmas, to the huge disadvantage of ente...

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is a very serious concern that we might be entering ...

My hon. Friend is starting to explore the issue of what happens when there is a variant. What we ...

We should all be afraid of the madness of that kind of policy. The difficulty is that 18 months a...

Happy St Andrew�s Day to all Scots across the parliamentary estate, whether they were born in Sco...

Is exactly the same not true of flu?

We do not suffer the same deaths, hospitalisations or outcomes from flu. [ Interruption. ] Well, ...

I know the hon. Lady has a great deal of medical experience, but she is referring to a period whe...

We are still seeing hospitalisations and deaths in people who are doubly vaccinated. The reason w...

Is the hon. Lady not concerned, as I am, that there is too much emphasis on PCR testing for track...

I was not claiming that it was, because genomic testing takes a couple of weeks generally and it ...

I thank the hon. Lady for bringing her medical knowledge to the House. It is very interesting, pa...

I think we would be talking about redesigning the test for a whole new antigen. I mentioned just ...

The Government Benches are not as sparsely populated as the Opposition Benches�and I do welcome t...

The reason that my colleagues are not here is that the debate is largely about the regulations in...

The hon. Lady perhaps answered some of this question, but will she set out her assessment of the ...

It is very difficult at the moment. Cases go up and down and we swap positions. At the moment, Sc...

Will the hon. Lady give way?

I have given way a lot, and lots of other hon. Members are waiting to speak.

As for the Lea...

Does the evolution of an immune escape variant, which omicron may be, occur because of a vaccinat...

I think that its emergence in southern Africa would suggest that it is from a naive population. O...

�Tis the season to be jolly, Mr Deputy Speaker. As my colleagues know and as you know, I am alway...

The explanatory memorandum tells us that the regulations make provision for

�NHS Test and T...

I do not think I would call directors of public health �activists�, although I understand that so...

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Business Secretary should have been involved in these decision...

Having been a Minister of the Crown, I hope that the regulations have been through the right-roun...

My hon. Friend has touched on an important point about the process within Government to ensure th...

I thank my right hon. Friend for his comments, which will have been heard on the Treasury Bench.<...

I thank the hon. Gentleman for being so generous in giving way. Does he accept that the evidence ...

I do accept that, and I also accept that the scientists who discovered the variant said on the me...

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I know that the Minister has been looking into the matter for me. We have not teed this up, Mr De...

I want to reassure my hon. Friend. I heard what he said yesterday, and I have asked my office to ...

I greatly appreciate that. The Minister is a good friend, and I know she is sincere. This morning...

The Liberal Democrats will support the regulations, but we have grave concerns about whether the ...

I want to pick up on the hon. Lady’s comment about working from home. I say gently to her that a ...

I take that point. We know that many of these measures often result in a lose-lose situation. A r...

I am listening carefully to what the hon. Member has to say. Does she agree that the group in soc...

I thank the right hon. Member for his intervention, but I respectfully disagree with him. What we...

I was talking about university students.

Ah, okay. I thought the right hon. Gentleman was talking about schools and young people. Of cours...

How on earth does the hon. Lady think that we can mandate or suggest that people work from home b...

Something appears to have been lost in translation here. I am not entirely sure whether the right...

I very much agree with the hon. Lady�s comments, and I wish that she had amplified them more in r...

I am incredibly grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that point. I have tried to raise that...

Order. Important though this matter is, the hon. Lady does appear to be straying. Could she pleas...

The point that I am trying to make is that the Government are framing the introduction of these s...

The hon. Lady is making an important and relevant point. Would she not accept, however, that thes...

I disagree with some of those points. As a liberal, I believe fundamentally in giving people the ...

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper). I absolutely agree with ...

Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that the major incentive for people to be vaccinated is to red...

I hope the hon. Lady accepts that people should be free to make their own decision on whether the...

My hon. Friend has been a Member of this House far longer than I have. Is there a mechanism where...

The mechanism is for the Minister to intervene on me, and I am happy to give way to her, to say t...

Yesterday, I intervened on the Secretary of State and during his statement he repeated to me:

I wish to return to the point I made earlier, and I wonder whether my hon. Friend shares my genui...

I do agree with that, and it is a good point for me to end on. Let us look at not just the consum...

I understand the dilemma that the Government face and are in. There are two main questions that w...

I see five people standing; the debate has to finish at 3.58 pm and we all want to give the Minis...

I shall endeavour to be mindful of that, Mr Deputy Speaker, and shall try to put some of those qu...

Although I recognise the right hon. Gentleman�s assertion that covid accounts for 6% of patients ...

I support the hon. Lady�s general call for transparency, but my point about the numbers is not an...

I refer to the declarations that I have made relating to the Covid Recovery Group.

I am esp...

It is always a pleasure to follow such a powerful speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Wycom...

It is pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) and my right hon. Frien...

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right in highlighting the predictions that are wrong, but the un...

The hon. Gentleman makes the point most eloquently. Politicians then become fearful. They think, ...

The last contribution before the Minister responds is from Dr Andrew Murrison.

3.30 pm

I record my interest as a practising doctor. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of W...

Does my right hon. Friend share my frustration that we have all these charts about covid, but we ...

Yes, I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. The point about that is of course that the national ...

I am pleased to bring this wide-ranging debate to a close. We are now almost two years on from wh...

Will the Minister give way?

I want to continue as many points have been raised and I was very generous in giving way when ope...