Contributions
5,553 recent contributions in Hansard
HANSARD Covid-19 UpdateI really appreciate what mosques around the country have done to make themselves covid secure, and what has been done in Bradford and elsewhere. I know how frustrating it is for…02 Nov 2020HANSARD Covid-19 UpdateI understand why the people of Keighley feel frustrated after so long. Their efforts have not been in vain in tier 3—they have helped to get the R down and to depress the…02 Nov 2020HANSARD Covid-19 UpdateI thank people who are working pro bono on NHS Test and Trace, who come under repeated attack, or on our vaccine taskforce. It is thanks to their hard work that the UK is among…02 Nov 2020HANSARD Covid-19 UpdateI congratulate my hon. Friend on the clarity with which he puts the dilemma. Even in areas where the incidence has been very low, it is now climbing very fast.02 Nov 2020HANSARD Covid-19 UpdateI thank my hon. Friend for his question. I can certainly reassure him that this measure is time-limited and will expire on 2 December. As for the legal basis, the Civil…02 Nov 2020HANSARD Covid-19 UpdateSchools will indeed remain open. I thank the teachers, parents and pupils of this country. I can confirm to my hon. Friend that these measures will end on 2 December in exactly…02 Nov 2020HANSARD Covid-19 UpdateThe rationale is very simple: it is to reduce the overall spread of the virus and get the R down below 1. That is the rationale.02 Nov 2020HANSARD Covid-19 UpdateI am grateful to the people of Luton for everything that they have done, as I am to every area across the country that has worked so hard to get the virus down. It is absolutely…02 Nov 2020HANSARD Covid-19 UpdateAgain, there is a budget of measures that we need to bring together to get the R down, and alas, when we start unpicking one bit, logically, a lot of the rest of it comes out. My…02 Nov 2020HANSARD Covid-19 UpdateAs I have said several times today, Scotland has, at the moment, a slightly different approach. It retains a tiered approach, but furlough remains a UK scheme and available across…02 Nov 2020HANSARD Covid-19 UpdateYes, indeed. My hon. Friend will have seen that there are specific exemptions for volunteers and people who are helping—for therapists and others. We continue to put many millions…02 Nov 2020HANSARD Covid-19 UpdateThese measures are time-limited—they elapse on 2 December—but I repeat that the objective is to get the infection rate to stop doubling and to start halving. To do that, we need…02 Nov 2020HANSARD Covid-19 UpdateI am grateful to the people of Nottingham for what they are doing. The hon. Lady is absolutely right: it has been a very tough time, but they have been working very hard to get…02 Nov 2020HANSARD Covid-19 UpdateI mentioned the support that we have been giving to mental health charities across the country. We will be doing much more over the winter to support the voluntary sector, which,…02 Nov 2020HANSARD Covid-19 UpdateI am happy to provide all the scientific data on which these decisions have been made, but I think the House will appreciate that for any particular human activity, one can always…02 Nov 2020HANSARD Covid-19 UpdateWe are rolling out testing of all NHS staff as fast as we possibly can, and we are all too aware of the risk of nosocomial infection of the kind that we saw last time. One of the…02 Nov 2020HANSARD Covid-19 UpdateI must respectfully remind the right hon. Gentleman of what I have said repeatedly throughout this afternoon: the furlough scheme is UK-wide and it will continue to apply in…02 Nov 2020HANSARD Covid-19 UpdateI am grateful to the people of Warrington for everything they have done; I know that they have had a very tough time. It has been tough to control the disease there, as it has…02 Nov 2020HANSARD Covid-19 UpdateI am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because he raises a very important point. We have put another £9 billion into the welfare system, principally by uprating universal credit,…02 Nov 2020HANSARD Covid-19 UpdateThere are many estimates of the economic impact that the country has already sustained and many projections of the losses in employment that we, alas, expect. Against them, we…02 Nov 2020