Public Health — House of Commons, 2020-11-04
Topic: Health
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker. You will have understood from my intervention on the Prime Minister earlier that, for only the second time in my 15 years in Parliament, I am not able to support my Front Bench. You will know from our shared endeavours and experience in the usual channels that it is not easy for a former Chief Whip not to support their party, but I do so for the following reasons I very strongly supported the tiered approach, and my part of the world, which I am here to represent, has a very low level of the virus. My constituents have been working incredibly hard—businesses and individuals—to keep the virus under control, and there is a very low level of prevalence not just across the community, but particularly among those who are over 60, where the level of virus remains low and, over the last few weeks, has been flat or falling. Certainly in conversation with my directors of public health and my local NHS, no concerns have been raised about the NHS being over- whelmed. That was my starting position. I listened very carefully to what the Prime Minister set out in his press conference on Saturday, and I looked yesterday at the data that was published, but there are several flaws with that data. First, the modelling that has taken place about the number of deaths is old data, and we already know—my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) set this out very clearly—that the most extreme of those models is wrong. It has predicted things for dates that have already passed, and it has been wrong by a factor of four or five The second thing we know is that the modelling that SAGE has undertaken does not take into account—it is set out very clearly in documents published yesterday—the introduction of the tiered system over the last couple of weeks. Therefore, all the modelling just does not take into account the fact that over half of the country has been placed under tier 2 or tier 3 restrictions. We know from the information published just yesterday by Steve Rotheram, the Mayor of the Liverpool city region, that that region, which was the first region placed in tier 3 restrictions, has seen quite a significant reduction in virus across all parts of that region Of course, it is that data from SAGE that has been fed into the national health service, and all of the modelling done by the NHS about its capacity has been based on that SAGE modelling. So if that modelling is wrong, as I believe it is, the NHS forecasts are wrong. It was very interesting that one of the leaked slides last week, which showed the capacity of the NHS being exhausted in the next few weeks, was not used in the presentation by the Prime Minister at the press conference, and no data has been published to substantiate it. That is because, according to that slide, the south-west hospital capacity should have been exceeded already, and it has not, and it is nowhere near being exceeded. Therefore, I simply do not believe the Government have made the case One further reason for me is that these regulations also give the power to use reasonable force to enforce them to officers of the state who are not trained to safely use that power. The Secretary of State knows I have raised this on the Floor of the House and with him and his Ministers. I had understood a review was to take place to remove it. That power should only be used by police officers who are properly trained to safely use it. For those reasons, I am unable to support the Government and will be voting against the regulations later today.