Covid-19 Update — House of Commons, 2020-03-24
Topic: Health
Matthew John David Hancock (Conservative, Centre-right): I will go through the answers to the questions the hon. Gentleman reasonably asked. He asked about the most vulnerable. A programme of work is under way to ensure that those who need support because they are staying at home—especially those who are victims of domestic violence—get that support. It is incredibly important and difficult work, but we are doing what we can in that space. He also asked about prescription charges. Only around a fifth of people pay prescription charges, so those who are the least able to pay already get free prescriptions The hon. Gentleman asked about Sports Direct. Sports shops are not essential retail, and therefore they will be closed. I have seen a bit of the noise that has been going on around today about Sports Direct in particular. I want to be absolutely clear that sports kit is not essential over the next three weeks, so we will be closing Sports Direct, along with other non-essential retail. He also asked about fines for corporates as well as individuals—absolutely, those fines are available if that is necessary The hon. Gentleman asked about protective equipment, and he is quite right to do so, because as we discussed yesterday, having protective equipment for staff on the frontline—especially those in the NHS and social care, but also in other frontline services—is very important. We are moving heaven and earth, and the military involvement is ramping up the delivery of that equipment. He asked specifically about social care. I am glad to say that the current plan is to get protective equipment to all social care settings by the end of this week, and then we will have to keep going. We have put in place a hotline. If someone needs PPE and they are not getting it, they should call the hotline so that we know where the difficulties are in getting PPE to the frontline, and we can respond to those calls and get it to them. I feel that very strongly The hon. Gentleman asked about testing. As we have discussed many times, we are ramping up testing as fast as we can, including buying millions of tests. My team are currently buying these tests, which we will make available as quickly as possible. He asked about there being no machines ready to buy. I do not recognise that at all. I have not seen any leak, and I would not want to comment on a leaked email—certainly not one that I have not seen. It is true that we are bringing testing machines together to provide a more efficient testing system, and I am grateful to the universities that have put these testing machines into the system. This is a national effort, and they are playing their part. We are also buying machines where we can The hon. Gentleman asked about staff ratios, which have been publicised this morning. It is true that we are having to change the standard staff ratios for delivery of certain types of procedure, including ventilation. The reason is that we cannot easily train somebody to intubate a patient and put them on a ventilator. We are training those who we can train to the standards necessary, but this is an incredibly difficult task, and it is therefore safer to have the doctors who are trained to do it and experienced in doing it doing it to more people, with more support staff than in normal circumstances. That is absolutely necessary to respond to the quantity of need, because this is a very specialist part of the NHS and of medicine that suddenly has much bigger demand than could ever have been envisaged outside a pandemic scenario I pay tribute to the staff who will be working much more intensively and who are putting their vital skills at the service of the nation in order to save lives. I am grateful to all those who have worked with the royal colleges to ensure that we get these ratios right and stretch the capabilities we have as far as we safely can in the circumstances. Finally, the hon. Gentleman mentioned abortion. We have no proposals to change any abortion rules as part of the covid-19 response.