Sir Jeremy Hunt
MP for Godalming and Ash · Conservative · United Kingdom
“It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I speak today as chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for financial markets and services. I refer hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, which states that I accept speaking engagements from financial services companies.”
“Chief executives of banks made very ill-judged decisions to continue paying themselves large bonuses at a time when the rest of the country was suffering, and the country suffered a longer and deeper recession at that time as a result of our exposure to the financial services sector, which was much greater than that of our peers.”
“We are in a much, much better state than we were in 2008.” But I do think that it has gone slightly too far in the other direction. Sometimes we can over-correct.”
“What further action will the Government take to improve access to finance for small and medium-sized enterprises and scale-ups, which has been a particular issue in the period since the financial crisis?”
“I thank the hon. Lady for her role in helping to salvage Barings. I did not know that before. She is absolutely right to raise that issue. I do not say this in a party political way, because my party pretty much supported it at the time, but there is no doubt that, in the run-up to the financial crisis, regulation was not as tight as it n…”
“To their credit, this Government have built on those reforms with the Leeds reforms, the Pension Schemes Act 2026 and the forthcoming Financial Services and Markets Bill, all of which are extremely welcome. But, as the hon. Member for Buckingham and Bletchley said, our competitors are not standing still.”
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Every one of 7,495 lines we hold for Sir Jeremy Hunt, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 26 of 150.
“Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) smiling. In fairness to the Government, they have moved on this issue. In July, Chris Whitty told the Health and Social Care Committee that he supported the routine testing of asymptomatic NHS staff in hotspots. I would like there to be such testing everywhere, including in my constituency, where recently we seem to have seen live cases trebling, but even in the hotspots it is not currently happening with any consistency. That is a worry, because up to a fifth of staff in hospitals got the virus during the first wave and up to 11% of deaths of coronavirus patients were caused by patients’ having caught the virus in their own hospital. That is the context.”
“I will support the Government today because, although I fully understand the concerns about parliamentary scrutiny eloquently expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady), the biggest threat that we face as a country is not the erosion of liberty but the explosion of the virus. We now know, as we go into a second wave, that for every death directly caused by covid there is at least one death indirectly caused by the disruption of cancer services, the interruption of emergency care and people being discharged early from hospital. I wish to ask the Government about measures that could reduce such indirect deaths, particularly the introduction of routine weekly testing of NHS staff, which we have discussed many times in the House—I see the shadow Secretary of State, the hon.”
“My hon. Friend has done a lot of campaigning to highlight that issue, as have Select Committee members from all parties. The Select Committee will publish a report tomorrow that considers that very issue and will be coming back to it. The Government’s own figures show that at least a thousand additional cancer patients died because of the interruption caused by the pandemic. As we go into a second wave, it does not have to be the same again. The Government have rightly introduced weekly testing for people in care homes; the arguments are exactly the same for our hospitals. Patients need to know that their NHS hospital is safe and NHS staff need to know that they are not infecting their own patients. As we go into this very difficult period, please will the Government act and make this happen?”
“I support the measures announced today. The Prime Minister will have decided on them with a heavy heart, but all the evidence from South Korea, Singapore and other countries is that early, decisive action now is the best way to avoid a second full lockdown later. I want to ask him about testing. We have tripled capacity since May and will double it again by the end of October, so there has been a transformation, but we are not there yet. At a school in my constituency a child has tested positive, but the school has a quota of only 10 tests every three weeks, and it is worried that people may be passing on the virus asymptomatically whom it is not able to identify. How can he reassure that school and others up and down the country that are trying so hard to do the right thing?”
“I support the measures outlined by the Health Secretary, which regrettably are both necessary and proportionate. Last week, on World Patient Safety Day, the World Health Organisation announced a charter for health worker protection, which asks all WHO member states to commit not only to having adequate supplies of personal protective equipment and mental health support, but to ensuring that there is zero tolerance of violence against health workers. Will the Health Secretary commit the Government to signing up to the charter so that, as we go into a second wave, all our brave frontline workers know that this Government and this House stand four-square behind them?”
“Today is World Patient Safety Day, which I had the privilege of launching virtually with Dr Tedros of the World Health Organisation this morning. The changes that the Health Secretary is announcing to A&Es are about patient safety. As Dr Katherine Henderson told the Health Committee, if we go back to crowded A&E waiting rooms, patients will die, so I welcome these changes. May I ask my right hon. Friend specifically about sepsis? Our A&Es have made huge progress in testing people who need to be tested quickly for sepsis when they arrive at A&E. If that is now to be done on the phone—if that is the first point of contact—it is absolutely vital that 111 call handlers are properly trained and their algorithms adjusted to ensure that we ask the right questions on sepsis. Will he undertake to do that?”
“A week ago today, the Secretary of State told the Health and Social Care Committee that he expected to have this problem solved in two weeks. Since then, in my constituency, two Farnham residents have been sent to Bristol for their tests, a councillor has been sent to the Isle of Wight for her test, and a teacher who tested positive had to wait a week for her results. Is the Secretary of State, given the efforts that his Department is making, still confident that in a week’s time we will have this problem solved?”
“As someone who has long campaigned for mass testing, I warmly welcome the ambition behind Operation Moonshot—and the implied characterisation of the Health Secretary as this country’s answer to Neil Armstrong. However, 10 million is a huge target. Could he give the House some idea of the proportion of that 10 million that is dependent on new technologies and the proportion that we can get to with existing technologies? Mass testing is so important to getting the country back to running as normal, and while we all want those new technologies, it would be helpful to have an understanding of how much expansion we can expect of the technologies we already have.”
“I thank the Secretary of State for his public recognition of the terrible symptoms that many people face many months after their coronavirus bout has ended; his words will give great comfort to the 60,000 people who have been suffering for more than three months. On testing, it is important to recognise the step change that we have seen and the massive increase in the volume of testing that is now taking place. Will the Secretary of State give the House some sense of the confidence he has that, with the increased testing and the local lockdowns that are now being rightly pursued, we will be able to follow the low infection levels seen in South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong, and will not see the increases we have seen in France and Spain and have to go back into another national lockdown?”
“The ongoing problems in maternity units in Shrewsbury, Telford and east Kent hospitals have shown that independent, blame-free investigations into baby deaths have never been more important. Will the Secretary of State confirm that it is still the Government’s intention to put the healthcare safety investigations branch on to a statutory footing and that those plans will remain in the Queen’s Speech later this year?”
“The Secretary of State has made impressive progress in making testing available to everyone with covid symptoms, but I wish to press him on the availability of tests for people who are asymptomatic. Will he confirm that it is the Government’s intention to introduce regular weekly testing for NHS staff, teachers and other people who are in regular contact with the public and who could potentially transmit the virus? Even if it cannot be done right away, is it the intention to do that as soon as possible? Surely that is the best way to reassure patients that their hospital is safe and parents that their kids’ school is safe.”
“This may be the last coronavirus statement before the summer break, so I congratulate the Health Secretary on his stamina over the past six months and in particular on his decision to introduce the 100,000 tests target in April, which I think will be seen as a turning point in our battle against the virus. The central challenge we now face is that according to the latest figures and as the Secretary of State knows, about 1,700 people a day are being infected by the virus and about 400 a day are going into NHS Test and Trace, which is about a quarter. As we think about how to prevent a second wave, will he give the House some details as to how we are going to bridge that gap so that we can go into our Christmas holiday with the same cautious optimism as we are going into our summer one?”
“Thank you, Mr Speaker, for special dispensation to ask this question remotely. I want to ask the Health Secretary about the worrying variation in coronavirus mortality rates between hospitals, which appear to range from 12.5% to 80%. There may be some issues of deprivation or ethnicity, but some of that variation is likely to be due to a failure in some hospitals to adopt best practice, which is what the Getting It Right First Time programme, led by Professor Tim Briggs, addresses. Will my right hon. Friend agree to meet me and Professor Briggs to discuss whether the Getting It Right First Time programme could help to reduce covid mortality rates?”
“Friend’s plans to do that, and when he does it, will he be able to do what not just Sir John Bell but Sir Paul Nurse and many other distinguished scientists are calling for, and provide routine testing for NHS frontline staff?”
“I congratulate the Health Secretary on the impressive resilience that he has shown throughout the coronavirus crisis, but as we both know, the joy of his job is that winter is always around the corner. One of the most sobering statistics in this morning’s report from the Academy of Medical Sciences is that the number of people every day over winter who have covid symptoms will increase from 100,000 to 360,000. It is obviously vital to know which of them have coronavirus and which just have regular winter flu. The report states that it is essential to have a massive ramp-up of testing and tracing capability before then, so what are my right hon.”
“We completely understand her tremendous commitment to patient safety, but does she agree that the gravity of this issue is such that it should be the Health Secretary, who made a very important apology yesterday, who comes back before the end of September and tells the House what the Government are going to do?”
“Thousands of lives have been blighted by what went wrong in the most terrible way. Does the Minister agree that the central issue is not about the three areas alone, but about all medicines and devices where there is no one for patients and people who are suffering to go to with the confidence that they will be listened to? That is why the suggestion of a patient safety commissioner is so important. It is not a tsar or a quango; this would be a person who would listen to people whose voices were not heard. I hope the Government take that recommendation seriously. Will my hon. Friend give a commitment that the Government will come back to this House before the end of September with their recommendations?”
“I thank the Minister for the compassion and the anger in her response. She is a fantastic champion of patient safety. I also thank the many hon. Members, including my right hon. Friends the Members for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) and for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke), who persuaded me to commission the report. I, too, would like to thank the brave campaigners who have not stopped until they got justice. I particularly thank Baroness Cumberlege, Sir Cyril Chantler and their team, who did a painstaking amount of work to get to where we are today. I commissioned this report because I knew that many lives had been ruined because we did not act quickly enough to deal with problems in these three areas, but the results are far more shocking and disturbing than I ever imagined at the time.”
“Last week, the Regius Chair of Medicine at Oxford University, Professor Sir John Bell, told the Science and Technology Committee that saturation testing of NHS hospital staff was an absolute requirement, and should have happened from the get-go. Last week, the Secretary of State delighted the social care sector by announcing that care home staff would be tested weekly. Now is his chance to delight not just Sir John Bell, but 1.4 million people in the NHS, by saying that from the start of next month, they too can have weekly testing. Will he do that?”
“I congratulate the Foreign Secretary on his personal commitment to human rights, which is becoming a hallmark of his tenure and is extremely welcome. If we are to have an international order that promotes not just our economic interests but our democratic values, there have to be consequences for people who violence those principles, which is why this statement matters. Will the Foreign Secretary look at whether the process for deciding who gets designated should become an independent process, as we have with compliance with the consolidated criteria for arms exports? That could be a way to disentangle the decision from the complexities of diplomatic relations, which we have to have even with nefarious states.”
“I salute the outstanding leadership being shown by my right hon. Friend on this issue, and, indeed, the superb leadership being shown by Dame Barbara Woodward as our ambassador in Beijing. It is one of our most difficult posts and we are truly lucky to be led by a diplomat of such calibre. The basic difference is that we believe that freedom of expression and peaceful protest support social stability, whereas the Chinese Government think that they undermine social stability. When we look at what is happening in the rest of the world, we can see that it has never been more important to stand up for those values, so will he tell the House what other steps the Foreign Office is taking to support freedom of expression and media freedom across the world?”
“I support the actions being taken in Leicester, but, like the whole House, I feel for the people of Leicester at this particularly anxious time. I want to ask the Health Secretary about the broader matter of testing NHS staff. He has said many times that he supports the routine testing of NHS staff, but last Wednesday—the day we debated this issue in the House—a letter went out to the NHS saying that testing NHS staff will be based on the PHE SIREN study, which is the antibody testing programme. Given that it takes up to three weeks for an antibody to show, how can a regime that is meant to stop the asymptomatic transmission of the virus to patients and colleagues possibly work?”
“May I put on record my thanks to the hon. Gentleman for praising me in this House for the very first time that I can remember its being on record?”
“When we add on the people who catch their infection in care homes, what we end up with is that about a third of new infections are likely to be in healthcare settings—so-called nosocomial infections, which is one of the many new words we have learned over the course of this crisis.”
“We can use it at airports instead of the quarantine policy, by testing people on arrival. We can use it for high-risk groups such as taxi drivers, who are particularly at risk. Most of all, we can use it for our frontline health and care staff. If we had Beijing levels of testing in this country, we would, in addition to the testing we are currently doing, be able to test every NHS frontline worker once a week. If we got it up another 200,000, we would be able to test every frontline care worker once a week as well. Why does that matter? It matters because, according to the evidence submitted to SAGE on 20 April, up to 25% of the coronavirus patients in our hospitals caught coronavirus in the hospital.”
“Well, the answer is to do something that the Government have already shown they are very good at, which is a dramatic expansion of testing capacity. The city of Beijing has about a third of the population of the United Kingdom, but its daily testing capacity is nearly double ours at around 400,000 a day, and many of those tests come back within 24 hours. We look forward to the triumphant announcement next week that we are meeting the Prime Minister’s target for all non-postal tests to come back within 24 hours by the end of this month, because speed matters. If we expand our testing capacity dramatically, we can use it, for example, to deal with localised outbreaks, such as the one we have had in Ynys Môn, where my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie) is doing such a fantastic job in supporting her affected constituents.”
“The challenge we now have is that we do not know where about two thirds of new infections are happening, so we cannot feed them into the test and trace process. That is a challenge, because SAGE’s advice is that we ask about 80% of potential coronavirus contacts to isolate, and we are still some way off that. In fact, we are contacting about 700 people a day to get their contacts and there are about 2,500 daily new infections. If we do the maths, assuming that each person with coronavirus has about nine contacts, which is the current figure, that is up to a quarter of million people since the process started whom we would have liked to have asked to isolate but we have not been able to do so. How do we meet that challenge?”
“We need to start this important debate by recognising that, as a country, we are in a transformed position because of recent changes to our response to the pandemic. We are now contacting around three quarters of the people we identify as testing positive for coronavirus and 90% of their contacts are being asked to isolate. That is the basis of South Korean test and trace, and it is incredibly important that we are in that position. I am sad in this respect that the Health Secretary is not here himself, because that would not have been possible if he had not taken the courageous decision to set the target of 100,000 tests a day at the start of April. Indeed, yesterday’s announcement about the gradual easing of our national hibernation would itself not have been possible if that had not been in place, and we need to recognise that.”
“It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson). It is the first time I have heard him speak from the Front Bench and it was a very thoughtful contribution. I hope we hear more from him. I thank the shadow Health Secretary for this debate, and, indeed, for mentioning my article in The Daily Telegraph . If I ever was on the Prime Minister’s Christmas card list, that mention will be sure to get me taken off it. [ Laughter. ] I particularly want to congratulate the Minister of State on leading this debate for the Government. As a veteran of many Opposition day health debates, I can say that she elicited a much calmer response from the Opposition than I ever did, and she deserves many congratulations for that.”
“Korea, Taiwan and Germany are all held up as examples of places that have been particularly effective in tackling coronavirus. All of them introduced test and trace, but they all did it when the virus was at an earlier stage with much lower levels of community transmission. If we want test and trace to be effective here, we need to introduce mass testing, starting with health and care staff, and we must not delay.”
“Weekly testing matters and is so important not only because, with around a third of new infections happening in healthcare settings, it will save a lot of patients’ lives and save the lives of frontline healthcare workers, but because it is the critical thing stopping the NHS getting back to its normal levels of activity. Last week, the president of the Royal College of Surgeons, whom the shadow Secretary of State quoted, talked about the mountainous backlog we face in, for example, orthopaedic surgery. He said that the thing holding the NHS back is the time it is taking to set up what he calls “covid-lite” facilities, where there is a low risk of people having coronavirus. That is why testing is essential. I do not want to take up any more time than I need to, but I want to make this point.”
“That is a reasonable question. I will certainly take that away. In fact, the CMO is coming before the Health and Social Care Committee in a few weeks’ time, and I am sure we will ask that question. My understanding is that the concern in the clinical advice is the question of false positives—people who get told that they have coronavirus when they have not. Those people might be in a very important frontline clinical role and be asked to isolate, and that might take them off very important work. To me the obvious answer is to give them a second, confirmatory test to establish whether they really do have the virus.”
“NHS Test and Trace is currently tracing the contacts of about 700 people every day who have the virus, but the Office for National Statistics says that 2,500 new people are being infected every day, which means that since the programme started, up to a quarter of a million people have not been asked to isolate who should have been. It is a big achievement to get the programme going, but that is also a big gap. What are the Secretary of State’s plans to close it?”
“On that last point, 20% of the people with coronavirus in hospital are estimated to have caught the virus while in hospital. So when does the Health Secretary plan to introduce weekly testing of all frontline NHS and care home staff as a way of bridging the still very significant gap between the number of people we test and trace and the number of people getting the infection every week?”
“I wrestled with this issue when I was Foreign Secretary, but I think it is the right thing to do. In Africa today, there is competition—intense competition—between countries such as China that do not promote democracy and human rights as part of their aid agenda, and countries such as Britain that do, and if we are going to support those British values, we need to speak with one voice. Given that one of those values is eradicating extreme poverty, would the Prime Minister consider allowing the junior Minister who will be responsible for DFID to attend Cabinet, so that people can see that the commitment to eradicating poverty is undiminished?”
“The Prime Minister’s testing turnaround target does not apply to postal tests. Given that the majority of infections can happen less than a week after the person who gives someone the virus develops symptoms, will the Secretary of State consider replacing postal testing with same-day delivery and collection of testing? If it is good enough for Amazon Prime, it should be good enough for NHS test and trace.”
“Q3. I congratulate the Prime Minister on hitting the 200,000 daily capacity target for testing, which puts us at the top of the European league table for testing. He rightly said that he wanted a 24-hour turnaround for testing, so could he tell us how many of the tests are currently being turned around within 24 hours and whether he would be willing to publish that number on a regular basis?”
“Thank you, Mr Speaker. I would like to ask the Secretary of State for three pieces of data, all of which are essential for this strategy. First, what level of new daily infections do we need to be down to before contact tracing happens for all new infections? Secondly, how many daily tests will the test and trace system need? Thirdly, if we are going to introduce weekly testing for all NHS and care-home frontline staff, when will our testing capacity be sufficient to deliver that on top of test and trace?”
“British science is world-beating because we have always championed inventiveness and encouraged challenge, so let us sweep aside the secrecy that surrounds SAGE and publish what it recommends, including dissenting views. In that way, we will harness the robust exchange of ideas, which has always been one of our greatest national strengths, and, as the Prime Minister said yesterday, come out of this crisis wiser and stronger.”
“Nor is parliamentary scrutiny possible, even when a Government say they are following the science. Until last week, we were not even allowed to know who sat on SAGE. We used to have similar secrecy over the interest rate advice that was given to the Chancellor. In 1997, the Bank of England was made operationally independent, lines of accountability were clarified and advice was made transparent. Since then, inflation has not troubled the British economy. Had SAGE’s advice been published in January, an army of scientists from our universities could have challenged why test, track and trace was not being modelled. They could have demanded a ramp-up of testing and challenged the behavioural assumptions that delayed lockdown. We cannot know for certain, but the result might well have been better subsequent advice and many lives saved.”
“Even though infections were doubling every five days, SAGE advised Ministers against lockdown and advised them to continue with events such as the Cheltenham festival and the Liverpool champions league match. That meant that infections soon grew to a point where traditional contact tracing could not cope. Of course Ministers have to take responsibility for their decisions. They have a duty to challenge and probe any advice, but their decisions are shaped by that advice. In that context, it would be totally wrong to blame individuals. Sir Patrick Vallance and Professor Chris Whitty are outstanding scientists and any Government would be lucky to have their advice. At fault is a systemic failure caused by the secrecy that surrounds everything that SAGE does. Because its advice is not published, it cannot be subjected to scientific challenge.”
“One can understand the reluctance to look at a totalitarian regime such as China, when it dangerously covered up the existence of the virus at the outset. But why, when the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies was modelling possible responses in January, did it look only at the extremes of total lockdown or mitigated herd immunity, rather than at the middle way of test, track and trace that was being pursued by the Asian democracies? That failure led directly to another, namely the advice to stop community testing on 12 March. That meant that we had no idea where the virus was, while countries such as Germany continued community testing and saved many lives as a result. A lack of interest in community testing led to another failure at the start of March.”
“I support the Government’s caution about lifting lockdown, and I commend the Prime Minister for being honest about the complex choices we face. I want to focus my comments on the quality of scientific advice received by Ministers. It is now clear that a major blind spot in the approach taken in Europe and America was our focus on pandemic flu rather than pandemic coronaviruses, such as SARS or MERS. Asian countries took a different path. As a result, Korea has had no more than nine deaths on any one day, Singapore is on just 20 deaths in total and Taiwan is on just seven. The failure to look at what those countries were doing at the outset will rank as one of the biggest failures of scientific advice to Ministers in our lifetimes.”
“Test, track and trace is possible only with a mass testing programme, so I offer many congratulations to the Health Secretary on achieving such a challenging expansion in our testing capacity. He has always said that he follows the science in the decisions he takes, but does he appreciate that, Zoom or no Zoom, it is very difficult for us as MPs to scrutinise such decisions if he does not also publish the advice of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies that he receives at the same time as he makes those decisions?”
“The World Health Organisation says that one of the six essential criteria for lifting a lockdown is that we should be able to track and trace every single new covid case in the community. Will that be in place in the next two weeks, so that when the Cabinet come to consider whether they can lift the lockdown, they will be able to do so in a way that is compliant with what the WHO is recommending? Will the Secretary of State appoint a big hitter from outside frontline politics to make sure that happens within a short period, as he has very sensibly done with Lord Deighton on PPE?”
“I salute the tone of the Prime Minister’s very difficult, sombre address to the nation on Monday night. I know that heroic efforts are happening to ramp up the amount of testing. Could he give us some idea of when we will be able to get back to routine testing in the community, as happens in Korea, Germany and other countries? Should we not now introduce weekly tests for NHS staff, so that we can remove their fear that they might be infecting their own patients?”
“Even if that is three or four weeks away, a date means that there is a plan, and without a date, people will not be confident that this really is the plan.”
“I thank the Health Secretary for the superhuman efforts he has taken to resolve the issues around PPE in the last week. The evidence is that we are in a much better situation now than we were a week ago. He will not mind if I follow up what the shadow Health Secretary said about testing. The concern is that we appear to be testing on a daily basis virtually no more people than we were over a week ago, when the commitment was to increase the daily number of tests from 5,000 to 25,000. Given that this is a vital part of the success of the suppression strategies in South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong, can he give us an estimated date when we will get back to routine covid-19 testing in the community of all suspected cases?”
“Is not the solution just to order manufacturers to make more of that vital equipment—not just a little more, but massively more? If that needs legal powers, the Bill should give the Government those powers to require every factory that is able to devote itself to the production of that life-saving equipment to do so. Numerous doctors have died across the world, including Dr Li Wenliang, the courageous Chinese doctor who first tried to blow the whistle on this virus. Twenty-three doctors have died in Italy. This weekend, France lost its first doctor. None of us wants that here. Given the total determination of the Health Secretary to protect our frontline staff, would he urgently look into whether we need to manufacture more of the highest-grade equipment?”
“All hospitals have had deliveries, and I pay tribute to the Health Secretary and everyone in his Department for achieving that, but there is still a lot of concern on the frontline. The main reason for that is because on 6 March Public Health England downgraded the recommendations as to what PPE doctors should use. That appeared to be at odds with World Health Organisation recommendations. I understand that has now been clarified by Professor Keith Willett in a message sent out on Friday that does bring our advice more into line with WHO guidelines. Most importantly, the advice now makes it clear that doctors should wear goggles if there is any risk of being sprayed, but obviously doctors would feel vastly more secure with more extensive protection, such as full-length gowns and FFP3 masks.”