Throughout my time as an MP, I have always had correspondence that makes for difficult reading, particularly those traumatic cases of individual constituents, fallen on hard times in one way or another. Yet I cannot recall such a collective cry of pain as has been borne out to me in recent days in the messages from those who lost loved ones during the pandemic – but were unable to be with them in their final moments, because they obeyed Covid rules and kept their distance.
It is not necessary for me to wait on the report into so-called ‘Partygate’ from senior civil servant Sue Gray to know how such constituents will have found it intolerable to hear stories of rule breaking by the rule-makers when they were forced to cope with grief alone. I also know that such frustration is widespread, and not confined to those who suffered personal loss.
Of course, to the extent that this is how the machinery of central Government works it is true that we will have to wait on the report from senior civil servant Sue Gray to bring official oversight to this affair. Amid such a swirl of reporting and accusation we do need someone to put in writing the facts as they stand.
I also believe that it would compound public frustration immensely if we allowed the ongoing saga of what happened at specific points during the pandemic to distract us from addressing the job of Government in the many key policy areas that affect our daily lives. We have many challenges, but also some extremely positive and welcome news – most important of all is the sense that we may be through the worst of Omicron and headed to better times.
When news first broke of Omicron it seemed like our worst nightmare. I was delighted when we reopened the country last July but always said the one thing that might send us back into restrictions was a new variant that could potentially evade the vaccine shield. Suddenly, we found ourselves facing precisely that prospect.
As case numbers shot up, I backed the decision, strictly as a precautionary measure, to take some relatively minor steps towards addressing social interaction – e.g. adopting a ‘work from home’ posture where possible and clarifying mask-wearing rules. Nevertheless, I made clear that my vote for such measures was conditional on the assumption that if emerging data on clinical severity did not justify further restrictions, that it was clear our default position must be to avoid further such measures, with all the harmful side-effects they entail.
Thus, I was delighted when the Prime Minister, in consultation with his Cabinet, agreed not to enter a lockdown over the late December period, contrasting with very tough measures in the devolved administrations. Just as in July when they opposed our decision to unlock, as Omicron numbers surged our Westminster political opponents wanted much stricter measures to curtail people’s freedoms – a massive misjudgement in my view.
We don’t need to speculate what such measures might have involved, as Labour are in power in Wales, and in December reverted to 2m social distancing in the public realm. This was at a time when both the data and a mass of anecdotal evidence were showing that Omicron was much milder, especially if you had been triple-jabbed. The World Health Organisation has even spoken of the Covid pandemic ‘coming to an end’ in the UK – thanks in large part to our brilliant vaccine program.
The implications of this is wonderful news, not least for our economy. As Covid broke, mass unemployment was feared but only this week we heard that there are a staggering 1.25m job vacancies. We were warned that as furlough ended joblessness would spiral, yet instead we have the highest number of jobs advertised on record.
This does not mean that times are going to be easy. The surge in demand for energy that followed the summer reopening of the world’s industrial capacity has created a matching burst of rising gas and electricity prices that my Ministerial colleagues will be rightly cognisant of – as will every reader of this paper, seeing the coming impact on bills. This comes in tandem with a wider global inflationary environment that may or may not prove temporary, but will bring further domestic economic consequences.
Nevertheless, the potential of exiting the pandemic even after a new variant that could have truly tested us, is a very positive one. Difficult times, but the prospect of something very special ahead: the return of freedom.
Published in the Suffolk Free Press.
