Dear Constituent,

On Monday (2 November 2020), the Prime Minister made a statement in the House of Commons announcing a second national lockdown in England.

The Prime Minister confirmed that, between 5 November 2020 and 2 December 2020, people in England will only be permitted to leave home for specific reasons, including: education; work; exercise and recreation outdoors; medical reasons; to shop for food and essentials; and to provide care for vulnerable people, or as a volunteer.

Essential shops will remain open and click-and-collect services will continue. Schools, colleges, universities, childcare and early years settings will also remain open. However, non-essential shops, leisure and entertainment venues and the personal care sector will be closed.

Provision for non-COVID-19-related healthcare will continue and people are being advised to use the NHS, attend appointments and collect treatments in the usual way.

Everybody is concerned about the rise in infections, hospital admissions and – tragically – the number of deaths. People in our constituency and right across the country will be anxious about what will happen over the coming weeks; anxious about their health and the health of their friends and family, and anxious about their jobs.

That is why three weeks ago I joined with my colleagues in calling on the Government to implement a short circuit-break in England, in line with the recommendations of the Government’s scientific advisors.

I am disappointed that Ministers did not act on the recommendations of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) back in September, only now to ask MPs to approve emergency regulations to shut the country down. I am concerned that the delay in introducing restrictions will come at an economic cost and a human cost, and as a result, this lockdown will be longer than it needed to be.

I did not come into Parliament to restrict people’s freedoms, ​to prevent people meeting their friends and their loved ones, or to decide when people can and cannot leave their home or how many people may attend a funeral. I do not want Parliament to be closing businesses, gyms, bars or places of worship. Indeed, I do not want Parliament to be legislating on any of these issues, least of all after the British public have made so many enormous sacrifices already.

While these new restrictions are not in any way desirable or perfect, I do not believe there is any excuse for inaction or for allowing the virus to continue to spread. It is with a heavy heart, and in the national interest, that I support them.

People in our constituency and across the country will want to know that there is a plan for exiting restrictions. Ministers have so far not set out what criteria will be used to judge whether the lockdown should be lifted and I hope that they will clarify this as a matter of urgency.

More widely, I believe the Government must use this lockdown to expand testing and fix contact tracing. This should include regular testing programmes to ensure key workers and those most at risk are using new, readily available rapid turn-around tests, including those developed by UK universities.

Scaling up community testing is vital to help protect jobs and restore confidence in businesses and the economy, and to keep workers, their families and communities safe by identifying those who may be carrying the virus without symptoms. I believe a plan to roll out strategic mass testing would give a clear, coherent roadmap for the next phase of containing the virus.

The Test and Trace system has been overwhelmed and concerns have repeatedly been raised about the speed at which test results are returned, the number of contacts of positive cases being reached, and the extent to which data about confirmed cases is shared with local authorities and local public health teams. The outsourcing of Test and Trace to private firms has been widely criticised by experts, including the British Medical Association. I have long argued that local public health teams and the NHS, backed by resources and national support, would be more effective at contact tracing.

Finally, I support calls for Ministers to use the Spending Review, due on 25 November 2020, to give our NHS and social care sector the funding they need throughout lockdown and beyond.

Yours sincerely,

Peter Dowd MP