Graham Stringer

Graham Stringer

Labour — Blackley and Middleton South

Speaking in the House of Commons on 16 January 2025

Debate

Covid-19 Inquiry

Contribution

I am less sanguine about the report than my right hon. Friend. The report, or what is part of a report—it is difficult to assess when we do not know what the rest will say—has been too expensive and has taken too long to produce. From reading it, it does not seem to me to include some of the fundamental questions that I and my constituents would like answered. What was the cost-benefit analysis of the decisions taken during lockdown, for instance? What about lockdown itself? Was that a benefit or a disbenefit? What was the cost of effectively closing down the NHS, apart from for covid patients? Where did the virus come from? Did it come from China, which most of the evidence seems to indicate? Those questions are not being answered. Furthermore, I do not believe that setting up a new quango in conjunction with the Cabinet Office, which has no experience of service delivery, will be the answer to any future epidemic. The report does not answer the questions I would like answered.

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