I beg to move,

That this House
has considered health inequalities and the covid-19 outbreak in West Yorkshire.

Thank you for calling me, Mr Hollobone. I thank everyone who has enabled me to secure this important debate so that a Yorkshire voice can make the case. I will be speaking about covid and the vaccine, so first I should like to place on record our thanks from every part of the House to everyone who helped to develop the vaccine, be they scientists, pharmacologists or all the people who have rolled it out. It has been an incredible journey, which shows humanity in a common endeavour against a disease. I congratulate all those involved.

I need not detain the House for long, but I will make a clear case for my Constituency in West Yorkshire, where I have lived all my life, although there are lessons for the rest of the country, too. Let me raise two brief points before I get to the central issue. First, statistics. They talk about lies and statistics. I have confidence in the statistics that I will use, because I have been tracking what has been happening since January. They vary a bit, but I am sure that the trends I will describe are correct.

I will use comparisons between my area and the Minister’s area—not to suggest that somehow she has been neglectful of our area while protecting hers, but because the differences are extraordinary. Not for one second do I think she is anything other than someone who wants to do their best for the whole country. However, there are chronic underlying problems in the way that our country is organised. The Government have said they will begin to level up; hon. Members will see how far we have to go. If I were to draw a map of England—the health service that we are responsible for—and shade the economic-social demography, it would be clear that there continues to be a north-south divide. If I were to draw a map of covid, the same would apply. It is striking.

The averages conceal quite a bit; none the less, there has been a rapid decline in covid infections. The figures that I will quote are per 100,000. In January, there were 406 infections per 100,000; now, it is 28 per 100,000. That is remarkable.