Our Pace out of Lockdown, and an Escape to the Sun?
The Peston Podcast
Faraz Aghaei
4.6 ā¢ 20 Ratings
šļø 25 February 2021
ā±ļø 41 minutes
šļø Recording | iTunes | RSS
š§¾ļø Download transcript
Summary
ā¶ Is the Prime Ministerās route out of lockdown too fast or too slow?
ā· Will we be able to escape to the sun this summer?
āø How is the pandemic affecting young peopleās mental health?
Join ITV's Political Editor Robert Peston as he sits down with Transport SecretaryĀ Grant Shapps MP, Epidemiologist, Imperial College LondonĀ Professor Neil Ferguson, UK Youth Mental Health AmbassadorĀ Dr. Alex George, Labourās Shadow Business MinisterĀ Lucy Powell MPĀ and the Chair of the Covid Recovery GroupĀ Mark Harper MP.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Coming up on the Pest and podcast, are we leaving lockdown too fast or too slow? |
| 0:19.0 | What chance is there that we'll get a summer holiday in the sun outside |
| 0:23.8 | of the UK this year? And mental health, particularly among young people, it's under such pressure. |
| 0:32.0 | What on earth can we do to help particularly our younger people? So talking about all of this tonight is the Transport Secretary Grant Shaps. |
| 0:41.3 | One of the most influential advisors to the government on the course of this epidemic and what we should do about it, Neil Ferguson of Imperial College. |
| 0:48.3 | The Prime Minister's own mental health ambassador for youth, Dr Alex George. You may remember him from Love Island. |
| 0:57.0 | And then one of the leading Tory critics of the pace of releasing lockdown. |
| 1:03.0 | He thinks the government should be going much faster. |
| 1:05.0 | That's Mark Harper, a former Chief Whip, and from Labour, a frontbencher, |
| 1:09.0 | always interesting, Lucy Powell. |
| 1:12.1 | Mark Harper, we want to come to you first. You've made it clear you would like an accelerated |
| 1:18.4 | lifting of lockdown. Talk us through what kind of timetable you would like to see. |
| 1:23.2 | Sure. Well, the start point is exactly the same as the government. So we argued for March |
| 1:26.7 | the 8th and that's not just a random date. |
| 1:29.1 | So, I mean, it's interesting, of course. |
| 1:31.0 | Data not dates, I think, was largely invented to throw at us. |
| 1:34.6 | But our dates were very much tied to the vaccine rollout. |
| 1:38.6 | So our argument was, once you vaccinated the top nine groups, |
| 1:42.6 | which will be done the government's target by the middle of April, |
| 1:46.0 | it's not everyone in the population, but it is the groups that account for 99% of people that have died from COVID, |
| 1:54.0 | and over 80% of people that have been hospitalized, because COVID isn't randomly distributed through the population. |
| 2:00.0 | It's largely by age, but also by health condition. |
... |
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