Ynys Môn’s Conservative MP Virginia Crosbie has been encouraged to offer constituents greater clarity over the UK Government’s response to the coronavirus crisis.
In an open letter from Ynys Môn Constituency Labour Party, Ms Crosbie has been urged to respond to a number of questions about the handling of the pandemic.
In February, Ms Crosbie was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to Matt Hancock, Secretary of State for Health in England, despite health being devolved to Cardiff Bay.
In this role she is believed to have worked closely with Matt Hancock and the Department for Health and Social Care on a number of coronavirus-related issues.
The open letter, sent on behalf of Ynys Môn Labour’s almost 500 members, comes in response to claims that Ms Crosbie has been reluctant to engage with constituents on the government’s response to date.
Ynys Môn Chair, Andy Short, said: “This is clearly not a time for political point scoring and it’s in everyone’s interests for the UK Government to get this right.
“However, it is important that Ms Crosbie engages with questions from her constituents about the government’s response to this crisis.
“As Parliamentary Private Secretary to Matt Hancock, she should be well placed to address people’s concerns on a range of issues, from a lack of PPE, testing and contact tracing to the reasons for the Government’s initial herd immunity strategy, which would have resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and had to be abandoned after just 11 days.
“People also have legitimate questions about why the UK Government were so slow to order a lockdown; why they failed to replicate policies that had been successful in other countries; and why restrictions have still not been placed on entry to the UK at major airports.
“There is justified suspicion that a decade of austerity left the government ill prepared to tackle the pandemic and that the findings of Exercise Cygnus, conducted in 2016 to simulate a pandemic, have been suppressed because they revealed serious gaps in Britain’s ability to respond – gaps that were not subsequently rectified.”
“These aren’t trivial matters and we would urge Ms Crosbie to respond frankly to our questions. People across Ynys Môn who are playing their part by staying at home in order to protect public health deserve answers.”
ENDS