WITH the lockdown continuing for another three weeks, there are more and more questions being asked of the Government.

It is right that the Government is held to account and Parliament meets again this week under a virtual, online system.

Ministers will answer questions, select committees will meet, and the process of scrutiny will pass from the press to MPs.

This is a good thing. The continued questioning by the press about Cobra meetings is a case in point.

Cobra is a venue, not a type of meeting. The Cabinet Office Briefing Room A (COBRA) is a secure meeting room that hosts all sorts of meetings, chaired by all sorts of ministers.

It is not usual for the prime minister to chair meetings in Cobra, irrespective of what the press say (and they know this).

But other questions are incredibly important and some of what the press picks up on needs further digging.

Indeed, as MPs in Worcestershire, we are being regularly briefed on local issues and it is our job to make sure our local crisis management is being properly supported from government, and is working.

Our local NHS is well prepared. It is an extraordinary fact that there around around 700 empty beds across the county in our acute and community hospitals.

This is to ensure that we have the best possible resilience in case we see a huge surge in covid-19, and to free up pressures on staff, reduced by around a quarter due to regular sickness and self-isolation.

This has been achieved by cancelling routine procedures and making sure patients have been able to leave hospital on time, fully supported in the community.

This will, of course, put pressure on our future NHS resources as cancelled operations need to be delivered.

PPE is still a problem. Although we have not run out, supplies are coming at a rate that leaves us with just a few days’ reserve. That is not ideal and we continue to press for more.

Meanwhile, we have a central testing facility at the Worcester Warriors ground on the M5, available for all key workers (including NHS workers).

There are all sorts of areas that I am profoundly worried about, but I get the sense that there is both an acceptance by the government that it gets things wrong, and a willingness to put things right.

We will learn an awful lot of lessons from all this.