Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions on Gatherings) (North of England) Regulations 2020
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions on Gatherings) (North of England) (Amendment) Regulations 2020
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions on Gatherings) (North of England) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2020
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (North of England) (Amendment) Regulations 2020
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (North of England) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2020
(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Jo Churchill)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions on Gatherings) (North of England) Regulations 2020 (S.I. 2020, No. 828).
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to consider the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions on Gatherings) (North of England) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 (S.I. 2020, No. 846), the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions on Gatherings) (North of England) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2020 (S.I. 2020, No. 865), the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (North of England) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 (S.I. 2020, No. 897) and the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (North of England) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2020 (S.I. 2020, No. 931).
Jo Churchill
It is my pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. The regulations came into force on 4 August to tackle the outbreak of coronavirus in parts of the north of England. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care was made aware that the latest epidemiological data showed high transmission rates of covid-19 across Greater Manchester, areas of Lancashire and West Yorkshire. It was therefore necessary to impose restrictions to prevent further spread of the virus.
On 8 August, following concerns about the significant increase in local incidence rates of the virus, the regulations were amended to extend their remit to include Preston. On Wednesday 15 August, a further amendment to the regulations meant that the national restrictions that were lifted across England would not be applied to those areas covered by the regulations, due to the high incidence rates remaining across such areas. However, by Wednesday 26 August, on reviewing the up-to-date epidemiolocal data and information from local authorities, directors of public health, Public Health England, the Joint Biosecurity Centre and contain teams, the Secretary of State was able to remove Wigan Metropolitan Borough Council and Rossendale Borough Council from the protected area. This meant that the restrictions remaining in those areas aligned with the those on the rest of England. On 2 September, we were able to remove certain wards in Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council and Kirklees Metropolitan Council from the regulations following another review.
The concerns about the outbreak of coronavirus in the north of England have been significant, and the engagement with local leaders has been extensive and productive. I want to thank all local authorities and local resilience forums, Public Health England and the Joint Biosecurity Centre—as well as local directors of public health, all council leaders and the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham—for their ongoing support. I also want to emphasise that the decision to take action on each occasion was not driven by numbers alone; it was a judgment about the overall situation, taking into account not only the epidemiological evidence, but local insights and views.
Action had already been taken to protect the people living in the affected areas in the weeks before the regulations came into force, such as increased testing and public health support. We also gave additional funding to all upper tier local authorities involved. That enabled them to enhance the various local interventions and to support measures that have been put in place. We hoped that those interventions and the work of local public health teams would get the infection rate down without our having to take more drastic action. When the regulations came into force, however, the incidence rates in almost all these geographic areas were significantly above the national average.
Pendle had the highest incidence rate in England between 31 July and 6 August, at 89.7 infections per 100,000 people. Oldham had the second highest rate, at 82.3, and nine other local authorities in the north had rates in excess of 30 per 100,000. The epidemiological data and local insights suggested that the most likely route for the increased transmission of covid-19 was as a result of people living in different households in the area meeting up with one another. Multigenerational households, households with several members and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds have experienced a higher risk of transmission.
However, by the end of July, it was clear that rates of infection were continuing to increase to undesirable levels. The cross-Government covid-19 operations committee, chaired by the Prime Minister, decided on 30 July to take further measures to tackle the outbreak, and the Secretary of State set out the measures in his statement. In general, these regulations prohibited households in the relevant areas of the north of England mixing with each other in their homes or gardens, apart from those with support bubbles or in other limited circumstances, such as on compassionate grounds. Some exceptions include work purposes, education or training, emergency protection, to avoid injury or escape harm, to facilitate a house move, to provide care to vulnerable people or to visit family members who are dying.
These regulations also included a provision extending that restriction to the protected areas covered by the separate Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Blackburn with Darwen and Bradford) Regulations 2020. The regulations include provisions making it a criminal offence to breach any of the restrictions or requirements. As with the national regulations, those who breach these provisions can be issued with a fixed penalty notice, with increasingly larger fines for repeated breaches. Offenders can also be fined following conviction.
Due to the increasing incidence rate in Preston as the regulations came into force, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made the decision to add Preston to the restricted area covered by the regulations, extending the ban on households mixing with each other to residents of the city. Despite the restriction on inter-household mixing introduced on 5 August, the incidence rates continued to rise or remain undesirably high. Consequently, on 15 August, further restrictions were imposed requiring certain businesses and venues to remain closed, despite their being able to reopen elsewhere in England. The venues in each local authority area that had to remain closed for the time being included casinos, indoor skating rinks, indoor swimming pools and water parks, indoor play areas, indoor fitness and dance studios, indoor gyms and sports courts, bowling alleys, conference centres and exhibition halls.
By 26 August, rates had fallen or remained acceptably low in Rossendale and Wigan and by 2 September rates had also fallen much safer levels across Stockport, Burnley and Hyndburn, as well as across certain wards within Calderdale and Kirklees. In the light of the improving situation in all those areas at those dates, the Secretary of State removed them from the regulations, so the only restrictions remaining in force in each area were those applicable to the rest of England. The regulations must be reviewed every 14 days to consider the need for the restrictions to continue. The next review is due on or before 25 September. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State committed to reviewing them weekly, which he continues to do.
Given the urgency of the situation in the north of England, we used the emergency procedure to make the present set of regulations as soon as we could. They give effect to the decisions set out by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in response to the up-to-date epidemiological data and situational awareness relevant to each local authority area. Alongside the regulations, we provided guidance on the www.gov.uk website explaining what people living in an affected area can and cannot do.
Since these regulations and their amendments were implemented, the Government have continued to review the ongoing situation. The incidence rates in most of these local authorities have increased and remain high. Although we are debating only these five statutory instruments, there have been regular reviews considering the positions in each local authority area, and we remain concerned about the continued high level of the virus in many of them, primarily driven by community transmission. People must follow the Government’s clear guidance to socially distance, wash hands frequently and wear face coverings in public indoor places.
We always knew that the path out of lockdown would not be entirely smooth. It was always likely that infections would rise in particular areas or workplaces, and that we would need to be able to respond quickly and flexibly to those outbreaks. The collective actions taken across the north of England have demonstrated a willingness and ability to take action where needed. We will, of course, use the experience of the restrictions in the north of England to help inform and develop our responses to any current local outbreaks.
As I said earlier, we will continue to make public the outcome of the reviews. I am very grateful to all Members for their continued engagement in this challenging process, and in the scrutiny of the regulations. I would particularly like to thank people in those parts of Lancashire, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire who have, in general, responded well to the measures put in place. It is thanks to their continued efforts that the changes to the boundaries were made, and we hope to ease measures further if improvements continue. I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Jo Churchill
I place on the record my thanks for the hon. Gentleman’s tone; I am grateful for the support. As we know from this morning’s announcement by Professor Whitty and Patrick Vallance, this is a difficult, fluid situation that is changing. It is important, as I answer some of the questions that the hon. Gentleman put to me, that we keep that level of dynamism in mind, because that is the problem: we cannot see into the future. One of the challenges is that if we pre-empt where we are going, we are much more likely to be over-restrictive than under-restrictive.
The one thing we have not heard in the offer of support is how that support would work within the parliamentary framework. Do we sit for seven days, because these things are arguably coming at us hourly? Do we do it on a smaller basis? Do we go through usual channels? This is considerably more complex. I understand the point the hon. Gentleman makes, because often members of the public are not sure how this place works, and there is a challenge in helping them to understand why we do things in certain ways.
Matt Western
The Minister makes a valid point. As a constructive suggestion, we have Westminster Hall and we have spare capacity in this place. How about using Westminster Hall solely for the purpose of having these debates about everything related to the covid-19 pandemic and how we work our way through it, and we could do stuff in advance?
Jo Churchill
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his suggestion; I am sure my Whip will take that away and feed it up through the usual channels. The hon. Gentleman makes the point that there are other places on the estate but, as he will know, there are also restrictions on movement around the estate and what parts of if we can move to.
The restrictions we have debated today are necessary and important for three reasons. First, and most importantly, they are necessary to protect the people in the north of England and surrounding areas from this terrible virus. The restrictions imposed have been difficult, but I think the people of the north of England recognise that the measures have been paramount to try to stop the spread of the virus.
Secondly, the restrictions protect those of us outside the north of England. Containing was very much the strategy laid out on 10 May. These restrictions greatly reduce the risk of transmission within the protected area, which in turn reduces the risk of infection rates increasing elsewhere. We recognise and appreciate that in abiding by these restrictions, those in the north of England benefit the whole country, and I place on the record my thanks to them.
Thirdly, the restrictions show the absolute determination to respond to the outbreaks of the virus in a focused and effective way. We are learning from what happened in the north of England as we work with local authorities and others to respond to future localised outbreaks, such as those that one of my colleagues will be debating in the House in due course. Indeed, we were able to work down to a granular, ward-by-ward level, but we have found that it is probably not the best strategy to open up on that basis.
The next review of the regulations will take place on or before 25 September. I am grateful to hon. Members for their contributions to the date today. I would like to address the point that the hon. Member for Nottingham North made first about timeliness and speed. The Government are confident that the regulations were made lawfully under the emergency procedure of the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984. They are receiving parliamentary scrutiny in accordance with the emergency procedure, and are being debated within 28 days.
The challenge with these regulations is that we caught the tail end of recess, which obviously pushed them out a little further. The procedure allows us to respond quickly to the serious and imminent threat to public health posed by coronavirus, first by imposing restrictions to break the transmission chain and to protect people, and secondly by removing those restrictions when it is safe to do so. The regulations we are debating show how fluidly and quickly we can make those adjustments and changes.
The Secretary of State considers that the requirements imposed by the regulations are a proportionate public health response to the threat of incidence and spread in England of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2— SARS-CoV-2—or covid-19. The regulations set out that a review of those requirements must take place every 14 days to ensure that they continue to be necessary to
“prevent, protect against, control or provide a public health response to the incidence or spread of infection”.
It is also important that timely reviews are made so that restrictions are not overly imposed on any part of the population.
We have subsequently amended the regulations to ensure that we continue to take necessary steps to protect public health as national restrictions were lifted over the summer—amendments were accordingly made on 8, 15 and 26 August. The hon. Member for Nottingham North asked how decisions are made locally and what the system is. Public Health England, the Joint Biosecurity Centre and NHS Test and Trace are constantly monitoring the levels of infection across the country, and work with local authorities to implement additional control measures as appropriate. Those decisions will be taken on a case-by-case basis, which is why that local knowledge is so important, and advice may differ according to the specific circumstances of any given outbreak. Indeed, tomorrow we will be talking about an outbreak in and around a place of work, which is obviously quite different.
The watchlist is already publicly available in Public Health England’s weekly surveillance report, and the decision to place restrictions on local authorities in the north of England was based on a number of factors, including not just the positivity rate, but the incidence rate of the virus, the extent of high-risk behaviours and the rise in the increased risk of transmission between the population. The next review will take place on Friday 25th—this Friday—and we are debating the regulations before that review. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will consider all those factors when making his decision.
As I have just mentioned, we have increased the capacity of the test and trace system by more than 10% in the last few weeks, with the aim of reaching 500,000 tests per day by the end of October. I pay tribute to all those involved in the test and trace system because, initially, we could process some 2,000 per day. We are now well over 240,000 per day, and some capacity, including antibody tests, is well over 370,000 tests per day. We are on track to hit 500,000 tests per day by the end of October. There are four new Lighthouse labs coming on stream, including Newport, Newcastle, Charnwood and Brants Bridge. There are hundreds of additional staff and capacity is being bought up abroad. Test and trace has led to more than 420,000 people isolating who may otherwise have spread the virus. As we heard this morning, breaking that transmission chain is so important.
Matt Western
I thank the Minister for giving way—she is being very generous. I have an observation: I visited our testing centre at the Ricoh Arena in north Coventry, which serves the whole region of Warwickshire and Coventry. In the hour I spent there yesterday, only 16 cars went in. There was clearly a lot of capacity—a big facility has been established there—and very professional people on site, but there must be a disconnect between the capacity she describes, which I saw, and what is being fed through to those centres. The numbers that she describes are huge, but I am not seeing that on the ground.
Jo Churchill
I think what we are all seeing on the ground is that demand has become exponential in the past few weeks. It is therefore a question of the system catching up, but it is important that the Government assess the risk factors and continue to protect healthcare workers and members of the social care workforce first to ensure that we are protecting the most vulnerable in society with the capacity that we have, and then begin to move through to other key workers. We need to have a risk stratification approach as the numbers increase.
This country’s population is in the region of 67 million. Even with a testing rate at 500,000 per day, it would take some weeks to get through that. There has to be a marrying of the testing capacity within the testing facilities and the ability of the labs to have the throughput that backs up behind it. We are doing an enormous number of tests, and it has been noted that we actually have a larger throughput than Germany, Italy, Spain and France.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
The Minister mentions Germany. I have just come back from Italy. Why is it that Germany and Italy have such lower numbers than the UK?
Jo Churchill
With the greatest of respect, I will move on, because we are somewhat going away from the regulations we are discussing. I was asked specifically about the test and trace figures in and around the north of England, rather than those stretching across Europe.
Jo Churchill
No, I am sorry, but I will not give way.
The north of England regulations were also amended on 2 and 8 September. The amendments made on 2 September removed certain local authorities or specified wards from the protected area under the regulations, following the decrease in incidence rates of the virus in those areas. On 8 September, the regulations were amended to enable certain businesses and venues to reopen, in line with elsewhere in England. The remaining restrictions continue to prohibit people from different households meeting in each other’s homes or private gardens, and to stop a small number of businesses reopening—for example, nightclubs remain closed in the relevant parts of the north of England, as is the case across the rest of England, for quite sensible precautionary reasons.
Let me conclude by recording on behalf of the Government our thanks to the people of Lancashire, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire, particularly the health and social care workers—indeed, all key workers in those areas—for their ongoing hard work and dedication in keeping our vital services running and for saving lives throughout these unprecedented times.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the Committee has considered the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions on Gatherings) (North of England) Regulations 2020 (S.I. 2020, No. 828).
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions on Gatherings) (North of England) (Amendment) Regulations 2020
Resolved,
That the Committee has considered the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions on Gatherings) (North of England) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 (S.I. 2020, No. 846).—(Jo Churchill.)
HEALTH PROTECTION (CORONAVIRUS, RESTRICTIONS ON GATHERINGS) (NORTH OF ENGLAND) (AMENDMENT) (NO. 2) REGULATIONS 2020
Resolved,
That the Committee has considered the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions on Gatherings) (North of England) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2020 (S.I. 2020, No. 865).— (Jo Churchill.)
HEALTH PROTECTION (CORONAVIRUS, RESTRICTIONS) (NORTH OF ENGLAND) (AMENDMENT) REGULATIONS 2020
Resolved,
That the Committee has considered the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (North of England) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 (S.I. 2020, No. 897).—(Jo Churchill.)
HEALTH PROTECTION (CORONAVIRUS, RESTRICTIONS) (NORTH OF ENGLAND) (AMENDMENT) (NO. 2) REGULATIONS 2020
Resolved,
That the Committee has considered the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (North of England) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2020 (S.I. 2020, No. 931).—(Jo Churchill.)