Coronavirus

Aaron Bell Excerpts

Thursday 25th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con) [V]]

It is a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes). I have been privileged to serve on two Select Committees during the pandemic, the Science and Technology Committee and the Procedure Committee, both ably chaired by hon. Friends who spoke earlier in the debate. I therefore have quite a lot to try to say in these three minutes.

I have supported the Government on their measures throughout the pandemic and I will do so again, with some reservations, tonight. I said in the debate in this Chamber in September:

“By the spring, we will need a new plan, informed by the scientific evidence at the time and by what we learn over the winter, because we simply cannot continue to live like this forever.”—[Official Report, 28 September 2020; Vol. 681, c. 109.]

We cannot live in fear. Luckily the vaccine works, but even if it had not, we would still need a way out of lockdown.

We now have a new plan and, to echo my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), I think it would be churlish of me to reject it because it might not be as fast as I would like or what I think would be manageable given the data. We have heard a lot about “data, not dates”, yet there are a lot of dates in the legislation and not a lot of data. My right hon. Friend the Health Secretary and the Prime Minister both describe the plans as “cautious but irreversible”, but I think there is a tension there with what we could achieve. The scientists told us in the Science and Technology Committee that they needed four weeks to assess the effects of each step, and the Government want a fifth week so that we can make preparations. I think the Government could consider scrapping that fifth week and taking the associated political risk, not the scientific risk, on to their own broad shoulders.

I also feel that there is an overall sense of mission creep. We have protected the NHS, which is how the lockdowns were sold to us, but the sooner we have our lives back, the better. I was glad to hear my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) that the way forward in step 4 is personal responsibility allied to the vaccine and to test and trace. I should pause to praise my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary. His belief in science and in the possibility of rapid vaccine development has been rewarded in spades, and his wisdom in ensuring that Oxford tied up with AstraZeneca is clear from the contrasting experiences we see across the channel and in other countries.

Turning to the procedural elements of the motions, I have been glad to serve under the excellent chairmanship of my fellow north Staffordshire MP, my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), but I was also glad to support the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) in that Committee. It is a matter of honour for many of us that we return, as we promised, to how things were before the pandemic. There may be many things we can learn from the procedural innovations that we have seen, and I think we should have the chance to do that. I welcome what the Prime Minister said in his response to the Chair of the Committee that we will have a debate on this, but I fear that there has not been enough time for us to debate these procedural innovations. It is a matter of honour that we return as promised, and it is also a matter of honour that this House aligns what we are doing with what we are asking the country to do.

Health and Social Care Update

Aaron Bell Excerpts

Thursday 18th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, absolutely, and we will be writing to all those who are shielding to set out the details so that they get a personal copy of those guidelines. What I would say is that the rates of covid now are much lower than when we paused shielding in the past, so this is not just because of the vaccination programme—which of course has benefited many people who are shielding, and we know that the first dose brings huge safety and benefit already—but is also because the rates of covid are so much lower.

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con) [V]]

On behalf of their citizens, who need to be vaccinated and who need to see their economies reopened, I have to say I am personally in despair at the short-sighted decisions taken by many European countries and what seems to be their absurd misapplication of the precautionary principle. I am sure my right hon. Friend would wish to be diplomatic, so will he join me in praising what we are doing, and the MHRA and the JCVI for their sensible and proportionate decision making, which has always prioritised public health here in the UK both in respect of the approvals given for vaccines and the dosing regimens they subsequently recommended?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, my hon. Friend puts it characteristically well. It is very important to take all considerations into account when making decisions like these. Of course, the precautionary principle is important, but when there are such huge benefits to vaccination, over-precaution is a mistake. We have to take overall public health into account.

Covid-19 Update

Aaron Bell Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I am not sure you were in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, when I addressed that precise question in my statement. Not having the contact details happens in about 0.1% of tests. In this case, we think the test was done as part of a home test kit, when it is incumbent on the individual to set out those details. Home test kits can be sent to someone’s home, in which case of course we have the details of where it was sent. Alternatively, in response to surges, tests can be taken round by local authority teams and dropped off. We therefore need to find out exactly where this test was dropped off. What the hon. Lady omitted to say is that the team has done a good job of narrowing down where that may be to 379 households. The call-out at the weekend was answered with a number of leads, and we are working hard to make sure we find the individual concerned.

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con) [V]]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. Both the scientific news and the progress of our vaccine roll-out suggest that we are well on the way to getting back to normal. In particular, I was delighted to learn about the fantastic new data showing that both the Oxford and Pfizer vaccines are effective in hugely reducing hospitalisations and deaths from covid and, indeed, that the Oxford jab, which is being manufactured here in Newcastle-under-Lyme, may even be the more effective of the two. Will he join me in welcoming the fact that our European neighbours, such as France, have recognised that fact and are moving to allow this terrific vaccine to protect the lives of older people there, just as it has done in the UK?

Covid Contracts: Judicial Review

Aaron Bell Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I think we need to try to keep to the questions, not score points. Let us go to Aaron Bell, who will not want to score a point.

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con) [V]]

As my hon. Friend just did, I note from the judgment that Mr Justice Chamberlain found that the three Members of Parliament who sought to join this case did not have standing. In paragraph 107, he stated:

“In a case where there is already a claimant with standing, the addition of politicians as claimants may leave the public with the impression that the proceedings are an attempt to advance a political cause”.

Does my hon. Friend agree that this recent practice of trying to extend politics through court cases is becoming quite damaging to our democracy as a whole, particularly when technical judgments are then deliberately misrepresented, as seems to have happened in this case?

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for what he has said. As a former Justice Minister, I have huge respect for the legal process and, indeed, for the judgment of the courts, but he is right to highlight once again the point that the judge made in his finding that the Members of this House who sought to bring this case had no standing in doing so and that it was the GLP that did. Although I appreciate that Members of this House feel strongly on this issue, and understandably so, I echo his point that I hope they do not seek to use the courts to make political points but rather to use them for what they are there for, which is to highlight legal issues.

Covid-19 Update

Aaron Bell Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

That is a critical question, on which I point to three things. First, we have put in place the new variant assessment platform, which uses our genomic capability to be of service to countries that do not have the capability to identify variants and sequence samples, if that is needed.

Secondly, we are working with the World Health Organisation to ensure that its library of variants is as up-to-date as possible. Of course, it is that work from which must flow the assessment of what appropriate updates to any vaccine are necessary, which is how it works with flu. The system is nascent but incredibly important, and I am grateful to the World Health Organisation for its work on that so far. We need to go further.

Thirdly, on the measures put in place today, by testing every international rival—given the nature of the UK, even in these tough times, as an international hub—we will, where we spot positives, be able to sequence them and therefore gather the sequences of coronavirus from around the world. The announcements made today will directly help us to address the question of where variants of concern are arising and therefore help the international efforts to tackle them.

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con) [V]]

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and join him in praising everyone involved in the vaccine roll-out. It is going incredibly well in Newcastle-under-Lyme; in Staffordshire, we have just passed 200,000 vaccinations given.

Brilliant scientists in the UK and around the world have delivered us these vaccines at an unprecedented pace, and I welcome the news that they are now working on new versions of them to fight variants. However, if we were to embrace even faster methods for evaluating the efficacy of vaccines, such as challenge trials, we could speed up the process even further.

Given the enormous economic cost of lockdowns, every month counts. That should prompt the whole world to re- evaluate our standard methodology for approving vaccines. Could my right hon. Friend set out what steps he is taking to allow new varieties of vaccines to be developed as quickly as possible, if they prove to be required?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, we do not rule out challenge studies at all. We are working with Oxford University on such an approach. More broadly, I am up for considering anything that can ensure that a vaccine can safely be brought to bear and support this effort as fast as possible.

I would, though, caution against undue pessimism in this space because the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has done an amazing job of maintaining very strong safety and efficacy requirements while speeding up every process, constantly challenging the critical path to vaccine approval and asking how it can be sped up while maintaining the very high standards that it should expect. It is continuing that work with potential iterations of the vaccine to ensure that the level of assuredness is appropriate and the degree of checks that an iteration needs to go through is appropriate to the degree of difference from the original vaccine.

For instance, for flu, we do not need to go through the full clinical trials process because the underlying platform is known to be safe—we need to demonstrate clinical efficacy. It is that sort of flexible yet rigorous thinking that the MHRA should be very proud of.

Covid-19

Aaron Bell Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con) [V]]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore). First, I would like to talk about vaccines. I welcome what we set out yesterday in the vaccine delivery panel, and I congratulate the Secretary of State and the vaccines Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), on all that they have done on that. I particularly welcome the dashboard. As a data geek, I have been refreshing it today during this debate and I have worked out that 165,844 more doses were added to it today. That is a rate of over 1 million a week, which is great, but it is not enough, as we know.

I have also had the opportunity to see how the vaccine roll-out is going in my constituency. On Friday, I went to the Loomer Road surgery in Chesterton and saw the incredibly slick operation there. They were injecting Pfizer that day; this week, they are out doing AstraZeneca in the care homes. The overall response on the vaccine programme has been excellent throughout Staffordshire, but we clearly have the capacity to deliver more vaccines than we are currently getting. That is the point I would like to make to the Minister: we need more supply. We need to up the manufacturing capabilities as soon as we can. I am looking forward to speaking to both AstraZeneca and the vaccines Minister tomorrow at the Science and Technology Committee, when I will be asking exactly that: how can we get the supply up more quickly?

In the Minister’s opening speech, he highlighted the great British scientists who have contributed to our fight against covid and the work of the Vaccine Taskforce. As a member of the Science and Technology Committee, I have been privileged to interview and take evidence from all these people throughout the pandemic. On Friday, we published our first report on the use of scientific advice by the Government; it was rather overshadowed by the disgraceful scenes in Washington. I would like to thank the Committee and the Clerks for that and to highlight the fact that the Government have always been serious about taking and following advice. There was an initial lack of transparency around SAGE, which has been rectified, and this needs to be continued for other areas. We need the same for other measures. We need more transparency about the other effects of the things we are taking, and data fragmentation must improve. Perhaps we could look at what Israel has been able to achieve on that in the last few weeks.

Finally, I would like to talk a bit about the human cost of the pandemic. Newcastle-under-Lyme borough has now sadly passed 250 deaths, and I have heard repeatedly from the Royal Stoke University Hospital about how much pressure it is under. The piece that has left the biggest mark on me in recent weeks was published on UnHerd by an anonymous junior doctor on 6 January. It brought home the awfulness of people’s suffering. I shall quote from it briefly:

“The most distressing part of their struggle is the air hunger. You can spot these patients easily, as they grasp the masks to their faces with both hands and gasp visibly for air.”

Anybody who doubts the seriousness of what we are going through or who doubts how hard our hospitals are having to work to manage the pandemic should read that piece. I thank the anonymous junior doctor for writing it, and I thank them for all that they and their colleagues are doing for all of us.

Public Health

Aaron Bell Excerpts

Wednesday 30th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con) [V]]

It is a pleasure to follow a typically excellent speech from my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne). I thank the House staff for all they have done to make today possible. It has been a momentous day both in this Chamber and in plenty of living rooms around the country. Not only have we had the Brexit Bill, but we have been discussing some of the most serious matters on the domestic front for many years.

I also pay tribute to all the NHS and testing centre staff who have been working not just throughout the whole pandemic, but particularly over the Christmas period. It is noticeable from the figures that we have kept up our testing rate over Christmas, whereas other countries have not necessarily done that, so I pay tribute to everyone who has given up their Christmas to try to make our lives a bit better.

We started today with the welcome news about the vaccine. It is a huge triumph for British science—I say to my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire that I am going to call it the Oxford vaccine—but I just wonder whether the world as a whole may look back and consider whether we could have proceeded differently with the vaccine. I was struck by a recent article saying that Moderna actually had its vaccine produced in January. Perhaps if we had taken a different approach, maybe using supersized trials once we prove the basic safety of a vaccine, we might have mitigated some of the enormous costs of the pandemic this year.

That is perhaps a question for the Science and Technology Committee, on which I sit, and I praise the Committee’s staff for letting us hold an emergency evidence session on 23 December, in which we had three witnesses from NERVTAG, led by the excellent Professor Peter Horby, who explained the new variant and all its details. I have to say that, as we have all heard, the numbers about how quickly it can spread are pretty worrying.

Before I move on to talk about tiers more generally, I want to welcome the statutory instrument on self-isolation that we are debating today. Again, it is something we have discussed in our Committee, and moving from 14 to 10 days is an evidenced-based and probability-based move. I do not think that those final four days of isolation have been cutting out many cases at all, and they cannot really be justified, so I am glad that the Government have moved on that.

I am no lockdown enthusiast. How can I be with Newcastle-under-Lyme being put into tier 4 today? It is a decision that will cause a lot of hardship. Indeed, I said in my first ever virtual speech in this Chamber on 4 May, when we were debating the first coronavirus SIs, that

“any future calculus needs to recognise properly all the costs of lockdown: health, economic and social.”—[Official Report, 4 May 2020; Vol. 675, c. 464.]

That still holds, but I have to be a lockdown realist as well, and we must look at both sides of the equation. Contrary to some commentators, the figures, especially from the November national lockdown, are clear that lockdowns and strict measures do actually work and that they can get things under control. We will have to wait and see whether they will be sufficient for the new variant, because we do not yet have all the data, but the vaccine has changed the calculus. We are no longer looking at an indefinite lockdown. We have light at the end of the tunnel, and we have a clear goal to aim for.

Some of the commentators who are so prominent on social media—often in the comments on our own pages—are dead set against lockdowns, but they keep moving the goalposts. First, they were asking, “Where are the cases?” and then there were cases. They asked, “Where are the hospitalisations?” and, sure as night follows day, there were hospitalisations. Then they said, “But where are the deaths?” Well, 981 deaths were reported today, and I am afraid to say that number is only going to increase based on everything we know about this virus and the lags involved.

In recent days, those commentators have taken to the rather tasteless statistic that only 388 under-60s with no underlying condition have died with coronavirus in the UK. First, 388 is quite a large number, and we should be worried about that, but what about the over-60s? What about those who have underlying conditions? What about people with manageable underlying conditions such as mild asthma? Are we really saying that the people over 60 or people with underlying conditions are somehow worth less in this calculus? People who make that case should think about what it says about their value system. It is right that the Government have rejected that approach throughout and have sought to protect the most vulnerable, and it is right that society has done that, with people who are not at much risk from coronavirus making sacrifices.

As others have said, we have had two major changes since we last met to discuss coronavirus in this place: the variant and the vaccine. They really have changed things. Before, we were perhaps in what you might call a siege— an unpleasant one that was certainly driving people stir crazy. Now, we are in a race instead. Given that we are in a race—the variant is spreading more rapidly and the vaccines are coming on board quicker and quicker—the Government must use all their tools to slow the procession of the virus and that, unfortunately, includes tighter lockdowns and measures such as today’s. Just as importantly, the Government must use all their tools to speed up the vaccinations, and I urge them to do that.

Covid-19 Update

Aaron Bell Excerpts

Wednesday 30th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

As I have said, we will absolutely vaccinate according to clinical need. Once we are through those clinical need cohorts, there is a very important call on the next set of prioritisations, which we have not yet set out, and both teachers and unpaid carers have a good case to make.

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con) [V]]

As the Health Secretary has said, today is clearly a day of mixed emotions. I hugely welcome the news about the Oxford vaccine and pay tribute to Cobra Biologics in my constituency, which has been manufacturing it and has been involved since the outset. However, moving Staffordshire to tier 4 is very tough on the people of Newcastle. We have worked hard to get our rate down and it is currently stable and, indeed, falling slightly. I understand the risk of the new variant, but will he confirm that there is a way out of tier 4 and that he will take into account vaccination rates and the effect on the NHS, and not look purely at case numbers once we have the vaccination programme rolled out?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, I absolutely will. We already look at the impact on the NHS, of course, but that will become more important as more and more people are vaccinated and, we hope, the correlation between cases and future hospitalisations, which is currently stable, starts to go down and there are fewer hospitalisations for every individual case. Obviously we should take that into account.

Covid-19 Update

Aaron Bell Excerpts

Monday 14th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

If the hon. Gentleman has an individual case of a school in that situation and he could let me know, we will sort that out, because in general the links between local directors of public health and the schools to tackle these sorts of problems are pretty good.

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

I know the whole House was thrilled at those wonderful images last week of people receiving their vaccines, including at the Royal Stoke University Hospital. Like other hospitals across the country, it has been gearing up for that really emotional moment for months. Like the NHS in general, it has a lot of experience of delivering these vaccine programmes, so will my right hon. Friend assure me that we will roll out this vaccine, and any others that get approved, as quickly as possible and as quickly as manufacturing allows?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, that is absolutely the goal. I pay tribute to everybody at the Royal Stoke, and it was wonderful to see some of the examples of those who have been vaccinated. Stoke has been having a rough time of it of late and we need to make sure not only that we get the virus under control, but that that vaccine is rolled out, not just in the city centre, but in communities right across Stoke and Staffordshire.

Covid-19

Aaron Bell Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle). I have only three minutes and I have three somewhat disconnected points, so I will try to make them quickly.

I shall start with the situation in my constituency of Newcastle-under-Lyme. We have had a lot of good news on the national level recently in the medium to longer term. We have had good news on the amount of testing available, good news on PPE and the best news of all, obviously, is about the vaccines. Congratulations to the scientists on their breakthroughs and congratulations, too, to the Vaccine Taskforce on all the work that it has done to make sure that we are in the right place when those vaccines become available.

But locally and in the short term, I am afraid the news is not so good. The case rate in Newcastle-under-Lyme has risen to 464 per 100,000 and in neighbouring Stoke-on-Trent, it is up to 562 per 100,000, which I believe is the seventh worst in the country, there or thereabouts. This has put a huge amount of pressure on our local hospital, the Royal Stoke. I would like to praise all the staff there, including the doctors and nurses, under the leadership of Tracy Bullock, who is doing a phenomenal job and has been briefing all the local MPs on what is going on. They have 304 people in hospital with covid at the moment and 32 are in critical care. They expect a further 100 by the end of next week based on modelling. They also have a lot of staff absence related to covid, with people having to self-isolate—62% of the staff absence is related to that. In the time available, I would like to impress upon the people in north Staffordshire the seriousness of the situation we are facing and the importance of continuing to follow the Government guidance.

I turn briefly to what we are asking of people in isolation and the evidence we heard on the Science and Technology Committee’s joint inquiry. I believe that what we are asking of contacts of people without symptoms is not rooted in probability, is not realistic and is not rooted in human behaviour. We heard from Professor Sir John Bell on 10 November that the data on asking people who have no symptoms and are just a contact to isolate for 14 days shows that very few of them are actually infected. He said:

“In order to prevent a single transmission, you have to isolate 70 of those people for one day. It is massively ineffective. The trouble is that people out there know it is massively ineffective. That is why they hate it.”

I think we have to be realistic about how isolation works. What we need to do, using the new lateral flow testing, is to find a way, as Sir John Bell said in his evidence, to enable people who are merely contacts to essentially test their way out of isolation at an earlier stage. I believe that the same could also be applied to travel quarantine.

Finally, as I have only three minutes, I wish to turn to long covid. I bring high praise from my mother-in-law, who has suffered from long covid, to the Secretary of State for what he said at the press conference on Monday. I have seen for myself how debilitating long covid has been for her. It is debilitating for lots of people across the country. It is damaging to everybody, not just the older people who are suffering worse from covid—I should stress that my mother-in-law is not an older person. I very much welcome the 40 long covid clinics that the Secretary of State has set out. We have a lot still to learn about this disease and that will be of great benefit to the people who have suffered.

To conclude, there is some light at the end of the tunnel. Science has shown us the way and I pay tribute to the Department for Health and Social Care for everything that it has been doing.