Covid-19: Over-75s

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend is entirely right about the massive mental health challenge and, if not the challenge to mental health, that of the isolation and loneliness felt by many who are shielding or isolated. Seven hundred and eighty thousand individuals over 70 are considered clinically extremely vulnerable. We have changed the terms of the shielding arrangements to give them more flexibility, and we have published the well-being and mental health support plan relating to Covid-19, which sets out steps to strengthen the support available for those who are struggling. But my noble friend is entirely right: we must do more to support and help voluntary organisations, which play a critical role, as do local authorities.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

Another wave of Covid is hitting care homes at the moment. Therefore, there is an urgent need for hand-held rapid testing kits that deliver accurate and swift results. What investment is being made in biotech companies and care staff to develop a rapid testing system that works at scale?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, the innovation and partnerships team at NHS Test and Trace has an enormous programme on this. The lateral flow devices are a huge development but, as the noble Baroness undoubtedly knows, the sensitivity of a lateral flow device means that it is not necessarily appropriate for the user case that she described. We have invested in DnaNudge and other small point-of-care devices, but having a fast-turnaround device that can be rolled out in mass numbers is a challenge, and we continue to search for the ideal format.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Monday 8th February 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, following on from the noble Lord, Lord Winston, it is important to stress that, for political leaders at this time, there is one overriding job to be done: to ensure that the relief sensed by everybody that the vaccines are coming is not misplaced into a false sense of security. We need to understand that over the next year or so we must continue the important social distancing measures that we have become used to. I believe the Government have one priority at the moment: to enable the country to emerge from lockdown to a situation which is sustainable in terms of social and economic health and well-being.

Key to that will be the opening of schools of colleges. I say that, but schools and colleges are open and people are working; they are just not physically present. It is important that as many schools as possible open as soon as possible. I urge the Government to move away from central fiats announced at short notice towards a culture of working more co-operatively with teachers and local authorities to work out what resources are needed in different areas to enable schools to open safely.

I draw to the Minister’s attention one issue that requires urgent attention. He will know that to open legally any children’s service has to have staff with up-to-date first aid qualifications. He will also know that first aid training cannot be completed online. Last March, the Health and Safety Executive announced an extension in the grace period for renewal of a certificate from one month to six. The HSE’s current advice is that all training will have to be renewed by 31 March and there will be no extension. That means that staff—and, incidentally, staff of training providers—are being told on the one hand that to get their training certificates renewed they have to go out to a training course, but on the other that they have to observe lockdown. Does the Minister realise that this potentially is a very big problem for schools, colleges and preschools? Does he also realise that this kind of mixed messaging is the last thing that professionals working at a local level to try and give some hope to their communities need?

I understand that it is being reported that test and trace is getting rid of staff. I and many others have been deeply critical of the poor performance of the test and trace operation, particularly the lack of support for isolation. Can the Minister say whether, as we go into this current phase, resources will be diverted to local authorities and local resilience forums so that we can continue to make sure that people are given supported, practical help to isolate? We can then have much more localised efforts to reverse trace so that we can find out where different variants have come from and how they have been transmitted among the population.

I have two final points. First, it is evident that mental health is becoming the big issue of this pandemic for schools and colleges. Are the Government now starting to plan to have emergency first aid mental health services for schools and colleges, exhausted public health staff such as doctors and nurses, and self-employed people who have not been eligible for any government support? Finally, on care homes, nursing homes and domiciliary care workers, when will the Government stop reporting the number of vaccinations that have been offered and start reporting the number that have been completed?

Mental Health Act Reform

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Monday 18th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

The noble Lord is 100% right: we can definitely start work on the recommendations of the report. As I said earlier, we have already done so: committing £400 million to end dormitories in 40 trusts. That sort of parallel processing can be done for other elements of the report. The consultation began last week, which shows our determination to get moving. Some recommendations of the report are spellbindingly obvious; we will work on them immediately. The role of police suites in safe refuge, cited by the noble Lord and by the noble Lord, Lord Winston, is exactly such an example.

[Baroness Barker (LD) [V]]

My Lords, this is yet another NHS document which makes not a single mention of the needs of LGBT people. The Statement is in effect an admission that the Mental Health Act 2007 was deeply flawed and, as a result, thousands of people have been subject to wrongful treatment. Will the Government act now to stop the abuse of community treatment orders and other elements of that Act that have led to the position that is so accurately described by Sir Simon Wessely?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I confess that the noble Baroness has me on the hop there, because I had not noticed that LGBT issues are not mentioned in Sir Simon’s report. I share the noble Baroness’s surprise about that. Let me return to the document and I will address her point in correspondence.

Medicines and Medical Devices Bill

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Report stage & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 14th January 2021 Lords Chamber

Amendment 68 withdrawn.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Barker) (LD)]

My Lords, we now come to the group beginning with Amendment 69. I remind noble Lords that Members other than the mover and the Minister may speak only once and that short questions of elucidation are discouraged. Anyone wishing to press this or anything else in this group to a Division must make that clear in debate.

Amendment 69

Moved by

Covid-19: Variant

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Wednesday 13th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord has more medical expertise than me to be able to answer that question, but the briefing that I have is that the significant mutation in the Kent variant is not of a kind that should affect the efficacy of either a single dose or two doses of the vaccine. This comes as a significant relief to the vaccine programme. We remain on the balls of our feet, looking out for any variations that might affect vaccine deployment, but at this stage we have not found anything that poses a significant threat.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, the ONS data in the second week of December showed that the number of cases from all variants of the virus had rocketed. Why did the Government fail to act on that information until late December?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

The noble Baroness is entirely right that the EpiData showed that the figures shot up in December; that is exactly why we looked extremely carefully at the genomic data from Kent and other places. As she knows, genomic data takes time to process—the tests can take a week to turn around. Looking at all the variants and matching EpiData figures with genomic data is an enormously complicated mathematical task. We moved as swiftly as possible and far faster than in many other countries.

Cannabis Oil

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness is being a little unfair; Health Education England published a medicinal cannabis education package on 8 August 2019. But we cannot force clinicians to make prescriptions. That is not how the health service works. We need to work on clinical trials to put in place the correct authorisations and to give marketing authorisations for these important and promising drugs. That will require collaboration between government, the regulator and industry, and I call on industry to step up to that challenge.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, some people in England and Wales are reliant on hormone therapies produced in the EU 27. Who precisely in the NHS is responsible for ensuring continuity of supply of those therapies to patients?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, procurement decisions in the NHS are done by the NHS. I do not think that a specific or unique group is focused precisely on hormone therapies, but I would be glad to go back to the department and write to the noble Baroness to confirm that.

Puberty-blocker Drugs

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con) [V]]

I reassure the noble Baroness that patient-doctor confidentiality remains paramount and is respected. To update her, the Tavistock has immediately suspended new referrals for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for under-16s. In future, they will be permitted only where a court specifically authorises it. I reassure the noble Baroness that those already on the programme will continue their medication until the review has been finalised.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

The legal team that brought the recent case has, over recent years, brought several cases designed to oppose LGBT rights and to restrict the reproductive rights of women and girls. All those actions are consistent with campaigns run by organisations including the Heritage Foundation and the Alliance Defending Freedom—extreme evangelical right-wing American organisations. Will the Minister tell the House which NHS England boards and committees approved the amendment of the gender identity service specification on 1 December, prior to the court requiring them to do so, and in the light of the fact that this judgment can and will be appealed? If he does not have that information now, will he write to me?

[Lord Bethell (Con) [V]]

Well, my Lords, it is not appropriate for me to comment on those who have brought these cases, and outstanding judicial proceedings exist and are in place at the moment, so it is not possible for me to comment from the Dispatch Box in response to the noble Baroness’s remarks. All I can say is that the NHS, NICE and the Tavistock all have the interests of patients at their heart; we are not ideological about that. We are absolutely committed to the best interests of patients, and I would be glad to write to the noble Baroness to answer in any way that I can the questions she asked.

HIV: Ending Transmissions

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Barker]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they have made towards ending HIV transmissions by 2030.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Bethell) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government remain fully committed to achieving zero new HIV transmissions in England by 2030. This is why we endorsed the HIV Commission, which was established by the Terrence Higgins Trust, the National AIDS Trust and the Elton John AIDS Foundation, and we welcome its report, published today. I reassure noble Lords that we will consider all the recommendations carefully, including an interim milestone of an 80% reduction in new HIV transmissions by 2025, and how we can expand testing. We will use the insights of the report to shape our upcoming sexual and reproductive health strategy and HIV plan.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

I thank the Minister for that reply. I am very proud to a member of the party which, before anybody else, advocated that there be services for people with HIV and AIDS, and we will be there until this report is fully implemented and the fight against AIDS is won. Will the Government move to introduce a system of opt-out testing so that all people, including men and women from black and minority ethnic communities, can know their status, and we can get sooner to the point where they can get treatment and stop transmission?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

The noble Baroness refers to one of the most interesting of the recommendations of the commission’s report. I took a briefing from the commission yesterday; members made that point very clearly, and their arguments were extremely persuasive. We have learned a lot during the Covid pandemic about opt-out testing; I completely understand the value of it, and I will take that recommendation to the department to look at it very closely.

Coronavirus Act 2020 (Expiry of Mental Health Provisions) (England and Wales) Regulations 2020

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, I warmly welcome the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, to your Lordships’ House and congratulate him on his speech. I was unaware of his professional background, but his explanation has led me to understand why there is such a sense of excitement among those Members of your Lordships’ House who are mere accountants. I look forward to the noble Lord joining the long-standing gang of Members who take a considerable interest in mental health and who often act as a bulwark against Members of the House of Commons who feel unable to take action on mental health legislation because of the grief they get from the popular press.

I declare an interest as a member of a special advisory panel for Rethink Mental Illness; I am indebted to it and to Mind for their briefings. When the Coronavirus Act went through, the mental health provisions were among the most controversial and the most feared, not only by lobby groups and patient groups—there was also a considerable amount of discomfort on the part of mental health professionals about what was being done. Under the Mental Health Act 2007, there is already a lack of patient involvement in decision-making, specifically in mental health. That is a fundamental flaw.

It was, on that basis, wrong to take away the safeguards that are the subject of these statutory instruments, and I am very glad that they have not had to be used. They have not had to be used because of the extraordinary efforts of both staff and indeed patients in the early part of this year. Both Mind and Rethink have done a considerable amount of work talking to people who were in acute services in particular. The surprising finding was the extent to which patients were deeply grateful to staff for continuing to look after them when the staff might well have been putting themselves in danger.

The extent to which patients were comfortable with incarceration during Covid was directly related to two factors: first, their ability to contact friends and family remotely and, secondly—because they are people just like the rest of us—the extent to which they were enabled to get out into the grounds and get fresh air. It is worth noting at this point that, in the recently announced hospital-building programme, only one of the new hospitals will be a mental health hospital. Given that we are likely for some considerable time to be going in and out of periods of physical restrictions because of the virus, we should do well to look at the physical estate of mental health services.

I agree with others that the £3 billion announced is very welcome, but there is a grave danger that it will be stretched way too thinly. A lot of it was earmarked before we entered the current situation. As others have said, and as the studies done by Mind and Rethink have shown, it is evident now that people are coming into community services with a greater degree of severity of mental distress and agitation. This is a clear signal that we will, in the coming months, see a much greater level of more severe illness if we do not put money now into rapidly accessible community services—patients are telling us that they cannot access those services. What efforts will be made to ensure that input of both staff and resources into a greater degree of community services?

In all the Government’s lockdown announcements, I have never seen anything acknowledging that those areas of the country that have been under severe lockdown for several months might have a greater need of mental health services than those that have not. Is that part of the analysis that the Minister’s department is undertaking? This is part of the question that I really wish to put to him. We are sitting waiting for the Government’s response to Sir Simon Wessely’s review. To what extent will the things that been learned during these last six months go into that review? For example, what have we learned about disproportionate levels of mental illness and lack of services among black and minority-ethnic communities, and what are we doing about children and young people? Can he tell us to what extent we have learned the lessons of the last six months and whether they will be in that new legislation?

Covid-19: Vaccine

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

The noble Lord makes a persuasive case for those who are most vulnerable, including the itinerant and the homeless. We have seen for ourselves the impact of the disease on those who live in close quarters with each other, have health vulnerabilities or are exposed to the disease due to the nature of their circumstances. Those who are most vulnerable should surely be at the top of the list. I do not know the precise arrangements for the homeless and itinerant, but he makes an extremely good point, and I would be glad to get back to him with details.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, as is the case with the ordering of home testing kits, in order to prove one’s identity and access the vaccine, will UK citizens be required to share their credit rating history with US data-mining companies with which the Government have signed contracts?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

No, they will not.