Covid-19

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Wednesday 15th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

Normally, of course, we would have taken these Statements separately but on this occasion, we can take them together. I hope we are working towards taking Statements on the day they are made in the Commons wherever possible.

I looked back at this week in 2020. This time last year, the Prime Minister introduced the rule of six—and really confused the nation. Covid marshals were introduced and the offence of mingling appeared on the statute book. We had infection rates rising, from the young to the middle-aged, and we were very concerned that that meant that they would move into the older cohort of the population. I of course acknowledge that vaccine and testing regimes have made a huge difference, but the lesson we need to learn from last year, and which is signalled in the recent SAGE report, is the need to take action in a timely fashion—which, I am afraid, the Government failed to do from time to time last year.

On Monday, we had confirmation of the vaccine programme for children, and we on these Benches welcome that and support the decision and recommendation of the CMO. Children may not have been the face of this crisis, but they have certainly been among its biggest victims. Yesterday, the Secretary of State also confirmed a booster jab and again, we on these Benches welcome and support that. The obvious question is: how will all this be done? In addition to the issues of our young people, booster jabs and the flu vaccine, we have areas of the country where vaccine take-up remains relatively low. For example, in Bradford, where I am from, second doses are running at 65%; in Wolverhampton, 65%; in Burnley, 69%; and in Leicester, 61%. The first question has to be: what support will be given to those areas and others so that they can boost their vaccine take-up?

Can the Minister explain to the House what the next stage in the children’s vaccination programme will look like and by what date he anticipates that children will be vaccinated? Will it be the responsibility of parents to arrange their children’s vaccination, or will the local NHS arrange it with schools, year by year, or class by class? Will the flu vaccine, which is this year being expanded to secondary schoolchildren, be delivered at the same time as the Covid vaccine or separately? Can the Minister explain what steps will be taken to ensure that parents are informed of the benefits and risks of the vaccination? Can he confirm the Government’s position in rolling out the vaccine and whether the consent of parents will be necessary, because surely the Gillick principle will come into play here? Can the Minister explain why, 470 days since SAGE warned about the importance of ventilation in schools and colleges, it looks as though not a huge amount of action has been taken?

Yesterday, in Grand Committee, I raised the issue of anti-vaxxers demonstrating outside our secondary schools. Given the creation of safety zones around hospitals to prevent harassment and bullying from anti-vaxxers and ensure the safety of our healthcare workers, patients and their caregivers, what will we do about our schools? Can the Minister confirm that the duty of schools, their leaders and the Government is to protect vulnerable children from any form of intimidation or demonstration at their school gates? What is his view of this matter?

Despite the success of the vaccine rollout, the delta variant continues to pose a considerable threat to people. Those who are sick with the delta Covid variant are twice as likely to need hospital care as those who contract the alpha variant. Of course, the UK has not yet experienced delta in the winter. The Government have acknowledged that there is a “plausible” risk of cases rising to an extent that would place the NHS under “unsustainable pressure”. Can the Minister advise the House at what point different measures in the plan will therefore be introduced?

The Government—and, indeed, the scientists—note that

“the epidemic is entering a period of uncertainty … It will take several weeks to be able to fully understand the impact of any such changes.”

In its report, SAGE stressed the “importance of acting early” if cases rise to stop the epidemic growing. It warned:

“Early, ‘low-cost’ interventions may forestall need for more disruptive measures and avoid an unacceptable level of hospitalisations … Late action is likely to require harder measures.”


Given that deaths are currently five times what they were a year ago, with hospitalisations four times as high, why are the Government not already pursuing light-touch measures, such as mandatory masks? The CSA, Patrick Vallance, said that the UK is now at a “pivot point” where, if the situation worsens, it could do so rapidly—so would light-touch measures not be prudent?

The Autumn and Winter Plan states that the Government want

“to sustain the progress made and prepare the country for future challenges … by … Identifying and isolating positive cases to limit transmission”.

Yet the Health Secretary said that no decision has yet been taken as to whether pupils in England will continue to undergo regular testing. Does the Minister share my concern that ending regular testing for pupils is contrary to that key plank in the winter plan?

Although we are still waiting to hear what changes will be made to Covid travel rules, the Health Secretary implied that PCR tests for fully vaccinated travellers will be replaced with lateral flow tests. What will this mean in terms of possible delays in identifying cases involving variants of interest or concern to the UK?

The Health Secretary also confirmed that, although the plans for mandatory vaccine-only Covid-status certification have been shelved for now, the Government may well pursue them in future under the plan B scenario. Can the Minister provide further details about which settings and scenarios will be involved? Can he confirm whether this will require primary legislation?

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, the publication of the 33-page Covid Autumn and Winter Plan, including plans A and B, rightly talks about the need to resume life as normally as is possible while Covid is still around, but to move into restrictions faster if cases surge and the NHS is pressured. The World Health Organization’s special envoy on Covid, Dr David Nabarro, has said that the UK is right to find a way to live with the virus. However, he added:

“Speed is of the essence. We’ve been through this before and we know, as a result of past experience, that acting quickly and acting quite robustly is the way you get on top of this virus, then life can go on. Whereas if you’re a bit slower, then it can build up and become very heavy and hospitals fill up, and then you have to take all sorts of emergency action.”


Why does the Statement talk about the vital importance of mitigations, such as meeting outdoors where possible, ensuring ventilation if inside and wearing face coverings? Why are there no clearer, repeated messages for the general public about all these vital interventions, especially what we can all do now to slow down the increase in cases and hospital admissions?

At the No. 10 press conference on Monday, Professor Chris Whitty said:

“Anybody who believes that the big risk of Covid is all in the past and it’s too late to make a difference has not understood where we are going to head as we go into autumn and winter.”


He is right to be concerned. The seven-day rolling figure for daily hospital admissions is now around 1,000, with an average of 8,400 Covid patients in hospital beds. These numbers are considerably greater than they were this time last year. SAGE is very concerned that, as rules are further relaxed and people start coming back into work, the number of Covid patients going into hospital is set to increase substantially. This would put the NHS under real pressure, with perhaps as many as 7,000 admissions a day in six or so weeks, so it says.

The Statement announces the final decision on the booster scheme for those aged over 50, healthcare staff and the clinically extremely vulnerable, following the third dose for the half a million people who are severely clinically vulnerable. We welcome this. However, the World Health Organization reminded us that we should also be providing doses for low-income countries, but I see that the Government are planning only 100 million doses over the next few months. That is a drop in the ocean given that only 2% of the populations of low-income countries have been vaccinated. Will the Government agree to review and increase this number?

We on these Benches welcome the news on 12 to 15 year-olds getting vaccines. We accept that this was a difficult and complex decision, but we are pleased that there finally is one. There was an excellent slot on the “Today” programme this morning, with a group of 12 year-olds asking a paediatrician some questions; he had to look one answer up on Google. I hope that all parents and children will be able to access this sort of information because we know that it makes all the difference in coming to a decision.

However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, said, anti-vaxxers are causing serious problems. Good on Chris Whitty for what he said about one celebrity who attacked the idea of 12 to 15 year-olds having vaccines. However, today, yet another celebrity attacked him on social media, saying that he should be hanged. That is disgraceful. What are the Government doing about public servants like Professor Whitty being threatened in this way? As importantly, what will the Government do about the disinformation that people are now spreading at school gates, including leaflets with the NHS logo on them?

Ten days ago, Dr Jenny Harries announced that all clinically extremely vulnerable children in England—even those still on chemotherapy—would be removed from the CEV list and expected to return to school as term was starting, regardless of their underlying condition or the fact that there are no masks, bubbles or even, in many schools, proper ventilation. Although it is really important to have all children back in school, this cohort of children is at particular risk. Their consultants and GPs are as bemused as their parents, so why is Jenny Harries’s letter to the parents of these children, explaining why they are being removed from the CEV list, not on either the NHS or UKHSA website? Will the Minister write to me to explain this decision? We are hearing confusion from parents and medics alike.

Finally, last week, I commented on the continuing farce of Ministers U-turning daily on the use of vaccine passports for clubs. It is confusing to keep up with the U-turns on U-turns; I note that the Statement is trying to have it both ways. I suspect that Ministers could do with some new flip-flops.

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

I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Thornton and Lady Brinton, for such thoughtful questions. I am very pleased to be here to answer questions on both these Statements, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for her kind remarks earlier.

I too welcome the decision to bring forward the vaccination of children. I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, that it will be done in the same way that a large number of other vaccinations are run through the school process. As I am sure she knows, vaccinations for things such as HPV and flu have been done at primary school for some time and there are extremely well-established and thoughtful protocols for handling them. They are handled not by school nurses but by nurses employed by the local authority or on contract by the local CCG to deliver the vaccinations, and the consent forms are handled directly with the parents. There is an extremely well-established process for the very rare occasions where there is a difference of opinion between the child and the parents. It is important that we get that right. I reassure the Chamber that this process for vaccinations has been handled for years. The professionals who deal with such disagreements are extremely well trained and the Gillick principles, which are extremely well known, will be applied to the Covid vaccination. I think all noble Lords agree that that is entirely right. Children aged between 12 and 15 will be provided with information, usually in the form of a leaflet, for their use. The school- age immunisation provider will, prior to vaccination, seek consent for all the vaccination programmes.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, quite rightly raised the question of children being pressured into taking or not taking the vaccine. I reassure her that the school-age vaccination programme and the clinicians involved are very well equipped and are well versed in dealing with vaccines in schools; this will not be a new thing for the schools or professionals involved. Their ability to gain consent and to communicate exactly why the Chief Medical Officer has gone ahead is an important element of the decision to accept the recommendation from the CMO on the back of the JCVI recommendation. The four CMOs have said that it is essential that children and young people aged 12 to 15 and their parents are supported in their decisions, whatever decisions they take, and are not stigmatised for accepting or not accepting the vaccination offer. Individual choice will be respected.

The rollout is starting immediately, at the beginning of next week, and we expect that it will end in schools by the end of November. The advice from Dr June Raine of the MHRA is that the flu and Covid vaccinations can happen contemporaneously—studies have supported that—but that will not necessarily happen in every case. The practicalities of the supply of Covid and flu vaccines are, as noble Lords know, extremely complex, and we do not want to make a complicated situation any worse by trying to force a combination if it is not possible.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, asked about our arrangements for the current winter period and particularly about mandatory masks. I completely understand the concern of noble Lords in the Chamber about making masks mandatory. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, referred to it as “light touch”, but our feeling is that it is not light touch to mandate the wearing of masks; in fact, it is an intrusion into people’s life in the most intimate way. That is not to say that it should not happen at all, but we are at a stage of the pandemic where we are trying to move the responsibility for individual choices, such as wearing masks, on to people to take it for themselves. Of course, if the worst happens and we have to move into plan B, we have the legal and influential role to be able to mandate masks, but at this stage it feels proportionate to try to use persuasion rather than mandation.

I remind noble Lords that the messaging around the pandemic is not the only thing we are trying to do right now. In response to the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, about public messaging, I reassure her that I am the Minister who signs off the marketing around Covid and other health messaging. We are currently spending a substantial sum communicating our messages on Covid. The fact that she thinks they do not exist is an example of the public exhaustion that is an inevitable result of 18 months of relentless campaigning on Covid. We have to recognise that the public can hear us only so many times before they start tuning out the message.

There are other very important messages that we have to get through to the public, the most important of which is for those who show symptoms of other diseases to step forward to get their tests, so that we can catch people who are ill with non-Covid diseases. We have a massive backlog of diagnostics; the NHS figure on the expected numbers of people who have diseases such as cancer, and need to be seen by GPs and specialists, is huge. We need to get those messages across to people as well and, while it is not a zero-sum game, to be aware that these messages compete with each other. We are using this moment where there is a pause in the Covid epidemic to try to get people back into the GP surgeries and the diagnostic hubs—back into hospital—to try to catch diseases and reduce the lists. That fightback is extremely important and is one of the reasons why we are focused on the “Help us to help you” messaging.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, asked about testing in schools. I reassure her that we have not only put a huge effort into the double supervised testing which, as she knows, kicked off the school term but are sustaining the support for school testing. There will be a review at the end of September but there are no current plans to end regular testing in schools. We have to ensure that there is value for money and that the testing is effective, but it is extremely well supported by schools. I believe it has made a serious impact on the spread of disease within schools and pay tribute to teachers, headmasters, parents and pupils for the high rates of uptake in schools. Around one-third of all positive cases are tracked down through asymptomatic testing, which is a really good indication of how effective it is at breaking the chains of transmission.

There is a review of our border arrangements in play, and I believe the Secretary of State for Transport will be making a Statement tomorrow. However, I reassure the noble Baroness that we take border control extremely seriously. We are very conscious of the threat from variants of concern. At the same time, however, we have to recognise that vaccination makes a big difference and be proportionate in our border arrangements. We are conscious that although travel is regarded as a voluntary matter, people may have strong family roots or good business reasons. Being able to travel is one of the great joys and loves of people’s lives, so we are seeking to be proportionate and reasonable in our travel arrangements. The Secretary of State will make further announcements on that tomorrow.

On the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, on public servants, I could not agree more. The rhetoric that has been directed at public servants such as Chris Whitty and JVT sometimes leaves one feeling quite cold and disappointed at the British public. As she probably knows, we have made arrangements to put a big arm around those people who have been threatened and improve the security arrangements for them. I call on everyone to express support for our public servants, who have a very tough job. They are often communicating unpalatable, difficult truths to the public and challenging some of the assumptions and preconceptions of those who would like life to be slightly different from what it really is.

In particular, I noted the physical attack on the MHRA headquarters in Canary Wharf 10 days ago. Videos of that attack really disturbed me; it was brutal, nasty and ferocious. I pay tribute to the Metropolitan Police, who responded extremely quickly and emphatically, and to professionals at the MHRA who had steady nerves on that Friday afternoon. We cannot operate in a society where differences of opinion about public health policy lead to physical violence on the streets of London. I absolutely condemn those who participate in physical attacks of that nature, along with the kind of violent extremism that calls for people to be hanged. This is no time for that kind of extremism. Those who participate in it are trying to divide society. They really need to move on and find something else to do.

I am extremely pleased to hear what I think was the implicit support of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for the principle of vaccine passports. It is right that we hold such an intimate and strong measure in reserve in case we need it for plan B. The technical and regulatory arrangements for the measures have been put in place but we have held off the implementation because it is not felt that it is needed right now. However, should it be needed either to break the chains of infection and restrain the spread of the virus or to encourage vaccine uptake, which is one of the benefits of such a measure, we will turn to it as part of our plan B measures. That is a proportionate treatment of that potent but very heavy state intervention.