King’s Speech

Baroness Harris of Richmond Excerpts

Thursday 9th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Harris of Richmond (LD) [V]]

My Lords, there was nothing in the gracious Speech about the most debilitating and underreported health problem which has arisen as a result of the pandemic, known as long Covid. It has become a serious health matter, especially since the Office for National Statistics stopped reporting on long Covid in March this year. Following the outbreak of Covid-19, the NHS committed to providing centralised funding specifically allocated to fund specialised long Covid services across the country. This funding has now been removed, meaning that the services are being absorbed back into local integrated care boards, which are now deciding service by service whether they will continue to fund and run a specialised long Covid service.

Yet it is now that we need to know the extent of the problem, as we know it affects 1.9 million people in the UK, which is 2.9% of the population. This figure comes from research done by the all-party parliamentary group on long Covid. People have been unable to get back to work because of the devastating side-effects they have experienced following a bout of the Covid virus. More will follow, as the latest information on the government website tells us that 6,832 people tested positive for the virus in the week to 28 October. This is almost certainly wildly inaccurate, as there are no free testing kits any more and people are unlikely to go out to buy them, so those reporting that they have Covid are likely to be people with smartphones or tablets who are sufficiently civic-minded to report themselves if they have the disease.

Many people have suffered after contracting the virus and their symptoms are so varied that I wonder what research is being done to support them. Some 1.82 million days were lost by healthcare workers alone suffering from long Covid, from March 2020 to September 2021, across 219 NHS trusts. A survey carried out by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development found that one-quarter of UK employers cited long Covid as one of the main causes of long-term sickness absence among staff. Clearly, this is an alarming figure.

I wonder if the Minister can tell me what research is going on in this country to try to mitigate the effects of long Covid on our own population? In Canada, for instance, research by the Ontario Covid-19 rapid research fund found that an MRI technique developed by Western University was able to see how tiny branches of air tubes in the lungs were moving oxygen into the red blood cells. They know that this happens in long Covid patients and are now researching to find out why this occurs, as they believe it has an important bearing on why long Covid happens in some people and not in others.

I have been introduced to an interesting programme by the English National Opera called ENO Breathe. It is a breathing and well-being programme developed specifically for people recovering from Covid-19 who are still suffering from breathlessness and associated anxiety. It is delivered in collaboration with Imperial College healthcare teams and is entirely online. It focuses on breathing retraining through singing. Would the Minister undertake to look at this programme and see how this sort of approach could be used more widely in the national health system?

I have a very personal interest in this subject, as one of my grandsons is a sufferer, having been unable to attend school since November 2020, having caught Covid-19 earlier. It is only because of the amazing help and support he had from his school, the Royal Grammar School in High Wycombe, his headmaster Mr Philip Wayne and some members of his staff, that he has been able to pass his GCSEs and enter the sixth form. Although still capable of doing only a fraction of what he had been able to do pre-Covid, Tate has been very lucky. Not every child will have had the parental and school support he has.

We know that school attendance has been plummeting; we have already heard that. The Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, has stated that one in five children were persistently absent from school, which is equivalent to 1.8 million children regularly missing. Has any research been done to see if long Covid has a part to play in these absences?

Recommendations on long Covid from the APPG include: launching specialised care pathways for children living with the illness; that guidance is issued to schools and educational settings on the management of and support for pupils living with long Covid; and that the UK Government issue urgent guidance to medical practitioners on long Covid in children. May I ask that the Government look urgently and favourably on these recommendations so that our young people, having endured two years of disruption to their studies already, should not have to worry further if they contract this awful virus?