Home Office: ODA-funded Support
Debate between Baroness Penn and Lord Dubs(1 year, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, I recognise that the reduction in ODA spending has had important consequences and we are, as I say, committed to returning to 0.7% when the fiscal situation allows. In various international development strategy documents, we have also set out how we will prioritise spending to the lowest-income households in humanitarian efforts, while aligning our programmes further with our ambitions on supporting women and girls in order to address the issues that the right reverend Prelate has set out.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister has twice cited the Illegal Migration Act in defence of government policy. Can she say which part of that Act is working?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, that Act is only in the process of being brought into force but it is an important part of our approach to reducing the pressures of illegal migration, so that we can better address the needs of legitimate asylum claims in this country.
Deprived Areas
Debate between Baroness Penn and Lord Dubs
Baroness Penn (Con)
My noble friend raises an important point. On testing, we have been piloting alternative delivery models based on identifying the trusted individual for people in underserved communities and enabling them to encourage their members or service users to start testing; that has been incredibly effective. For vaccines, we have a community champion scheme which applies a similar logic, and we are taking vaccinations to places and sites where people will access them and improve take-up rates.
Lord Dubs (Lab) [V]
My Lords, the Minister has on two or three occasions just now referred to the importance of tackling obesity as a way of evening up inequalities in healthcare and life attainment. Does she agree that local authorities ought to have and are bound to have a key part in tackling those inequalities, whether based on obesity or other matters? How can they do this when they have been subjected to serious cuts in expenditure? Is not the real answer that what we want to tackle these inequalities is more devolution of power from Whitehall to the regions?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, a key focus of the Government’s and the NHS’s plans for reform on health is the introduction of integrated care systems, which will work by putting providers and local authorities in the position where they can join up care and focus on population health and prevention. That will be an incredibly effective way in which to address some of these public health measures, which is why we look forward to introducing our NHS Bill later this year.
NHS Test and Trace
Debate between Baroness Penn and Lord Dubs
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, we have recently increased the resources available to local authorities—for example, in the amount of money they have for discretionary payments to support those who are self-isolating. The noble Baroness is absolutely right about the importance of partnership in this work, and in particular the role of local authorities and directors of public health, to ensure that the uptake of testing is as high as we need it to be. We find that, once people are tested, they do tend to self-isolate.
Lord Dubs (Lab) [V]
My Lords, will the Minister say how many firms of management consultants have been employed on the test and trace system since it began? Were they all appointed by competitive tender, and what evidence is there that this is money well spent?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, I believe that all the processes in setting up test and trace will have followed the relevant guidance on both the use of private-sector consultants and how the processes for tendering should take place, and I am sure that we will continue to ensure that that is the case.
Covid-19 Update
Debate between Baroness Penn and Lord Dubs(3 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Dubs (Lab) [V]
I apologise. Does the Minister have any estimate of the number of people who are currently in self-isolation? Does he agree that if these people were to be given high priority for testing, their period of self-isolation would be shortened and more people would be willing to go into self-isolation because they would not lose so much money if they could be tested quickly and resume their ordinary lives?