Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Self-Isolation and Linked Households) (England) Regulations 2020
Debate between Baroness Penn and Lord Greaves(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Greaves (LD) [V]
Sorry, I did so, and it went back on mute. I beg your pardon. My Lords, I speak again from the hills of east Lancashire, which are not so sunny today.
The Minister said that we are not back to the grim times of last March, but in this part of the world, and many others in the north, we have never really been out of them, apart from a short time in the middle of summer. The misery, loneliness and debilitating frustration of people such as small shopkeepers in town centres continues.
Vaccination is really the Government’s last chance to show that they can do something competently in this area. My noble friend Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted talked about the logistics and the rollout. In my view, at local level it is very important that the local people involved—the hospitals, GPs, pharmacies and local authorities providing facilities—are able to operate with a degree of flexibility.
Too often we have an attitude in this country of tram lines and tick boxes, and people are not able, and do not feel they are able, to do anything at all that is not on their tick list. Yet if people have the vaccines locally, it is very important that they use them, and that we do not get a situation in which there is a surplus of vaccines in a particular place and people do not turn up to get their vaccination, or there are not enough of the priority categories available. People have to be able to use those vaccines. Every vaccine delivered locally and not used will be a disgrace. I ask the Minister to assure us that people will have the flexibility to use them and to get people vaccinated, right up to 100%.
Cross-Government Policy to Strengthen Families
Debate between Baroness Penn and Lord Greaves
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, I agree wholeheartedly that support for family policy is a cross-government endeavour. I think the noble Lord will know that within government we have the family test, which is a resource that policymakers can use to ensure that the needs of families are considered at the heart of policy-making.
Lord Greaves (LD) [V]
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, referred to the state of crisis in many families, and that has been dramatically worsened for very many families during this year as a result of the Covid crisis. The Government’s reaction and policies on Covid have tended to rely on three pillars: medical, economic and educational policy. Is it not now time to put much more emphasis on social policy, and in particular on the health, welfare and well-being of families of all kinds and their members of all ages?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, the Government have put a huge amount of support into health policy during this crisis and policy to support the well-being of families. That has included additional support towards mental health, making sure that social services have the resources they need to continue their important work during this time and ensuring that both schools and early years settings have the resources they need to provide support to children and young people.
Covid-19: Levelling-up Agenda
Debate between Baroness Penn and Lord Greaves
Lord Greaves
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the consequences of their policies in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic on their levelling up agenda in England.
Baroness Penn (Con)
The Government recognise the significant impact of Covid-19 on every region and nation of the UK and remain committed to levelling up opportunity across the country. In recognition of this, we have announced unprecedented support for business, workers and local authorities across the UK, including support for 2.7 million people through the Self-employment Income Support Scheme, and have extended the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, which has already supported 9.6 billion jobs and provided over £62 billion in business support loans.
Lord Greaves (LD)
My Lords, the Northern Health Science Alliance reported two days ago that Covid has made economic inequalities worse, with reductions in mental well-being in the north costing the economy £5 billion a year, and that more people in the north have died. The Northern Powerhouse Partnership is calling for a northern economic recovery plan. The LGA says that in the north, where core services have already been cut by up to half in some of the poorest areas, more cuts will just make regional inequalities worse. South Yorkshire’s mayor, Dan Jarvis, wrote yesterday in the House magazine:
“The brutal reality is that the North is now on course for levelling down, not levelling up.”
Is it not now time for a huge transfer to the north of resources of all kinds and the powers to use them?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, I think that we have seen a significant transfer of power to the north; Dan Jarvis, the mayor in Yorkshire, is an example of that. The Government are absolutely committed to levelling up and to reducing this inequality. That is why, for example, we have the £3.6 billion Towns Fund, which supports at least 45 places in the northern powerhouse and 30 places in the Midlands engine region.
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions on Gatherings) (North of England) Regulations 2020
Debate between Baroness Penn and Lord Greaves(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Greaves (LD)
My Lords, yesterday I said quite a lot about a similar set of regulations which I will not repeat, but what I did do in the evening yesterday after our long discussions was attend a meeting of Pendle Borough Council. I was able to do that from my room in this building. I am obviously a member and I shall give a flavour of two resolutions that the council passed, which might be helpful. The first was to express the council’s thanks and gratitude to the staff of Pendle Council and all the other local agencies whose staff have “shown such fortitude in the face of unprecedented peacetime impacts on the daily lives of themselves and their citizens” and gone beyond the call of duty in what has been happening.
The council then passed a motion on test, trace and isolate, which in a sense was a little less positive. “The council notes with alarm that the chaos in the nation’s test, trace and isolate systems for Covid-19 is contributing to the disease accelerating.” The failures of the Government system have created a situation where they are locking us into lockdown in Pendle. These are things that I have said previously in the Chamber. The council believes that “oppressive” regulations—not all regulations, but oppressive regulations—are counter- productive to the fight against Covid-19 and are generating mental health issues and undermining social cohesion across the borough. I also talked about that to a degree yesterday.
The council requested that the Government should issue a simple set of principles setting out the steps that individuals should take. The Government think that they have got that, but we are asking that people understand it. The emphasis should be on supporting people to live their lives in accordance with the guidance, rather than a reliance on virtually unenforceable regulations and “Covid marshals” and—this is a point I have been making on behalf of all the councils in the hotspot areas—the Government should provide sufficient resources for Pendle Council and its partners to have an effective test, trace and isolate programme involving screening, targeting individual testing, a local end-to-end tracing programme and adequate support for individuals who are required to self-isolate, together with the monitoring of such isolation to ensure its effectiveness. The Government have been moving towards this, but I thought that this might be helpful.
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, I remind noble Lords of the two-minute time limit for Back-Bench speakers.