Covid-19 Update

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for taking questions on this Statement today. It was noticeable yesterday, and on Monday, that at no point was there any attempt to reveal any scientific basis or evidence for the impact on the spread of the virus of either a 10 pm curfew or going back to working from home if you can. A few weeks ago, we were all being urged to go to the office or workplace if we could. We have certainly not been told what SAGE’s modelling shows as the impact a ban on mixing households indoors would have.

The Government are lacking a clear Covid-management approach. We recognise that the pandemic, and its impact, are complex. The response can be no better than the best compromise, and that should be admitted. Timely policies to rejuvenate the economy will fail if policies to contain the infection fail; we recognise that. In the absence of a vaccine, testing, tracing and isolation is the only response that matters now. Covid infection data should be published, to make it clear to the public where the risks are. The Prime Minister said that more information would be made available. I would like to know that it will and when that might happen.

This leads back to testing, tracing and, importantly, isolating, as every conversation about the containment of Covid-19 does at the moment. Looking back over the last few weeks of growing disquiet, and then serious concern, about not being able to get tests, does the Minister agree that part of the problem—leaving aside the seeming failure of the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, and her operation—is the clear lack of communication about testing? I plead with the Minister not to treat the House to the mantra about the record number of tests and so on. It is completely clear, from MP’s postbags and the media, that “them out there” were under the impression that tests were more widely accessible than they in fact are. Lecturing us on how simple all this is both misses the point and is dangerous.

As far as schools are concerned, I asked a headmaster how things were going. He said: “If they ran a school the way they are running the country, what Ofsted grade would they put on their self-evaluation form?” I thought that was quite a good question. The tone of the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister in their Statements rather gave the impression that the Government were blaming people for breaking the rules and allowing the virus to grow. The reality is that people have done everything that they were asked to do. They have missed birthday celebrations, weddings and funerals; they have, quite rightly, sent their children back to school; they have gone back to their workplace. They have done what they were asked to do. In return, Ministers were supposed to fix test, trace and isolate so that we could return to something like normality.

The mayor of Tower Hamlets, John Biggs, said:

“With cases rising the government is right to bring in stricter restrictions to prevent the transmission of COVID-19. In Tower Hamlets we need to keep each other safe by following these new rules”.


He added:

“Government also needs to ensure adequate testing is available and that there’s continued support for those losing out financially due to these restrictions. The next few months will continue to be challenging—as a community we’ll remain resilient and together can get through this”.


He puts the case extremely well.

The Cabinet Office Minister, Michael Gove, said the 10 pm curfew on pubs in England has been brought in after evidence from places such as Bolton, where the curfew has already been in place for two weeks, suggested it will drive down coronavirus infection rates. However, according to the latest figures released by Public Health England, the infection rate in Bolton has risen again. Does the Minister share my concern that the new regulations may be based on poor evidence? Will the Government review this decision and immediately publish the evidence to allow it to be scrutinised in peer review?

Why is that 10 pm curfew not on all sales of alcohol? For example, you get thrown out of the pub at 10 pm with five of your mates; you go to the off-licence, buy whatever you want and go to somebody’s home. I cannot see the evidence that this will make any difference. I would really like to know.

Returning to tests, can the Minister confirm that only half of all tests have been received in less than 24 hours and will he publish the Pillar 2 data which breaks down how many people asking for those tests were symptomatic and how many were asymptomatic? Many parents report going to walk-in centres with their sick children, when they had no symptoms, and being given a test. Was that a national policy? Has it been abandoned? This is further evidence of confusion.

I welcome what the Minister said about prioritising NHS staff, care workers and teachers, but can he clarify why he has issued guidance to hospital trusts placing restrictions on the number of tests they can carry out? Also, how he will protect care homes? In a previous exchange this afternoon between the Leader of the House and the Leader of the Opposition, my noble friend asked the noble Baroness about domiciliary care. I think she maybe did not understand what was being said—it might have been after a question from the Back Benches. Will people in domiciliary care, going from one home to another doing social care, be given PPE and will the tests available in care homes be available to them? I am trying to put it as simply as I can because it is a very important question.

Will the Minister ensure that no one is discharged into a care home without a Covid test? Given where the virus is, what is his advice to the shielding community? What protections is he putting in place for those from black, Asian and minority-ethnic communities, given that there are disproportionate numbers from those communities in intensive care units even today?

None of us wants to see another lockdown or circuit-break. We will understand if one becomes necessary, but test, trace and isolate should be fixed. The failure of that has left us vulnerable and exposed. It seems to me we must now act with speed to save lives and minimise harm.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, three months ago the Secretary of State said that test and trace was the single most important thing that had to be done to conquer the virus. Yesterday the Prime Minister said it had “little or nothing” to do with the transmission of the virus. These two things cannot both be right. For six months, the problem has been that we have had confused messages, careless use of statistics and a persistent refusal to work with and listen to people who run local public services and know what needs to be communicated to whom and how.

All those are the fundamental reasons we find ourselves in this situation. We still lack an effective and timely track, test and isolate system. In its place and without any evidence base behind them, we have come up with messages which, quite frankly, do not make sense to the general public. The rule of six does not make any practical sense at all, as was very well evidenced today by my noble friend Lord Newby in an earlier interaction with the Leader of the House.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister said the Government now had granular data that enabled them to understand the transmission of the virus. When will that evidence be released? And when will it be released to Members of this House and the other place, who, next week, are going to be asked to renew emergency powers the like of which have never been seen before to this Government? If the Government cannot come up with that evidence—and, I have to say, over the last six months, they have persistently failed to answer any kind of detailed question from Opposition Benches in this House—why on earth should they be trusted to have those powers renewed? When are we going to get the evidence base?

It is helpful, looking at the Secretary of State’s Statement, to see that finally, after repeated questions from these Benches and the Labour Benches, we have got a clearer statement on who is being prioritised for testing and in which area. But, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, said, it is remarkable that there is nothing about black and minority ethnic communities, which we know are at greater risk, and nothing about the important people who work, for example, in domiciliary care, or who work in hospitals but are not medics.

I would like to ask one final question. When will they start listening to local authorities, who are persistently asking, in helpful ways, what they can do to expand the capacity for testing and to make sure that testing is better tied into the rest of the services? We are about to have an app launched, and local authorities are already telling us that there is soft intelligence that people who think they have symptoms but are unable to get a test just give up, and that people whose children are ill give up. It is all well and good for the noble Lord to say, as he did the other day, that they are going to completely redo NHS 111 to make it a more streamlined portal into the NHS, but if people have given up looking for tests long before they should, we are never going to get the data we need to get on top of this.

So I ask, as I did the other day: when they are revamping NHS 111, will they talk to the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health about the NHS 111 protocols? I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton; I think the public are desperate to do the right thing. They have been extraordinarily patient and have listened throughout, giving the Government the benefit of the doubt. But they will not go on doing that indefinitely while the Government continually fail to come up with a decent evidence base for their actions.