Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Leicester) Regulations 2020

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Wednesday 29th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, in reality, it is only within the last seven days that local directors of public health, after many times of asking, were finally given access to address-level data, which is so needed for local contact tracing. This is very important to stem household transmission within vulnerable communities, particularly among those living in overcrowded housing. As yet, local public health officials and local authorities still do not routinely, in real time, get other data on those who have had negative tests; nor do they have workplace data to spot workplace clusters early and take effective action based on local knowledge. They do not have data by ethnicity, which is provided only sporadically at the time of testing and not regularly on death certificates.

Some local authorities are doing crazy things, such as scanning test results to spot likely ethnic names to help them understand the characteristics of a community spread. Information from the call centre process is not available to local authorities on who has been contact traced, where they live or whether they have undertaken to self-isolate. As well as inadequate real-time data, local authorities lack resources. The additional £300 million for Covid-19 action plans will not go far. Some local authorities have no paid or trained local contact tracers. Can the Minister clarify whether he sees local authorities, rather than the national process, as the leads in managing outbreaks; what he is doing to assure them of real-time comprehensive data of the kind that I have outlined; and how he plans to create a step change in local authority capacity? Yesterday, the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, said that local outbreaks are being managed by local authorities extremely well. This is not how local authorities feel.