Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend and the all-party group for their work. He raises an important point: the challenges posed by infection control and the impact of the pandemic on the operation of hospitals. That has had an impact in this space, but I entirely recognise the value and importance of hydrotherapy as a treatment for particular conditions and I will be delighted to meet him.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Of course the number of general and acute beds open across the estate impacts on a trust’s ability to get on top of the elective backlog, which now stands at 5.3 million—a record high—with 336,000 waiting over a year and 7,000 waiting over two years for treatment. On appointment, the Secretary of State promised trusts that they would get everything they need to get through the backlog. So how much will trusts get and when will they get it?

[Edward Argar]

It is an important question. The Secretary of State has made it clear that tackling the elective backlog is one of his key priorities in his new role. The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that the Government have already committed £1 billion to helping to tackle the elective backlog. That, of course, comes on top of the record funding of £33.9 billion to ’23-24 for our NHS, but that commitment remains. We will do whatever is necessary to ensure that our NHS can tackle the elective backlog and get those waiting lists down.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I am grateful to the Minister for his answer, but if it is a priority of the new Secretary of State why on Friday were trusts told that the threshold for accessing that elective recovery funding was increasing, effectively making it harder for a trust to access funding at just the time when hospital admissions for covid are increasing and we have trusts, such as in Leeds and Birmingham, cancelling cancer surgery? Surely we should be giving trusts more resources now, not restricting access to the elective recovery fund.

[Edward Argar]

In terms of the elective recovery fund, we have worked with the NHS to determine the right thresholds and the right premiums for payment for elective activity over and above what we would be expecting in the circumstances. The NHS is doing an amazing job in difficult circumstances, as the right hon. Gentleman will appreciate, with the impact that infection prevention control restrictions have had on the ability of trusts to see the number of people that they normally would. Trusts are taking huge strides to restore services and the ERF is there to help to ensure that they are funded for that activity level so that they can get provision up and above where it needs to be in order to get the waiting lists down.

Covid-19 Update

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Monday 12th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. I join him and others across the House in paying tribute to the England side. They did indeed unite the country, and we are proud of each and every one of them. Of course, those players did take the knee to show they were taking a stand against racism. Labour again offers them our solidarity and joins with others in condemning utterly the racist, vile abuse that we have seen in the last 24 hours.

We want to see the economy reopen in a balanced, safe and sustainable way. That means maintaining certain mitigations to contain the speed at which infections are rising, to help reduce transmission and to help to limit the numbers exposed to the virus before they are fully vaccinated. Instead, the Secretary of State has taken a high-risk, fatalistic approach, trying to game what might happen in the winter and deciding that infections are going up anyway. Instead of caution, he is pushing his foot down on the accelerator while throwing the seatbelts off. He admits that that could mean 100,000 infections a day, which means potentially thousands suffering debilitating long covid and that, as more cases arise, more may escape, with the threat of a new, more transmissible variant emerging.

Two weeks ago, the Secretary of State justified unlocking by suggesting that it would make us healthier. Today, hospital admissions are running at more than 400 a day and there are now 393 people in intensive care units, up by more than 100 since the start of July. Of course, significant increases in admissions have a knock-on effect on the NHS’s ability to provide wider care. He says that infection rates will not put unsustainable pressure on the NHS, but last week cancer patients at Leeds were having their surgery cancelled and ambulance trusts across the country were reporting some of their busiest days ever. The 111 service is under intense pressure.

At the weekend, the Secretary of State warned that the elective waiting list could rise as high as 13 million. Perhaps he could therefore define what he means by “unsustainable pressure”. What does he predict that hospital admissions will peak at? He has told us he expects 100,000 infections, so how many hospital admissions does he expect? Does his confidence mean that there will be no extra resources for the NHS this summer to get through this summer wave? He again highlights vaccination, but why are vaccination rates slowing down? What will he do to drive up rates among younger people, which are still at only about 56% of 18 to 24-year-olds? When will we begin vaccination of adolescents? Other countries are doing it—why are we not?

To rely only on vaccination as infections climb is the approach of the one-club golfer. The Secretary of State needs to put other measures in place as well. First, Labour would continue with mandatory mask wearing. I notice that his tone has shifted in the last week or so and now his view is that it would be irresponsible not to wear a mask in a crowded room. Surely it is equally irresponsible for the Government to abandon mandatory mask wearing.

Secondly, on working from home, yesterday Susan Hopkins from PHE suggested that for the next four to six weeks at least people should try their best to work from home, so will the Secretary of State guarantee that anyone who wants to continue working from home will have the right to do so?

Thirdly, we know how important fresh air is. Germany has funded air filtration systems in public buildings. Last week, the Secretary of State referred to the infection control funding given to social care, but that was not for ventilation. There are British firms that manufacture air filtration and ventilation units, so let us support those firms and British jobs, and offer grants to premises to install air filtration units. Will he also use the summer to install air filtration systems in every school?

Fourthly, as more virus circulates, more people will be exposed, more people will become ill and more will have to isolate, but some people still cannot isolate because of their finances, and those with caring responsibilities for someone who has had to isolate can also be financially penalised. Furlough is beginning to be withdrawn, so financial support for isolation will become even more urgent. Will the Secretary of State ensure that those who need to isolate can access adequate sick pay and support?

Fifthly, to get through this third wave and flatten the curve, we will need ongoing testing, and contact tracing will need extra capacity. Will the Secretary of State give local authorities the resources to lead the enhanced retrospective and forward contact tracing they need to do, and will he now abandon the proposed charges for lateral flow tests, which he is set to introduce?

Finally, when the Secretary of State was appointed, he said that any easing on 19 July would be, in his word, “irreversible”. Other countries have thought the same with their road maps, yet Israel has reintroduced masks, and the Netherlands reopened nightclubs and had to close them again after two weeks. Is it still his view that the 19th is terminus day and that everything he has announced today is irreversible, or does he agree that it would be more sensible to have regular review dates in place through the summer as we deal with this third wave and rising infections?

[Sajid Javid]

The right hon. Gentleman started by saying that he supports a balanced approach in a sustainable way, and that is exactly what I have set out today from this Dispatch Box. That is the Government’s approach, so I agree with him. We as the Government have set out the detail, but I am still not sure what his plan actually is. However, given that he set out those objectives, I hope he can support this plan. He talks about the risks that are involved, and I have been very up front about that. The Government have been up front: there is no risk-free way forward. Opening up is not without risk, but ongoing restrictions are not without cost, and I hope he appreciates that.

The right hon. Gentleman raised a number of questions, and one of his first was about hospitalisations. As I have said, case numbers are going up and we expect them to continue going up, but the most important difference today versus the last wave is vaccination—the wall of defence that our country has built—which has meant that hospitalisations, although they are rising as case numbers rise, are rising at a rate that is a lot slower than before. I have set out specifically regarding test 3 in a road map that we believe the pressure, with all the data we are seeing at this point, is not unsustainable for the NHS.

The right hon. Gentleman talked about vaccinations, and I am pleased he is highlighting that, especially for more young people to come forward. As I mentioned in my statement, we are ahead of the plans we set out when step 4 was temporarily pushed out by four weeks. He also asked about the vaccination of children. He knows that we have a group of expert science advisers—the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation—and this is something it is actively looking at. At some point, we will reach a final decision, but I hope he will agree with me that we should take the scientific advice on that and consider it very carefully before making such a move.

On air ventilation units, some of the £90-plus billion extra the Government have provided to the health and care system during the course of this pandemic has of course gone on air ventilation units, and we should continue to support that. A lot of extra funding has also gone to people to support them financially if they are asked to isolate, and it is important that that is both kept under review and continues to be taken seriously.



The right hon. Gentleman mentioned lateral flow tests and something about charging for them. That might be his policy, but it is not this Government’s policy. I do not know where he has got that one from, but we have no plans to charge for lateral flow tests.

Lastly, 19 July is a step forward on our road map. As we have clearly set out, the pandemic is not over, but it is a very significant step forward. The right hon. Gentleman talked about reviews. I have just said that we will have a review in September to make sure that we are properly set up for autumn and winter.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Ashworth]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Is it further to that point of order?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

It is indeed further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I rise to reinforce the point raised by the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) and the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper). What the House is being asked to decide tomorrow is whether to proceed with compulsory vaccination for a certain section of the healthcare workforce. We have not had compulsory vaccination in this country since the 19th century, when it was tried and abandoned. This is an incredibly serious intervention. Is there a procedure by which the House can delay coming to a decision tomorrow until the assessment is published?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I do not believe there is such a procedure, as the matters on the Order Paper are a matter for the Government. I note that the Lord President of the Council has just come into the Chamber, so he will undoubtedly hear the end of this matter, although he did not hear the beginning of it and so I would not dream of asking him to comment. If the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that a delay should be put in place, I am sure he will be able to make reference to that when he has the opportunity to do so tomorrow.

Covid-19 Update

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. This morning, he warned that he expected infections to hit 100,000 a day. Will he confirm that he is saying that will be the peak? By his expectation, when will we hit it? Infections at 100,000 a day will translate to around 5,000 people a day developing long-term chronic illness—long covid. What will the long covid waiting list look like by the end of the summer?

The Secretary of State justifies allowing infections to climb by pointing to the weakened link between hospitalisation and deaths, and saying that we are building a protective wall. But the wall is only half built. We know from outbreaks in Israel and research that the delta variant can be transmitted through fully vaccinated people, even if they do not get sick.

Indeed, data in the last 24 hours or so from Israel’s Ministry of Health points to the Pfizer vaccine being just 64% effective at stopping symptomatic and asymptomatic transmission of the delta variant. Sadly, being double jabbed means a person is still a risk to others, yet the Secretary of State is releasing controls on transmission at a time when infections are rising. Hospitalisations will rise, too, given what we know he is doing.

Can the Secretary of State tell us the percentage of intensive care beds, and general and acute beds, that need to be occupied before, in his view, wider NHS care is compromised? We have heard him in the last week or so tell us that he wants to unlock because he rightly wants to focus on the monumental NHS backlog, but the rising hospital admissions that are baked into the plan, into the path he has chosen, will mean operations cancelled, treatments delayed and waiting times increased. Will he now be clear with patients, who are waiting longer and at risk of permanent disability, that the increase in hospital admissions will mean they have to wait longer? What is his assessment of the waiting list, and what will it hit by the end of the summer?

I understand the rationale for the Secretary of State’s announcement today, but I have to tell him again that the biggest barrier to an effective isolation policy has been not the inconvenience but the lack of financial incentive to stay at home. If we are to live with this virus, the days of people soldiering on when unwell are over. Sick pay is vital to infection control. Will he please now fix it?

Getting back to normal, which we all want to do, depends on people feeling safe. Does the Secretary of State appreciate that those who are immunocompromised, or for whom the vaccination is less effective, will have their freedoms curtailed by ditching masks on public transport? Blood Cancer UK warned yesterday that people with blood cancer will feel like their freedoms have been taken away when mask wearing lifts. What is his message to those with blood cancer? It is not good enough simply to say that people should travel or go to the shops at less busy times.

Of course, the Secretary of State understands the importance of masks. I have now read his Harvard pandemic paper, to which he likes to refer. He praises the use of masks in this paper, but he also warns:

“Changing course in policy making…is an essential feature of good policy making. Yet, politicians find it hard”—

because of—

“the tendency for decisions to become psychologically and emotionally anchored.”

Well, I agree with him, and I hope he still agrees with himself. Let us have a U-turn on mask wearing. Yes, let us have freedom, but not a high-risk free for all. Keep masks for now, fix sick pay and let us unlock in a safe and sustainable way.

[Sajid Javid]

Let me turn to the right hon. Gentleman’s questions. First, he asked about infections. As I said yesterday from this Dispatch Box, we expect infections to continue to rise for the time being, for the reasons I set out yesterday. By 19 July, when we enter step 4, the advice we have received and the modelling suggests infections could be as high as 50,000 a day, double what they are now. Beyond that, as he says, we believe infections will continue to rise. As the modelling goes out further, it is less certain, but infections could go as high as 100,000 a day. I have been very up front about that.

What I have also been very clear about is that the reason we can make the decisions that we have made, as set out yesterday and today, with the decision just announced on self-isolation rules for those who are double vaccinated if they come into contact with someone who is infected, is because of the vaccine. The vaccine has been our wall of defence. Jab by jab, brick by brick, we have been building a defence against this virus.

Although no one can say at this point that the link between cases and hospitalisations has been definitively broken—there is not enough evidence for that—there is enough evidence to show us that the link between cases, hospitalisations and deaths has been severely weakened.

The right hon. Gentleman asked how many hospitalisations there have been or there may be. What I can tell him will help to demonstrate how this link has been severely weakened. In the last 24 hours, there have been approximately 27,000 reported new infections, and the total number of people in hospital in England with covid-19 is just under 2,000. The last time we had infections at that level, we were certainly above 20,000. That is a demonstration of how much the link has been weakened. In making sure that it stays that way, we of course want to see more and more people getting vaccinated. We have announced a booster programme that will start in September, to make sure that the immunity that comes from the vaccine remains.

The right hon. Gentleman also rightly talked about non-covid health problems, which a number of hon. Members have raised. I would like him to try to understand that one reason why so many people who wanted to go to the NHS with non-covid health problems such as cancer, heart disease and mental health problems but were prevented from doing so, is the restrictions that we had in place. The restrictions caused many of those problems—for example, the right hon. Gentleman should think about the mental health problems that have been caused by the restrictions. If we want to start dealing with non-covid health problems, we must start easing and moving away from the restrictions because of the protection that the vaccine has provided us. As the shadow Health Secretary, the right hon. Gentleman should be just as concerned about non-covid health problems, as I am, as he is about covid health problems.

The right hon. Gentleman also asked me about the immuno-suppressed. Again, he and other colleagues are absolutely right to raise this issue. The vaccines are there to protect everyone, including many people who are immuno-suppressed but who can take vaccines. For those people who cannot take vaccines, the fact that the rest of us do helps to protect them. We would them to take the same precautions that they would usually take in winter—for example, trying to protecting themselves against colds, flus and other viruses. I also encourage people to ensure that they are in contact with their GP to see what other measures or precautions they might be able to take.

Lastly, the right hon. Gentleman asked me about masks. He referred to a paper that I authored before I took this position, but he should understand that it is a strange question for him to ask. There is a role for masks in dealing with a pandemic, particularly when we have no wall of defence against it. When we have a vaccine, when that vaccine works and when we have the best vaccine roll-out programme in the world, we need to start moving away from restrictions, including on masks.

Covid-19 Update

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Monday 5th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I start by paying tribute to our NHS on its 73rd anniversary and thank again our extraordinary health and care workforce. The best birthday present they could have, of course, is a fair pay rise, not the proposed real-terms pay cut that is currently on offer.

We all want to see these restrictions end. Lockdowns are a sign of policy failure and I hope that, when the Secretary of State makes the final decision next week, it will be based on the data, the modelling and the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies advice, but let us be absolutely clear about what he is talking about today. When only 50% of the total population across England are fully vaccinated and another 17% are partially, his strategy, as he indeed was gracious enough to concede, accepts that infections will surge further and continue to rise steeply, and accepts that hospitalisations will continue to rise until they reach a peak—presumably later this summer. Some of those hospitalised will sadly die, and thousands upon thousands of mostly children and younger people, but others as well, will be left exposed to a virus mainly because they have no vaccination protection—we also know that even double-jabbed people can catch and transmit the virus—and many of them will be at risk of serious long-term chronic illness, the personal impact of which may be felt for years to come.

Even though vaccination may have broken the link with mortality, there are still questions about the link to morbidity. As part of the Secretary of State’s strategy of learning to live with covid, will he spell out today for the British public what that actually means? How many deaths does he consider are acceptable when we are living with covid? How many cases of long covid does he consider acceptable when we are living with covid? Given that we know that covid can escape and evolve when the virus circulates at high rates, what risk assessment has he done on the possibility of a new variant emerging? Will he publish it?

The Secretary of State says that every date for unlocking carries risk and that that is why we need to learn to live with covid, but we should not have to take a high-risk approach. We should be pushing down risk. Indeed, we mitigate risk across society all the time. We do not just accept other diseases; we take interventions to try to prevent them. Why is he therefore collapsing all mitigations completely when he knows that covid rates will continue to rise? He will be aware that Israel has reintroduced its mask mandate because of the delta variant, so why is he planning to bin ours? Masks do not restrict freedoms in a pandemic when so much virus is circulating. They ensure that everyone who goes to the shops or who takes public transport can do so safely, because wearing a mask protects others. If nobody is masked, covid risk increases and we are all less safe. He must understand that those in the shielding community are particularly anxious. Why should they feel shut out of public transport and shops because he has abandoned the mask mandate? That is no definition of freedom that I recognise.

Who else suffers when masks are removed? It is those working in shops, those who drive the buses, those who drive taxis and those who work in hospitality—it is the low-paid workers who have also been without access to decent sick pay. Many of them live in overcrowded accommodation. It is those who have been savagely, disproportionately impacted by the virus from day one and now the Secretary of State is asking them to bear the brunt of the increased risk again. Will he explain why he thinks abandoning masks is a sensible proposal to follow?

Given that people will still need to isolate, as the Secretary of State recognised, and that test and trace will still be in operation, will he accept that living with the virus will mean that, more so than ever, those who are sick will need to isolate themselves from the rest of society? Will he therefore ensure that they are paid proper sick pay and isolation support to do it? Does he agree that it has been a monstrous failure of the past 15 months that isolation support has not been in place?

Now, masks are effective because we know that the virus is airborne. The Secretary of State could therefore further mitigate covid risks by insisting on ventilation standards in premises and crowded buildings. He could offer grants for air filtration systems. Instead, all we get is more Government advice. Ventilation in buildings and grants to support air filtration systems do not restrict anyone’s freedoms. Indeed, they would probably help get back into school some of those 400,000 children who have been off school because of covid.

Yesterday, the Secretary of State said that he believed the best way to protect the nation’s health was to lift all restrictions. I know he boasts of his student years at Harvard studying pandemics, but I think he may well have missed the tutorial on infectious disease control because widespread transmission will not make us healthier. We are not out of the woods yet. We want to see lockdown end, but we need those lifesaving mitigations in place. We need sick pay, local contact tracing, continued mask wearing on public transport and ventilation in buildings and schools to prevent further illness. I hope, when the right hon. Gentleman returns next week, he has put those measures in place.

[Sajid Javid]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comments. First, I think he started by asking for reassurance on whether the final decision on go or no go for 19 July, which we will make on 12 July, will be informed by the very best expert data. Of course it will be, just as every decision has been informed in that way. I am only about a week into the job, but I must say that I am incredibly impressed by our scientists, medical advisers and Public health England. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to all they have been doing.

Turning to the right hon. Gentleman’s second point about the link between cases and hospitalisation and death, that is absolutely central to the next step we are taking. Case numbers are high. As I said, they will go significantly higher and we need to be ready for that, but what is far more important is how many people are ending up in hospital and how many, sadly, are dying. That is where the vaccines have worked, alongside the treatments we now have that we did not have a year or so ago. That has meant that the link between cases and deaths has been severely weakened. The last time we had 25,000 new cases a day, we had around 500 deaths a day. The level now is a thirtieth of that. I know the right hon. Gentleman will welcome that and understand that there is no absolutely risk-free way to move forward, but we need to start returning things back towards normal and learning to live with covid.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about masks. Again, we have taken the best public health advice. He will know from what I have said that, although we will remove all legal requirements for anyone to wear a mask in any setting, we expect people to behave sensibly and think about others around them. The guidance will be there. If one is on public transport—let us say on a very crowded tube—it would be sensible to wear a mask, not least to show respect for others. However, if you are the only person in a carriage late at night on the east coast main line, then you can choose much more easily not to wear a mask because there is hardly anyone else around. We expect and trust people to make sensible decisions. That is the way we should move ahead.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about compensation and sick pay. He knows that many measures are in place and we will continue to keep them under review.

Covid-19 Update

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Can I just say at the outset that, despite our fierce political differences, my dealings with the previous Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock), were always courteous, respectful and professional, and I wish him well in resolving his personal difficulties.

I welcome the right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid) to his place and thank him for advance sight of his statement. He will find working with the NHS and social care staff both inspirational and rewarding, and I hope he will agree to make arrangements for them to receive a fair pay rise and not the real-terms pay cut that is currently pencilled in.

Today, the Secretary of State has let it be known that the 19 July reopening will effectively go ahead. He told the news this morning that there is “no going back” and that lifting restrictions will be “irreversible”. A word to the wise: I have responded to a lot of these statements these past 15 months, and I remember Ministers telling us there was “nothing in the data” to suggest that 21 June would not go ahead. I remember children returning to school for one day before the January lockdown. I remember, “It will all be over by Christmas”. I remember, “We will send it packing in 12 weeks”.

Well, we have seen around 84,000 cases in the past week—an increase of around 61%. Today, we have seen the highest case rate since January. If these trends continue, we could hit 35,000 to 45,000 cases a day by 19 July. That will mean more long covid—the Secretary of State did not mention more long covid—and it will mean more disruption to schooling. For some, it will mean hospitalisation, and we know that even after two doses, someone can catch and transmit the virus, so what is he going to do to push infections down? Vaccination will do it eventually, but not in the next four weeks.

I want to see an end to restrictions and our constituents want to see an end to restrictions, but I hope the Secretary of State’s confidence today about 19 July does not prove somewhat premature or even, dare I say it, hubristic. Can he confirm that by “irreversible” he is ruling out restrictions this winter? Has he abandoned the plan that the previous Secretary of State and officials were drawing up for restrictions this winter?

Increased infections will impact on the ability of the NHS to provide wider care. Today, the Secretary of State has promised to give the NHS everything it needs to get through the backlog, so will the hospital discharge and support funding be extended beyond this September, or will trusts have to make cuts instead? How does he define getting through the backlog? When will the NHS again guarantee that 95% of patients will start treatment within 18 weeks of referral? We know thousands are waiting too long for cancer care, so when will the NHS meet its cancer target that 96% of patients wait no longer than a month from diagnosis to first treatment? When will he give primary care the resources to meet the challenge of the hidden waiting list of over 7 million patient referrals that we would have expected since March 2020?

Given the pressures on primary care, is it still the Secretary of State’s plan to press ahead with the GP data transfer? To be frank, Mr Deputy Speaker, if the Department cannot keep its CCTV footage secure, how does he expect it to keep our personal data secure? Will we see a plan to fix social care, or is today’s Telegraph correct when it reports that he, the Secretary of State, is of the opinion that we are completely at the wrong stage of a Parliament to launch a new social care strategy? Is that really his view? Given the pressures across the whole of the healthcare service, will he abandon the ill-thought-through top-down reorganisation of the NHS that the previous Secretary of State was set to embark on?

Finally, given the recent questions of propriety around covid contracts, the Secretary of State will understandably want to present himself as a new broom. Can he confirm that he will not use a personal email account to carry out Government business? Can he explain why the social care Minister has been using a personal email account to carry out Government business? Why was the Minister for Innovation, the noble Lord Bethell, using his personal email account to discuss the awarding of Government contracts, and why did he have meetings with a firm that won a contract but not declare it? Can he tell us whether he maintains confidence in that Minister? Is it not time that that particular health Minister was relieved of their ministerial responsibilities as well?

[Sajid Javid]

First, I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comments and for what he said about my predecessor.

On the right hon. Gentleman’s questions, he started by rightly pointing out the incredible work that our NHS staff across the country have been doing, even before the pandemic, but especially, I think we would all agree, throughout the pandemic. I heard about that myself this morning during my visit to St Thomas’s Hospital talking to staff—doctors, nurses, consultants—and hearing directly about the challenges they faced at that time but also the challenges they continue to face. I wanted to hear from them what more the Government can do, whether on recruitment or resources, and what more help can be provided. So it remains an absolute priority. Of course, it is absolutely essential that, when the pay settlement process is complete, that is a fair process. Of course, it absolutely will be and it will be a fair pay settlement.

Turning to the right hon. Gentleman’s next question about the timing of the move to step 4, I set out, I think clearly in my statement, the Government’s plan and the rationale for that plan. I point out that what is at the heart of this is the vaccination programme and the excellent work that has been done by many across the country: the volunteers, doctors, and nurses. I visited a vaccination centre today, as well as St Thomas’s Hospital. Excellent work has also been done by the Minister for Covid Vaccine Deployment, my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi). More people are getting vaccinated. We are seeing clear evidence that we are breaking the link—this is absolutely crucial—between the number of cases of people getting infected by covid-19 versus those who sadly end up in hospital or even, in some cases, lose their lives. The more evidence we see of that, the more confident it can make us that we will put this pandemic behind us. That is what gives me confidence about the date of 19 July. With all the data I saw yesterday—I sat down and discussed it with the experts and my colleagues—it is very clear that we are heading in the right direction, and I am very confident about that date of 19 July.

The hon. Gentleman rightly asked about the backlog. The focus, for all the right reasons, of the NHS and social care system on dealing with the pandemic has, sadly, seen a significant backlog of cases build up. The Government have already provided record amounts of funding to try to deal with some of that backlog. In total to deal with the pandemic, some £92 billion of extra funding has been put into the NHS and social care system, and much of that is targeted at the backlog. It will be an absolute priority—it was for my predecessor, and it certainly will be for me—to see how quickly we can deal with that and what the best and most efficient way is to do so. Just today, on my visit to St Thomas’ Hospital, I heard some excellent new ideas from people on the frontline. We will certainly be listening to them as we set out further plans.

The hon. Gentleman also asked about social care, and I should warn him not to believe everything he reads in the press—and I think he should know that. Social care remains an absolute priority for this Government, and for me. The Prime Minister himself has rightly made some very clear commitments on social care, and we absolutely intend to meet them. When it comes to reform, of course we are committed to the Bill on NHS and social care reform, which my predecessor has talked about at the Dispatch Box. If hon. Gentleman sits down with me, perhaps I can persuade him a little of the virtues of that Bill, and I am sure I can convince him that it is essential. If, like me, he believes that what matters most are the patients—we want the people who go into hospital feeling unwell to be seen quickly and efficiently and to get better—the people in our social care system, and having better integration, then he will believe in the virtues of that Bill. I hope, eventually, he can come to support the Bill and do the right thing.

Lastly, the hon. Gentleman asked me about my Ministers. I have such a fantastic ministerial team—all and every single one of them. It is not just a question of confidence; it is a group of Ministers who are incredibly talented and who have delivered both in this House and in the Lords. Having led five Departments previously, I have had some considerable experience of working with Ministers, and this is one of the best teams I have ever had.

Coronavirus

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I begin by paying tribute to our much-missed friend and colleague Jo Cox. Jo was an internationalist, and I know that, if she were with us today, she would be rallying support not just across this country but through her international contacts for a campaign to vaccinate the world. She would remind us that we will defeat this virus only through our common endeavour. I think that all of us miss Jo and want to send our best wishes to her family today.

We will support the extension of restrictions in the Lobbies tonight, but we of course do so with a heavy heart. We are guided by data not dates, and we have to recognise the facts before us. The delta variant is 60% more transmissible than the alpha, and even with the current restrictions in place the daily total of positive cases has been rising, with a seven-day rolling average of more than 7,000 per day compared with around 2,000 per day in early May. That is beginning to translate into hospitalisations. With cases doubling every nine days, at the moment it looks like hospitalisations are also doubling. On 4 June, 96 people with covid were admitted; nine days later, 187 people were admitted—almost double. If that continues to double, within four sets of doublings we will be close to the April 2020 peak.

Given that we know that there is always a lag in the figures, we are no doubt likely to see around 250 admissions a day in 10 days’ time. We are seeing a third wave in the NHS. We need to do all that we can to stop hospitalisations rising, because this is a time of huge pressure on the national health service. We have lost a number of beds over the past 10 years, and because of the need for infection control measures we have fewer general and acute beds open today in the NHS as well. We are facing a monumental backlog in care, with 5 million people on the waiting list, more than 385,000 waiting over 12 months for treatment, and nearly 3,000 now waiting over two years for treatment.

Throughout the crisis, we have said that the NHS was not overwhelmed, but it was not overwhelmed only because of some of the terrible choices that had to be made. To be frank, I do not want to see the NHS forced to make choices between providing covid care and cancer care. That is why we should listen to those NHS leaders who have warned us about the increasing pressures on the NHS. Chris Hopson of NHS Providers said:

“The NHS is running hot at the moment dealing with backlog recovery and emergency care pressures.”

The NHS Confederation said:

“Health leaders are very aware of the damaging effects that prolonged social restrictions could have on the nation’s physical health and mental wellbeing…Yet, according to our survey the majority of NHS leaders are concerned about the risks that lifting prematurely could have on the NHS’s ability to cope”.

[Steve Brine]

I know that the official Opposition’s position will be to support the regulations today, but I am keen to explore this with the right hon. Gentleman. Would he be happy to see the terminus on 19 July, or would he like to see it maybe at the end of September, when the entire adult population will be double-jabbed, or at the end of next year, when the G7 thinks that the rest of the world will be vaccinated? What would his instinct be?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

Of course I want to see terminus day on the 19th, although I am not sure if we are going to see terminus day on the 19th. The hon. Gentleman, who is always well-informed, will no doubt have read the explanatory notes, which indicate that this four-week period is to assess the data, and the four tests will be applied at the end of that four-week period. That is not quite the terminus day that the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State have indicated.

[Chris Bryant]

It is wholly misleading to call it a terminus date anyway. Even if we were to implement cessation of some of the measures on 19 July, there will still be lots of other measures that will exist, including test and trace, maybe for quite proper reasons. To mislead the nation by constantly going on about freedom days and terminus days is just a mistake.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Of course I want to see terminus day. I want to see freedom; I want to get back to doing the things that I enjoy—although I am quite happy to sit in a group of six in a pub; I am not sure that I have more than six friends, Mr Deputy Speaker, so it has suited me in many ways. But more generally—[Interruption.] I see you have one less friend today, Secretary of State.

I am keen to see terminus day. But interestingly, although the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the Secretary of State have tried to hint that restrictions are coming to an end by using the new phrase, “We have to learn to live with the virus like we live with flu,” the Secretary of State or the Prime Minister have not outlined to us what that means. They are trying to suggest to us that it is all going to go back to normal, but actually we put in place mitigations to deal with flu year by year. The hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) was a Public Health Minister. He was very much involved in the flu vaccination campaign. We vaccinate children to deal with flu. We put infection control measures into care homes when there is a flu outbreak. There will have to be mitigations in place when we go back to living with this virus, but the Secretary of State must explain to us what those mitigations are. Will we continue wearing masks?

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

No!

[Jonathan Ashworth]

Well, the Secretary of State needs to explain whether we should or not. Will we be supporting the installation of proper ventilation systems? We have known about the importance of ventilation in dealing with respiratory viruses since the days of Florence Nightingale. Countries such as Belgium are now providing premises and buildings with CO₂ monitors to improve their air quality; will we be doing that?

The other thing about this virus is that, even when we vaccinate people—of course I want to see us meet the various vaccination targets—we know that some people will still be at more severe risk than they would be from flu. There will be people who will develop long covid symptoms. For some people, those symptoms are beyond achiness and tiredness. We have seen people lose hair, lose teeth. In some people it presents as depression, anxiety—even psychosis in some circumstances. So Ministers must explain exactly what “living with this virus like flu” means.

There is something else that they should explain to us. What are we going to do in the winter? It did not come up in the earlier exchanges; I thought that it might. Perhaps the Secretary of State, or the Minister in responding to the debate, can tell us whether the Secretary of State, the Minister or departmental officials are putting together plans for restrictions this winter, and whether the Secretary of State has developed or discussed those plans with any colleagues in Whitehall. I shall be grateful if the Secretary of State or the Minister would tell us about that.

[Mr Harper]

rose—

[Steve Brine]

rose—

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I will give way first to the former Public Health Minister, and then to the former Chief Whip.

[Steve Brine]

The right hon. Gentleman is right: we had a battle royal with influenza in the first year that I was in the job, but the difference was that we did not have any non-pharmaceutical interventions. Our interventions were about the take-up of the vaccine—yes, for children as well as for adults, especially the vulnerable. One of our chief advisers, the deputy chief medical officer then, one Professor Chris Whitty, never suggested masks, let alone closing schools—just a really good roll-out of the flu vaccine. We lost 22,000 people that year. Never were those numbers rolled on BBC News; never did we know the R number, but there was a point where we accepted an element of risk in society. I guess that was the point of my earlier intervention on the hon. Gentleman: what element of risk is he prepared to accept? Because that is what it comes down to—our own mortality is part of the human condition.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

We do accept it but we do not glibly accept it, because year by year we are looking for improvements in vaccinations, therapeutics and medicines to push infection rates down as low as possible. Even though we are grown-up enough to be aware that sadly some people will die from flu and pneumonia, we do all we can to avoid it. That is what we will have to do with this, but I do not want to see it done by some of the wider restrictions and lockdowns that we have heard about. That is why I would be interested to know whether the Department has developed plans for restrictions this winter and whether the Secretary of State has been discussing that with Whitehall colleagues.

[Mr Harper]

On the point about the restrictions, I know that those discussions are going on because I have seen documents from within Government with very detailed suggestions about what measures may continue. I asked the Secretary of State about this when he was in the Commons earlier this week, and he did not rule out bringing in restrictions this winter. That is partly why some Conservative Members are very concerned and why we are not going to vote for these regulations today. However, I want to take the right hon. Gentleman back to his comments on what Chris Hopson said about the fact that the NHS is very busy at the moment. There is a danger here. I am very sympathetic to colleagues who work in the NHS, who have done a fantastic job, but we cannot get to a point where we restrict and manage society in order to manage NHS waiting lists. That is not the right way round. The NHS is there to serve society. If we need to enable it to do that, we have to think of a way of doing it other than putting restrictions on the rest of society. That is not a sustainable or a desirable position, but it is the logical consequence of what Chris Hopson was saying earlier this month.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

Even though we will find ourselves in different Lobbies this evening, I think there is more in common between us than perhaps one might expect. I do not want restrictions to remain in place for any longer than they need to. I want to move to a system where we are trying to push down covid infection rates by, yes, rolling out vaccination as far and as fast as possible to everybody, but also putting in place the proper framework so that those who are ill or a contact of someone who has been ill with covid is able to isolate themselves.

We still have a culture in this country of soldiering on; the Secretary of State has referred to it in the past. I dare say that it is true of many of us in this Chamber. I have certainly done it in the past 20 years of my working life. I have gone into work with a sore throat or feeling under the weather, thinking I will just have some paracetamol and get on with it. Things like this have got to change, because although that sore throat may well have been fine for me, we now understand in great detail that it could have been very dangerous for others. We have to change our attitudes. However, there will still be a lot of people who have to go to work because they cannot afford to stay at home, so we need decent sick pay sorted out. One of the things that was revealed in this morning’s Politico email was the leak of a Government document that said that the isolation system is still not effective. That is because we still do not pay people proper sick pay. This is going to become more of an issue because presumably Test and Trace is to stay in place for the next year or so, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) indicated. People who have had two jabs and are asked to isolate themselves will ask themselves, not unreasonably, “If I have had two jabs, why do I need to isolate myself?” This is going to become much more of a challenge and we will need proper sick pay in place.

Let me finish dealing with the point made by the hon. Member for Winchester. I want us to control the virus by doing things such as proper sick pay, proper ventilation support, and investing properly in public health systems and local primary care systems. One of the things we know about this virus is that, like flu, it disproportionately hits the poorest and the disadvantaged because they are the people who have to go to work or the people in those communities where significant long-term conditions such as diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease tend to cluster. That often makes those people more vulnerable to these types of respiratory viruses.

[Dr Murrison]

On the subject of the poorest and most disadvantaged, what does the right hon. Gentleman then make of the recent observation by the chief medical officer on the annual toll taken by the ill effects of smoking? He said that because he wanted to compare and contrast the number of people that we are losing, sadly, to covid with those we lose every single year to the ill effects of smoking. We have been prepared to countenance some swingeing restrictions on all our liberties for the past 15 months; banning smoking, for example, would be far less restrictive by comparison. It is smoking that is driving up health inequalities, but I have not heard him comment on that yet.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I have not commented on it in my remarks so far, but I have commented on it in the past and I absolutely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. We need to do more to drive down smoking rates, we need to do more to deal with alcohol abuse and we need to do more with the fact that too many of us eat food that is high in salt and sugar. I am prepared to work with the Government to be more interventionist on these matters. I would look at levies and taxes on tobacco companies, and I would invest more in anti-smoking and public health facilities locally, some of which have been cut back, sadly, because the public health grant has been cut back. So yes, I completely agree with the right hon. Gentleman.

[Dr Murrison]

With respect, the right hon. Gentleman has missed the point. Perhaps I did not make myself clear enough. The chief medical officer was introducing that because he was trying to explain that we are going to have to live with some level of risk. We need to have a discussion about the public’s appetite for risk if we are to live with covid. The reason he cited smoking and the figure of 90,000 a year is that it approximates to the number of people we have lost from covid so far in this pandemic. Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that we need to have a discussion about where we are prepared to pitch this? Is it 22,000, which is the figure for a bad flu year? Is it 90,000, which is the number we lose every single year from the ill effects of smoking?

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I understand the point that the right hon. Gentleman is making. It is in some ways similar to the flu point. We do not just glibly accept smoking. We take measures in society to try to push down rates. I do not think the House would want to go as far as to ban smoking outright, despite what any of us might feel as individuals about smoking, but we do what we can to push down smoking rates because we want to reduce the poor health outcomes from smoking. That is what we will have to do with covid. We will have to put measures in place to mitigate the negative effects of covid, which I would argue is about allowing people to isolate themselves with proper sick pay, doing things around ventilation, giving local authorities more responsibility, perhaps to inspect premises without proper ventilation standards in place, and obviously resolving some of the issues around contact tracing that still have not been resolved 15 months on. So I do understand the point that the right hon. Gentleman is making, and he makes it well, as always in this place.

Before I was taken off course, I was quoting some of the health organisations. The point is that, given where we are now in our response to the virus, I believe that we should listen to those health professionals and take into account what they are saying. Delaying the road map by four weeks will hopefully relieve the pressures on hospitals, which is why we are prepared to support the restrictions tonight in the Lobby. I fear that lifting all the restrictions now could be akin to throwing petrol on a fire, so we will support the Government. But, of course, we should not be here. We are only here because over the last eight weeks we have failed to contain the delta variant and have allowed it to become dominant.

I have always tried to keep our dealings with the Secretary of State civil in public and private, but that is not so, it seems, for the Prime Minister. The right hon. Gentleman is now forever branded as “hopeless” Hancock by his own leader. Our constituents watching the news tonight will know that the Government have failed to protect our borders, that they have allowed this variant to take off and that restrictions are being extended, and I have no doubt that many of them will repeat the Prime Minister’s expletive-laden sentiments about the Secretary of State tonight.

We are being asked to endorse these restrictions because the Government failed to prevent this variant from reaching our shores. Rather than red-listing the delta variant when that was needed, they gave it the red carpet instead. Let me remind the House what happened. On 24 March, India’s health ministry warned about a so-called double mutant variant. On 30 March, The BMJ warned that India’s cases had taken a sharp upward turn since March and that India had the third highest number of confirmed cases and deaths from covid-19. On 1 April, the original B1617.1 was designated as under investigation. By 2 April, the Government had put Pakistan and Bangladesh on the red list, but not India. By this time, cases were running at close to 100,000 a day in India and thousands of people were returning to the UK from India. The Secretary of State justifies his position by saying that he did not have the data, but he should have acted on a precautionary basis. When he could see that the virus was raging, with 100,000 cases a day in India, he should have immediately put India on the red list, because the one thing that we know about the virus is that if we do not get ahead of it, it quickly gets ahead of us.

The House is being asked to extend these restrictions, but there are a number of pressing issues. First, many of us have been contacted by business people in our constituencies who are deeply concerned about the extension of these restrictions. For my constituency in Leicester, which has been living under a form of restrictions more severe than other parts of the country, other than perhaps parts of Greater Manchester, this has been particularly devastating. I hope that the Government will be putting in place full support for businesses such as mine in Leicester and Greater Manchester and elsewhere.

The second issue, which we have touched on a little bit, is whether these restrictions will ever end, or whether the Prime Minister has trapped us in Hotel California, where we can never leave. He has talked about 19 July as the terminus date, but the explanatory notes themselves say that the four tests will apply on 19 July, and that these four weeks will be used to gather more data.

Even with the vaccination programme going ahead and going further—I, like the Secretary of State, have had my second jab rearranged and am looking forward to it in a couple of weeks’ time—there will still be a large proportion of the population who have had one jab or no jab and who will still be vulnerable to catching the virus, and the virus can still exploit that opportunity to transmit.

It was the Secretary of State himself who said some weeks ago that

“Delta can spread like wildfire”

among those who have not had a jab. That will mean further disruption to people’s lives, more people needing to isolate and more people suffering from long covid. When I put these points to him on Monday, he said that the logical conclusion of that is that restrictions remain in place forever. On the contrary, the logical conclusion of that is that we put the other measures in place that will allow us to push down infection rates. I am talking about basic infection control measures such as sick pay and isolation support. A total of £38 billion has been allocated to testing and tracing, and yet the numbers using lateral flow tests have gone down six weeks in a row. This is because we do not have proper sick pay for people. Moreover, anecdotally, we are also hearing that more people are deleting the app from their phones.

We will support these restrictions tonight, and we hope that the Secretary of State or the Minister can give us a commitment that they will come to the House in two weeks’ time and give us an update on that data. We hope that the Secretary of State will give us a commitment to put in place the other measures that will help push down infection rates, but the sad truth is that we have to push forward these restrictions again for another four weeks, because the Secretary of State was indeed hopeless and failed to contain the delta variant.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

We will have a four-minute limit immediately, but I think that that will be reduced later on. We have had a few withdrawals, so please do not assume that everybody is here on the list. Of everybody contributing, there are only four contributing virtually today, so everybody else is physical, which is very pleasing for the Chair. The four-minute limit is for Back-Bench contributions only.

Covid-19 Update

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. I congratulate Sir Richard Sykes on his new role and I thank Dame Kate Bingham.

Tonight’s announcement was both predictable and, sadly, predicted. Many of our constituents and local businesses will be deeply disappointed. Our constituents did what was asked of them. They queued up for vaccination. We praised them in this House. The Secretary of State shed tears on the news and boasted, “Cry freedom,” on the pages of The Spectator. Yet we are now in the grip of a delta wave that is spreading with speed, and our constituents face further restrictions.

The Prime Minister’s complacency allowed this variant to reach our shores. On 25 March, there were warnings of a new variant in India. It is reported that Ministers first learned that the delta variant was in the UK on 1 April. The Government red-listed Pakistan and Bangladesh on 9 April, but did not red-list India until 23 April, by which point 20,000 people had arrived from India. Our borders were as secure as a sieve, and all because the Prime Minister wanted a photo call with Prime Minister Modi. It is astonishing that these Ministers promised to take control of our borders and conspicuously failed to control our borders at the very moment it mattered most.

Not only did the Prime Minister open the back door to this variant; he failed to take measures to suppress it when he could. It has been growing in prevalence among school-age children, yet mandatory mask wearing has been abandoned in secondary schools, and the Secretary of State has never explained why, despite being repeatedly asked. We know that isolation is key to breaking transmission, yet, 16 months on, people are still not paid adequate financial recompense to isolate themselves. When asked at the Select Committee last week, he claimed that people would game the system. The only ones who gamed the system are the mates of Ministers, Tory donors, spivs and speculators who made a fortune supplying duff PPE.

The Secretary of State seeks support for extending restrictions by pointing to plans to go further on vaccination. We will support extending restrictions in the Lobby, but even after extending the doses that he has outlined, there will still be large proportions of the population left unprotected, having had one dose or none—exposed to a variant that, if left unchecked, could accelerate and double every week, putting us on track for tens of thousands of infections per day by the end of this period. That will mean more hospitalisations, more long covid, more disruption to schools and more opportunities for variants to emerge. Will the Prime Minister lift restrictions in those circumstances, as he appeared to promise tonight, or will infection rates and hospitalisations have to fall before he does so?

Vaccination will get us through this in the end, so what is the Secretary of State’s plan to bring down infections and to extend vaccination rates in hotspot areas? We have learned that in Leicester surge vaccination has been abandoned. In parts of the north-west—in Chorley, Mr Speaker, in Tameside, in Salford and in Wigan—the dose numbers have gone down. Has vaccination surging been abandoned in those hotspot areas?

Finally, we are likely to see more infections in the coming days, and we are likely to see more contacts of infected cases in the coming days. Will the Secretary of State finally give those people isolation support so that they can isolate and quarantine themselves from the rest of society?

The chief medical officer said tonight that we would be lifting restrictions if it were not for the delta variant. The Prime Minister should have moved at lightning speed to prevent the delta variant reaching our shores. Instead he dithered, and tonight he is responsible for this delay.

[Matt Hancock]

I think that in that response, we saw a lifting of the veil on the Opposition’s position. The right hon. Gentleman knows that he has supported the Government’s position for a very large part of the crisis. We will be grateful for their support in the Lobbies, and quite rightly, because the Labour party has clearly accepted the logic of the position.

However, the logic of the questions the right hon. Gentleman just raised moved towards a position of never escaping from restrictions. I want us to escape from restrictions, and the vaccine is the way for us to escape from restrictions. The truth is—it is not the easy thing to say, but it is the right thing to say—that in this country and around the world, covid-19 will be with us and we will have to learn to live with it in the same way that we have learned to live with other deadly diseases like flu. The vaccine will help us get to a state in this country in which we can manage it and live our normal lives. The logic that the right hon. Gentleman set out is one in which we never escape.

It was a logic based on flawed thinking about how things work in practice, because the right hon. Gentleman’s other argument was that this is all due to the Government not taking decisions on India, based on information that we did not have at the time. His argument is that he has now seen in the published data that there was a problem in India—too right! And as soon as we saw the data, we acted on it. The whole case that he set up was that on 2 April we should have acted, but on 2 April neither the original B1617 Indian variant strain, nor the B1617.2 delta strain, had yet been designated a variant under investigation or a variant of concern.

Captain Hindsight over there is arguing, “Never escape from restrictions, and base your logic and evidence on things that haven’t been recorded yet.” That is no way to run a pandemic. Instead, we will put the interests of the British public first. We will take a cautious and irreversible approach. We will take difficult decisions if they are necessary, but we will get this country back on the road to recovery.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

It is very important that, across the country, the UK is open, the NHS is open and that people can come forward and get treatment if they need it. As my hon. Friend knows, I work closely with the delivery of the NHS in Wales. The NHS there is of course the responsibility of the devolved Administration, but I am happy to take up his concern with the new Welsh Minister for Health and Social Services to see what we can do.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

We have seen reports today of how exhausted NHS staff are. The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said in the media this morning that he was not sure what more the Government could do to support NHS staff. Obviously, the Government could give them a pay rise, but will the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care also commit today to extending free hospital car parking for NHS staff beyond the pandemic?

[Matt Hancock]

Of course, we have made hospital car parking free for staff during the pandemic. That is one of the many, many things that we have put in place to support staff. Staff wellbeing support and mental health support have also been incredibly important, learning, as we have done, from the support that we give to others in public service who go through traumatic episodes. The right hon. Gentleman is quite right that there is a wide array of things that we need to do to support NHS staff on the frontline.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I wanted a commitment to extend the relief of hospital car parking charges beyond the pandemic.

The Secretary of State knows that waiting lists are at 5 million and that 432,000 people are waiting beyond 12 months. Once we are through this pandemic, the priority must be to bring those waiting lists down, but he is about to embark on a reorganisation of the NHS with his integrated care legislation. Local boards permit the private sector to have a seat on them. Virgin Care has just been given a seat on the integrated care system in Bath and North Somerset. He once promised that there would be no privatisation on his watch, so will he instruct that ICS to remove Virgin Care from its board?

[Matt Hancock]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that integrating the health service with services provided by local authorities, such as social care, is absolutely critical, and I know that he supports those proposals that have come from the NHS. When it comes to delivering services in the NHS, what matters to patients is that they get high-quality services, for instance, to deal with the backlog, and what matters is getting those services as fast as we possibly can. People care much less about who provides the service than they do about the service getting delivered, and that is the approach that I take, too.

Covid-19 Update

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. I am also grateful that he has confirmed that the Government’s approach continues to be driven by the data, not by dates. We face some uncertainty, as we often have done throughout the past 15 months, but we do know that the delta variant is now the dominant variant in the UK. We know that 73% of delta cases are in unvaccinated people. We know that one dose offers less protection against this particular variant, and we know that, although hospitalisations are low, an increase in hospitalisations will put significant pressures on the NHS as it tries to deal with the care backlog. We also know, of course, that long covid is significant and debilitating for many people.

I am an optimist and I strongly believe that, ultimately, vaccination is our way through this. Can the Secretary of State go further on vaccination? Is he able to do more to drive up vaccination rates in those areas that have seen the delta variant take off and where uptake remains low, such as Blackburn or my own city of Leicester? Can he narrow the timeframe between the first and second dose, given that we know that one dose is not as protective as we would like? We have seen that Wales will be vaccinating everyone over 18 from next week. Can he tell us when England will follow?

Yesterday, the Secretary of State talked about the outbreaks among schoolchildren and young people. We know that children can transmit the virus and that children can be at particular risk of long covid. In that context, may I ask again why mask wearing is no longer mandatory in secondary schools? I am pleased that he has asked the JCVI to look at vaccination for children; it is something that I have I pressed him on a number of times at the Dispatch Box. Can he give us a timeframe on when he expects the JCVI to report on that front?

The Secretary of State talks about the G7. The pandemic has certainly shown that in an interconnected world where climate change and biodiversity loss drive zoonotic spillovers, working internationally to prevent future outbreaks is in our interests. None of us is safe until all of us are safe. That is not a slogan; it is the fact of the situation that we are in. That means working internationally. For a start, it means not cutting international aid, but it also means working globally on our vaccination efforts. He will have seen today that Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and other ex-world leaders have put forward a G7 burden sharing plan that would vaccinate the world. Will the Government support it?

Finally, I welcome what the Secretary of State said about research. Research and science are our way through this pandemic, and our way through to curing so many other diseases and ailments. However, he will know that while we are in this pandemic—while GPs and frontline staff are stretched—patients are unaware that a whole load of GP-held patient data is about to be transferred to NHS Digital.

Now, I am not opposed to NHS data being used for public good research, but some of the most sensitive personal data shared with GPs by patients in confidence several years ago—potentially when in a state of vulnerability, such as termination of pregnancy, matters of domestic or sexual abuse and issues of substance misuse or alcohol abuse—is set to be shared with NHS Digital and potentially to be used by commercial interests, and yet hardly anyone knows about it. There are worries about safeguards and patient confidentiality. Given the secrecy, the haste and the difficulties in opting out, will the Secretary of State now consider abandoning this plan, pausing it for now and launching a transparent consultation process with patients and clinicians on how confidential data can best be shared for research purposes?

[Matt Hancock]

First, the right hon. Gentleman raised the question of ensuring that we reduce transmission among children. It is true that the increase in case rates has predominantly been among children, especially secondary school-aged children. The testing regime among secondary school-aged children has been enthusiastically taken up by schools across the country. It is very important, as we return from half-term, that that is reinstated in full—that every child is being tested twice a week. It made a big difference in helping to keep schools open. If somebody tested positive at home before they went in, it meant that the whole bubble did not have to go home. It also prevented transmission up to older people, who might be more badly affected. Testing in schools is incredibly important to ensure that we can keep as much education as possible between now and the summer.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about the JCVI advice on children’s vaccination that will be available in a matter of weeks. I know that the JCVI is working hard on it now. I will of course come to the House, Mr Speaker, to explain the proposed approach as soon as we have that formal advice.

Finally, the right hon. Gentleman asked about the use of patient data. I am glad that he said how important he thought research based on data is within the NHS, because it is life-saving. It has been used incredibly powerfully during the pandemic. In fact, one of the reasons why the UK is the place where we discovered some of the life-saving treatments for covid, such as dexamethasone, is the powerful use of data. Just that discovery of dexamethasone, which happened through the use of NHS data, has saved over 1 million lives around the world.

The right hon. Gentleman raised the issue of data, which he said belonged to GPs, being passed to NHS Digital. The truth is that data about his, my or anybody else’s medical condition does not belong to any GP; it belongs, rightly, to the citizen—the patient. That is the approach that we should take. I absolutely agree that it is important to do these things right and properly, but I am also very glad that the vast majority of people are strongly on side for the use of their data to improve lives and save lives. That is the approach that we are going to take in building a modern data platform for the NHS, so that we can ensure that we use this modern asset to improve individuals’ care and to improve research and therefore all our care, while of course preserving the highest standards of safety and privacy, which will be enhanced by a more modern use of data. I am glad that he is on side for the use of data in the NHS, but you have to be on side when that is actually put into practice. It is not just warm words; it is about making it happen.

Covid-19: Government Handling and Preparedness

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will update the House on the pandemic preparedness of the Department of Health and Social Care.

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Matt Hancock)]

What we have done to handle this coronavirus pandemic has been unprecedented in modern times. Throughout, we have been straight with people and this House about the challenges that we as a nation face together. The nation, in my view, has risen to these challenges. Of course, there were unprecedented difficulties that come with preparation for an unprecedented event.

This pandemic is not over yet. Our vaccination programme has reached 73% of the adult population, but that means that more than a quarter still have not been jabbed; 43% of adults have had both jabs, but that means that more than half are yet to get the fullest possible protection that two jabs give.

Yesterday, we saw 3,180 new cases of coronavirus—the highest since 12 April—but thanks to the power of vaccination, in which I have always believed, the link from cases to hospitalisations and deaths is being severed. About 90% of those in hospital in hotspot areas have not yet had both jabs, so the continued delivery of the vaccination effort and the ongoing work to control the virus through testing, tracing and isolation are vital.

Yesterday, we saw the opening of vaccinations to all those aged 30 and above. I am delighted to tell the House that the vaccination programme is on track to meet its goal of offering a jab to all adults by the end of July. It has met every goal that we have set. Setting and meeting ambitious targets is how you get stuff done in Government.

As a nation, we have many challenges still to come. I know, and one of the things I have learned, is that the best way through is to work together with a can-do spirit of positive collaboration. The team who have worked so hard together to get us this far deserve our highest praise. I am proud of everyone in my Department, all those working in healthcare and public health, the armed forces who fought on the home front, the volunteers who stood in cold car parks with a smile, colleagues across the House who have done their bit and, most of all, the British people. Whether it is the science, the NHS or the people queuing for vaccines in their droves, Britain is rising to this challenge. We have come together as one nation, and we will overcome.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

Families who lost loved ones will have noticed that the Secretary of State, in his opening remarks, did not respond to any of the specific allegations from yesterday—allegations that are grave and serious: that the Prime Minister is unfit for office; that his inaction meant that tens of thousands needlessly died. We had allegations from Dominic Cummings that the Secretary of State, specifically, misled colleagues—an allegation from Mr Cummings, Mr Speaker—on our preparedness and lack of protection for people in care homes.

The allegations from Cummings are either true, and if so the Secretary of State potentially stands in breach of the ministerial code and the Nolan principles, or they are false, and the Prime Minister brought a fantasist and a liar into the heart of Downing Street. Which is it? Families who have lost loved ones deserve full answers from the Secretary of State today. Is he ashamed that he promised a protective shield around care homes and more than 30,000 care home residents have died? Why were 25,000 elderly people discharged from hospitals into care homes without any test? Did he tell Downing Street in March that people discharged from hospital had been tested, even though it was not until 15 April that there was a requirement for testing to take place?

In public, the Secretary of State has often claimed that little was known of asymptomatic transmission at the time, so testing was not necessary, but the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies in January flagged evidence of asymptomatic transmission. A study in The Lancet in February flagged it. On 5 March, the chief medical officer said that

“there may well be a lot of people who are infected and have no symptoms”,

so why did the Secretary of State not insist on a precautionary approach and test all going into care homes?

On 6 May, at the Dispatch Box, the Secretary of State claimed that it is

“safer for them to go to a care home.”

Yet 12,000 people had died in those early months. How could he justify that comment? In April, he told the House:

“What is important is that infection control procedures are in place in that care home”.—[Official Report, 19 May 2020; Vol. 676, c. 494.]

However, care homes, like the NHS, struggled with the most desperate of personal protective equipment shortages. He was telling us in March from the Dispatch Box that supplies were extensive, but apparently in private, in Downing Street, he was blaming Simon Stevens for the lack of PPE.

The reality is that the Secretary of State and his Department were responsible for PPE, and the National Audit Office report said that the supplies were inadequate. Some 850 healthcare workers died. How many could have been saved had they had PPE? Families lost loved ones and have been let down by the Government, the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary, but the truth matters. Those families and the country deserve clear answers from the Health Secretary and the Prime Minister today.

[Matt Hancock]

The allegations that were put yesterday and repeated by the right hon. Gentleman are serious, and I welcome the opportunity to come to the House to put formally on the record that these unsubstantiated allegations around honesty are not true, and that I have been straight with people in public and in private throughout. Every day since I began working on the response to the pandemic last January, I have got up each morning and asked, “What must I do to protect life?” That is the job of a Health Secretary in a pandemic.

We have taken an approach of openness, transparency and explanation of both what we know and what we do not know. I was looking at it this morning. Since last January, I have attended this House more than 60 times. With the Prime Minister, we have together hosted 84 press conferences. I have answered 2,667 contributions to this House and answered questions from colleagues, the media and the public, and we will keep on with that spirit of openness and transparency throughout. As well as coming to the House today, I will answer questions and host another press conference later.

Sometimes what we have had to say has not been easy. We have had to level with people when it has been tough—when things have been going in the wrong direction. Also, we have learned throughout. We have applied that learning both to tackling this pandemic and ensuring that we are as well prepared in the future as possible, but beyond all that what matters remains the same: getting vaccinated, getting tested, delivering for our country, overcoming this disease and saving lives. That is what matters to the British people.