Covid-19: Vaccination Programme

Debate between Lord Bethell and Lord Hamilton of Epsom

Wednesday 24th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My right honourable friend the Prime Minister said in his Statement that decisions would be led by data, not dates. In the same Statement, he said that step 2 would be no earlier than 12 April, step 3 no earlier than 17 May and step 4 no earlier than 21 June. This morning, the Daily Telegraph reported that the 21 June date may be brought forward if the data continues to show that coronavirus is being well dealt with. What is leading the Government’s decisions? Is it dates or data?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I recommend that my noble friend and the Daily Telegraph look at the large amount of conditional material that the Prime Minister articulated in his Statement. There were no firm dates. He made it clear that data would drive decisions and he made a lot of his indicative programme remarks reliant on passing the four key tests that he laid out very clearly in his programme.

Covid-19 Vaccines Deployment

Debate between Lord Bethell and Lord Hamilton of Epsom

Thursday 11th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Government on the vaccine programme. After a pretty disastrous war against Covid, it looks as though the Government may be winning the last battle, which is the one that counts. What happens to people who have received the jab and are registered under the test and trace system? Will they be forced to isolate, despite inoculation making it very unlikely that they will catch the disease or transmit it to others?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I am afraid that is not the view of the scientists at the moment. I am extremely glad about all those who have had their first jab, but the very strong recommendation is that everyone has to abide by the lockdown rules at the moment. The transmissibility is still there: a person who has had the jab can still, and often may well, be infected by the disease, carry it and communicate it to someone who has not had the jab. They remain a danger to the community and, until a very large number of the population have had the jabs, those protocols will remain in place.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between Lord Bethell and Lord Hamilton of Epsom

Tuesday 6th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I am touched by the testimony of the noble Baroness. I pay tribute to the work of National Voices, which has presented an extremely thoughtful and helpful guide and presented the testimony of those who have been under the extremely harsh regimes of shielding. She is entirely right that those who have had to go into the most extreme forms of lockdown depend the most on government guidelines. Those guidelines can be complex, and people can feel confused or lonely and separated because of their status. We have invested a huge amount in local authorities and in charities specifically to reach those groups. It is through that kind of civic and public service support that we can work with those people. It is not properly the role of central government to have individual communications with those who are shielding at home. We rely on our partners, and we have provided an enormous amount of resources to ensure they can do that job properly.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, if I was diagnosed with coronavirus today and subsequently recovered or showed no symptoms over the next couple of weeks, in 27 days I might get knocked over by a bus and killed, and that would be registered as a Covid-related death. My question to my noble friend is this: why are we including all these deaths that are nothing to do with Covid in the overall statistics that we publish every day?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, if my noble friend caught Covid today and recovered in two weeks’ time, I would personally celebrate that enormously, as I am sure would others in the Chamber. He is right that we have existing protocols for identifying cause of death, and we approach Covid in exactly the same way we do all other causes of death. This is to help our demographic analysis. Of course, the example that he gives—which is entirely correct—is an extreme example, but it is helpful for us to understand, when we are doing retrospective analysis, who has been touched by Covid in order to explain at a later date where the causes of those deaths may have come from. A death that is not apparently from Covid today may in future have a clearer connection.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between Lord Bethell and Lord Hamilton of Epsom

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness asked about PPE, which is naturally a concern as we go into winter. I assure her that the NHS has 15-day, 45-day and 90-day plans for the supply of PPE to the NHS and the independent sector. Roughly half of that comes from British sources. The distribution mechanisms have been radically overhauled and tested, and have proved to be utterly modernised.

We are working extremely hard on the deployment of a Covid vaccination. She rightly mentions other vaccinations. I assure her that we have 30 million doses of the flu vaccination. As she rightly points out, there appears to be a strong link between having flu today, Covid tomorrow and problems with a combination of both at a later date.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

Sweden did not go for a total lockdown, as we did in this country. Although there is some evidence that its number of infections is going up at the moment, it still has far fewer deaths from Covid per 100,000 than we do. On top of that, its economy is supposed to be declining by about 5.5%, while ours will decline by at least double that. Does my noble friend think there are any lessons to be learned from Sweden?

My second question is about herd immunity. We started this whole process of dealing with coronavirus by talking about herd immunity. We then seemed to completely desert that idea and did not think it held any promise. Where do we stand now on herd immunity?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, it is with sadness that I note that the infection rate in Sweden is inching up, and with regret that I note that Stockholm is bringing in many lockdown measures similar to those in the UK. The noble Lord is right that Sweden has had a distinctive approach, but it is not as distinctive as would appear. Many of the same regulations that we have had here have been applied in Sweden. One area where Sweden has shown leadership is in compliance among the public. When regulations have been brought in, there have been extremely high levels of compliance, and therefore the optics are different from the reality. This Government have never supported a herd immunity strategy.