NHS: Nursing Workforce

Debate between Lord Blencathra and Lord Bethell

Wednesday 8th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness raises a really important point. We addressed it nearly 18 months ago, before the pandemic, when we had a crackdown on racism and abuse from patients. I would be very grateful if she could send me the details of her correspondence, and I shall look into whether we need to do more on that immediately.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

Why should patients with vulnerabilities and vulnerable conditions, who have obediently had their injections, risk their lives by attending hospitals or medical facilities and encountering staff who have refused vaccinations? Will the Minister make it absolutely clear that there is no place in the NHS for vaccine refuseniks either among the medical staff or among those tens of thousands of people who seem to wander around carrying files or doing non-medical work?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, we are looking at ways in which to take testing and other treatment out of hospitals and into the community. On my noble friend’s substantive point I say that, as he may know, we have promised to have a consultation on mandatory vaccination for healthcare. We are determined to do that in partnership with the workforce, and I look forward to updating the House on our progress.

Covid-19: Vaccinations

Debate between Lord Blencathra and Lord Bethell

Wednesday 13th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend accept my congratulations? The Government have done an absolutely magnificent job on vaccinations. They bought more than enough of the right vaccine, approved it first in the world, injected it first in the world and have vaccinated more people than the whole of Europe put together. I hope the Government will now not be distracted by some of the pathetic media trivia we have heard about how far you can ride a bike, whether a Scotch egg is a meal, whether it is 2 metres or 3 metres, or tier 3 or 4, or whether things have been too fast or too slow. Does my noble friend agree that the only thing that matters now is vaccinating all our people, in the whole of the United Kingdom, as quickly as possible—and 24/7 if vaccine supplies permit—to build on the success we have had so far?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I am enormously grateful for my noble friend’s kind words. I think that, as a Government, we would prefer to be judged at the third act of this important performance, so I think it is probably too early to take too much praise, but I would like to say a massive thanks to the British nation.

In three ways, the nation has really stood up. The amount of collaboration between different groups—I alluded to it in my previous answer—between the Army, industry, the NHS and local authorities has been enormous. At the beginning of this pandemic, there were arthritic elements to the way in which Britain is governed that meant that different parts of our political and administrative machinery did grind into action slightly slowly, but, my goodness, over the vaccine deployment it has been absolutely athletic, and I take my hat off to every part of the machinery of government. On the union, this has been such a strong example of a national solution: all of Britain has come together in order to purchase and deploy the vaccine. Lastly, I would observe the resilience of the British public. It makes me enormously proud that the country puts the elderly and the infirm first and stands by and celebrates the weakest and most vulnerable in our society being put first in the queue. That is a national quality we should all be proud of.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between Lord Blencathra and Lord Bethell

Monday 14th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, that is the pub-quiz question of all pub-quiz questions. There are special provisions for families that are, like the noble Lord’s, separated or complex. Those guidelines have been published, I believe, and I would be glad to send him an email with a link to them.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

[Inaudible]—simple rule and the long overdue emphasis on better and stricter enforcement. Does my noble friend not agree that when a law is systematically and routinely broken and not enforced, it brings the rest of the law into disrepute? Therefore, will he encourage the police, in the strongest possible measures, to stop turning a blind eye to massive house parties, raves and woke demonstrations and tell them to get off their knees and enforce the law?

Covid-19: BAME NHS Staff

Debate between Lord Blencathra and Lord Bethell

Tuesday 19th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell]

My Lords, I share the noble Baroness’s tribute to BAME staff in the NHS, who, as she rightly points out, are on the front line and putting themselves at risk. We should all, as a nation, be enormously grateful for their contribution. I also salute those in the NHS moving quickly to address the concerns and evidence that the disease itself is discriminatory. I would be glad to meet representatives, but I want to be clear that the processes in place in the NHS are reasonable, proportionate and will, I believe, deliver the needed results.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

Will my noble friend the Minister please ensure that the inquiry carefully and thoroughly investigates all anomalies? While black Afro-Caribbeans have a much higher than death rate than white people, I understand that the rate is even higher for Filipinos and far lower for the Chinese. Will the inquiry also look at why 70% of those dying are men, which is nothing to do with race, and why obesity, diabetes, vitamin D and blood thinners all seem to be factors in this epidemic?

[Lord Bethell]

The noble Lord is entirely right. This disease is racist, fatist and sexist. We need to understand why it is discriminatory in all these areas. I reassure the noble Lord that the National Institute for Health Research and UK Research and Innovation have jointly called for research proposals to investigate emerging evidence of an association between ethnicity, behavioural and social factors, and the adverse health outcomes it is generating.

Covid-19

Debate between Lord Blencathra and Lord Bethell

Thursday 23rd April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell]

My noble friend Lord Dobbs is right that there seems to be an opportunity, but I have to be candid with him. Our need for PPE runs into hundreds of millions of items. We have delivered more than 1 billion pieces of PPE since Covid began. I am afraid to say that the manufacturing abilities of Her Majesty’s prisons do not reach to that kind of level.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

As my noble friend the Minister has just said, in January the NHS had to deliver half a million PPE items to 233 hospitals. It now has to deliver 1 billion items to 58,000 health facilities. The experts in logistics are the military, as we saw from the brilliant No. 10 briefing by General Carter yesterday. Will the Government now hand over complete control of distribution to the Armed Forces? Will the Minister comment on reports that the much-vaunted EU purchasing scheme has not delivered a single item of kit to any EU country?

[Lord Bethell]

I would like to take my noble friend to Skipton House in London’s Elephant and Castle to see the very large room where there is a combination of the diplomatic skills of the FCO, the trade skills of DIT and BEIS, the military skills of the Army and the clinical skills of Health. Seeing all those different skills and abilities work together to deliver the kit that our health workers need is a really impressive sight. That collaboration is the secret to success.

Covid-19: Personal Protective Equipment

Debate between Lord Blencathra and Lord Bethell

Thursday 23rd April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell]

The noble Baroness is entirely right to commend the sacrifice of hard-working care workers who put their safety on the line and put themselves in harm’s way. She is also correct to allude to the challenge for care homes—15,000 of them—that have previously largely looked after their own procurement arrangements. This Covid disease presents an enormous procurement challenge. The Government have stepped up and are helping care homes in many ways. Nearly a billion items of PPE have been distributed in the last six weeks and we will continue our commitment to support care homes.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, first, I congratulate my noble friend on the excellent job he is doing in the department and on his diligence in answering our questions. I ask him this: if handwashing destroys coronavirus on our hands, why on earth do we not launder these 450,000 so-called disposable garments that we throw away each day? Is that not an appalling waste of resources, as well as bad for our environment? Will we radically step up making our own washable PPE, now and for the foreseeable future?

[Lord Bethell]

The noble Lord makes an entirely reasonable and common-sense request. It is one that I have put to officials myself. The practicalities of PPE are that you have to be prepared to be covered in large amounts of human fluids and for the garments to be waterproof against their impact. Staff are uncomfortable with wearing garments that may have been used in that way previously. In order to maintain levels of hygiene and to rid them of disease, it is very difficult to reuse them. However, we have a committee looking at the potential for reuse, which will be reporting shortly.