Coronavirus Vaccine

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

As ever, the noble Lord is extremely wise in his observation. He is entirely right to hold us to account. There is no point in enjoying this fine moment too much when you have the noble Lord, Lord Patel, on your case reminding you about the next big challenge around the corner. He is right that pharmacovigilance is essential. We need to make sure that this and other vaccines work and that we learn from the behaviours of all of them. That is precisely why we put the deployment of this vaccine through the NHS. There was a temptation to set up an alternative agency and focus on the actual injection of the vaccine over all other matters. Instead we have run it through the NHS digital process, which means that all the information around the vaccine is put very firmly into the GP record. That means that we can do population-wide analysis of the results of the vaccine. We have a very large research community in the UK both in the companies such as Pfizer, which, as he knows, are responsible for pharmacovigilance, and in the university sector. We will have all those records available for them to do the follow-up work that he rightly emphasises.

[Lord Dobbs (Con) [V]]

My noble friend will know that I have reservations about some aspects of government policy, but the news about the vaccine is wholly good news. It is a triumph for all concerned and I join in with his praise for them, although my noble friend himself should not be shy about taking his own share of the credit. He mentioned that other vaccines are coming down the road—in the pipeline, I think he said—including the Oxford vaccine. These vaccines have different characteristics and require different handling. How do the Government plan to distribute and discriminate between the different vaccines? Will one get priority over another? While I understand that he cannot be precise, can he offer any further guidance about how soon we can hope that everyone who wants one will have a vaccination available?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his kind words. I reassure him that everyone in Britain who wants a vaccine will get one. In fact, we are going to do everything that we can to encourage everyone in Britain to have a vaccine. We believe that prevention is better than cure, and that vaccines such as the ones coming down the pipeline offer the best possible fightback against this horrible disease. With regard to the different properties of the vaccine, his observation is entirely right: it is likely that the different vaccines have different properties, not least that some are much easier to transport than others, but some might work better, for example, with children or with those susceptible to other conditions. We do not have full data on the other vaccines so it is impossible to make those comparisons at this stage, but I assure him that when we have the data we will make sensible decisions along those lines.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers) (England) Regulations 2020

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs (Con) [V]]

Parliament: a word whose very definition means “to talk, to discuss”. It has come to mean, over the years, to take responsibility. Not so long ago, we fought a referendum on the basis that we wanted to return more powers to our Parliament. That is what the Prime Minister said then, and I want to take him at his word.

In a war, you are confronted by an enemy. You send in the drones and missiles, you decide to take the swine out using lethal force but, before you do it, do you not first stop to consider the potential unintended consequences and collateral damage? Will innocents suffer? How many will suffer? How long will they suffer? This is pretty basic stuff. The question behind every such decision is simple: is it worth it? Yes, we are told, we have to save the NHS, but we have not; we have sent the NHS into a spiral of inadequacy. We are infringing personal liberties on a massive scale, as sometimes has to be done in war. Then there is the massive economic and social damage, long-term mental health issues, the undermining of democracy and of Parliament itself. Again, is it all worth it? Perhaps it is, but that is why we have asked for a cost-benefit analysis, so that we can respond to the question, is it worth it. We know the cost of Covid; what we want to know is the cost of the cure.

Apparently, the oil lamps have been burning late inside the Treasury: officials have been running around with scissors and paste pots, and what they have come up with is a 48-page document, hurled so untimely and ill-formed into the streets during the dark hours of yesterday. It is filled with very pretty graphs and bar charts, lots of wiggly lines and wandering statistics, but, for a cost-benefit analysis, it is remarkably lacking in costs or benefits. It is a thing of shreds and tatters. We had been promised crystal clarity; instead, what we have is Ministers squabbling over whether people should eat Scotch eggs. I think Marie Antoinette said much the same thing.

We need information in order to do our duty as parliamentarians, and we do not have it, or not enough of it. I am not suggesting that the Government are trying to drag us like lambs to the slaughter but, at times, it feels a little as if they are trying to pull our own wool over our own eyes. In another world, at another time, the Treasury rushed forward to offer all sorts of terrifying predictions, stretching years into the future, about the monsters that would leap out and devour us if we dared vote for Brexit. So, today, we ask—and it is our duty to ask—what is the expected rise in unemployment? How many pubs and other businesses will close? How many non-Covid patients will die because they can no longer get prompt treatment? If Ministers cannot answer those basic questions, is it because the work simply has not been done, which would be astonishing, or because they do not want us to know the answers, which would be frightening?

This morning’s Times newspaper said that, indeed, there is an assessment—let us not call it a forecast, let us call it an assessment—that has been circulated within government, not for sharing with the public, in which a dozen different sectors are rated red: the disaster zones. So, I ask my noble friend: is there any truth whatever in that report on the front page of the Times? Does any such dossier exist?

I try to be a loyal Tory Back-Bencher; really, I do. I desperately want this Government to defeat this disease and move on with all their glorious ambitions for post-Brexit Britain. This is not the way to do it. We are not properly informed, we are not adequately consulted and it is clear that we are not trusted. Indeed, we are accused of shirking our responsibilities and wanting to let the disease rip. Those remarks are unworthy of any reasoned debate.

We are curtailing fundamental civil liberties in a way that is simply unprecedented in peacetime. We are damaging innocent lives on a massive scale. We are demanding sacrifices. We are starving our economy and our society for years to come. All I want to know is: is it worth it? I want to support the Government, but if I cannot wholeheartedly support them, I can at least encourage them. So, this evening, in order to do just that, I hope to have the opportunity to vote for the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe.

Covid-19 Update

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Monday 30th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Morris of Bolton) (Con)]

The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, has scratched, so I now call the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs.

[Lord Dobbs (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I would like to indulge in a little flight of fantasy by bringing two different elements together. The first is the Oxford vaccine, which appears to be much cheaper and easier to distribute than the other vaccines currently on offer. The second is the pressure on our foreign aid budget. Will my noble friend have a word with his Foreign Office colleagues and see whether it is possible to bring the two together, using the aid programme to distribute the Oxford vaccine as soon as any surplus supply becomes available? Distributing it to our aid recipients to help them with their own battles against Covid will show that Britain is a proud world leader in supplying practical humanitarian support.

Covid-19: Vaccines and Medical Equipment

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I congratulate AstraZeneca and Oxford University on their triumph in developing this vaccine. I hope that my noble friend agrees that without the exceptional input from the private sector, this game-changing treatment simply could not have been developed. What plans do the Government have to cope with the anti-vaxxers? Some of them will simply be individuals exercising their right to say no, but others will be deliberately spreading lies and misinformation that can only undermine trust in the vaccine. Do the Government have any specific plans to deal with this challenge?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, we have extremely detailed and energetic plans to deal with misinformation, which is based on confusion, and disinformation, which is based on malice. It would not be right for me to go through those plans in detail at the Dispatch Box, but I reassure my noble friend that they are in place and are being characterised by a degree of consideration for those who have concerns about the vaccine. It is a grave undertaking to have an injection such as that. People naturally have searching questions they would like to ask, and we are trying to meet those questions with a degree of thoughtfulness and to answer them in the spirit in which they are asked.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 2) (England) (Amendment) (No. 4) Regulations 2020

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Tuesday 6th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, “hundreds of thousands” of people would die if we simply “let the virus rip”. That is what the Health Secretary said last week, but I am baffled because I have no idea who is making these silly suggestions. The Prime Minister has said that some people think we should

“give up and let the virus take its course”.

Who is proposing that? It worries me when we go to extreme lengths to deal with extreme arguments; that only adds to the confusion, and there is confusion. I share the confusion of my noble friend Lord Lamont about the 10 pm pub curfew and about how we are going to get through Christmas with the rule of six.

Kate Bingham, the head of the Vaccine Taskforce, in an interview with the Financial Times, has offered a rather more interesting insight: less than half the population is going to get the vaccine—if there is one. There will be no vaccinations for the under-18s because it is aimed primarily at those over 50. Looking at the death rates rather than the infection rates, that seems to make great sense. It suggests that we can and must be far more flexible in our approach by differentiating between those most at risk and younger, healthy people who are not going to die from the disease. If we can do that and put aside the one-lockdown-rule-fits-all approach, we could put our economy back into shape much more quickly. We could speed up medical help for non-Covid patients and we could strike a stronger balance between the competing medical, economic and social tensions. However, it is news to most that not everyone is going to get the vaccine and I hope that my noble friend will be able to shed a little light.

Coronavirus Act 2020: Temporary Provisions

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Monday 28th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, your Lordships should take no more attention of my speaking from the Cross Benches than you have of my noble and learned—and very welcome—friend Lord Clarke of Nottingham speaking from the Bishops’ Bench. I trust that we will both get back to normal soon. It is also a pleasure to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Clark of Kilwinning.

I start by thanking the Minister for his prodigious personal efforts over all these months. We are asked to follow the science, but what science? Is it the science that said that there would be half a million deaths? If that is so, we have done remarkably well. Or is it the science that said that 20,000 deaths would be a good figure? In that case, we have done considerably less well. Perhaps it is the science that points to the tens of thousands of excess, non-Covid deaths that we have been suffering because of people not going to the doctors and getting the treatment that they require, or the science that predicts that there will be many tens of thousands of deaths in the long run if we go into a period of endless recession. This is not a matter of science but of judgment—political judgment—as we search for a balance between impossible demands.

I want to share two concerns today. The first is that, despite all the Government’s best efforts, the judgments that are being made are exceptionally confusing. Let me use young people as an example. We have just sent them off to university, where we have often locked them in and told them that they may not get back for Christmas. I do not know what they are going to do for Christmas; perhaps they should all gather at Barnard Castle, where apparently, we can all have a jolly good Christmas. What future are we offering our young people with this economic policy of stop, start, stop, stumble again, then stop? The latest ONS figures show that the number of under-45s who have died from coronavirus amounts to 1.1% of the national total, whereas the over-65s amount to 89.3%. Yet, we treat them all the same, when clearly, they are not. Why do we devastate the entire economy and the future of young people? Can we not find a better way of protecting the vulnerable while allowing the young to carry on with something like a normal life?

My second concern is the damage being done not just to health and the economy but to our fundamental rights and democratic accountability. We are infringing on individual rights on a massive scale. After seven months of this Covid nightmare, we need to revisit not just our policies but their legislative basis. We must not forget the lessons of Brexit. Government got too far from the people; as one Prime Minister said, government was done to the people, not for the people.

I wish to help my Government and support them in their fiendishly difficult task. I believe that the way to support them tonight is to support my noble friend’s Motion if he asks us to.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions on Gatherings) (North of England) Regulations 2020

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Friday 25th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs (Con) [V]]

My Lords, these orders are not simply about the wretched virus. They are also about how we operate as a Parliament. We see profound damage on all sides, yet there is no proper chance to discuss it. Instinctively, I want to support my Government—of course I do—but the Government’s path has been a rocky one, from lockdown to easing and back again to lockdown, with detours through empty testing centres and a particularly overcrowded car park at Barnard Castle. Conservative Peers, such as my noble friends Lord Forsyth and Lord Moynihan, have raised important issues today, and next Monday my noble friend Lord Robathan has a Motion demanding more parliamentary consideration. Those are signs of growing frustration.

It is a frustration that I understand and entirely share. My noble friend Lord Robathan’s Motion, along with today’s proceedings, are not simply about Covid but about fussy little things such as democratic accountability, that irritating grit in the oyster. I notice that my noble friend Lord Bethell is down to respond next week. As much as we all admire him, I would have thought it more appropriate for the Leader of the House to handle that business. I hope the Government will change their mind.

Already my time is up. There is no time for this House to speak, and not enough time for the Government to think, listen or clear up their own confusion. But in the long months that lie ahead, they will need to listen very much more carefully if they are to show the leadership we all want and allow us in this House to get on with our job.

Covid-19 Update

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Monday 14th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, the phenomenon we had noticed was that large groups of people, sometimes in pubs and sometimes in other congregations, would seemingly be from two households, but that the actual definition of “household” was proving to be extremely flexible in the minds of many people. Therefore, putting an integer into the formula makes it much clearer.

[Lord Dobbs (Con) [V]]

May I return to the issue of political gatherings, which my noble friend and I discussed last Thursday? He mentioned that protests such as those we have seen recently from Extinction Rebellion might not be outlawed quite yet, but it is not really a matter of outlawing political protest—I did not ask for that. However, can he understand how deeply outraged many would feel while spending their Christmases abiding by the very difficult rule of six if, out their window, they were watching political protesters who do not give a monkey’s about the rules? Will he confirm that political protesters are subject right now to precisely the same rules as the rest of us?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I sympathise with my noble friend’s point, but I remind him that the regulations come into force later today. It is up to the Metropolitan Police to implement crowd dispersal but the sentiments he expresses are ones that I share.

Covid-19 Update

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

The noble Lord is entirely right to emphasise the challenge of itinerant domiciliary care. Such workers were always a vector for potential disease and are putting their own lives on the line. That is why we have radically changed the guidelines. We have put more resources in place to ensure greater support for domiciliary care, PPE is stocked for them to use and there is regular individual testing

[Lord Dobbs (Con) [V]]

My Lords, the new guidelines require political protests to be “organised in compliance with” government rules and

“subject to strict risk assessments”.

Who will undertake these assessments, when and how will they be undertaken—I presume they will have to be undertaken before any protest is mounted—and does this mean that the type of protest we saw the other day by Extinction Rebellion will by definition be unlawful?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, my understanding is that the risk assessment is done by the local police force in conjunction with Public Health England, but I am happy to check that and write to my noble friend. With regard to Extinction Rebellion, I found the protest last week particularly tedious but I am not sure if it will be outlawed quite yet.

Covid-19: Rise of Positive Tests

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

I advise the noble and right reverend Lord that those figures are published on the PHE website. I would be glad to send him an email with the link.

[Lord Dobbs (Con) [V]]

My Lords, what I am about to ask implies no criticism, because this is such a difficult question. The increase in restrictions on social gatherings that have just been announced will be so difficult to enforce. Is there at least a case for us to consider focusing more on mortality rates rather than simply on infection rates, and finding better ways of identifying and protecting the truly vulnerable, while allowing the rest of society to get on sensibly with their lives as best they can in the circumstances, before the costs of trying to protect everyone become both economically and politically unsustainable?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My noble friend is entirely right to say that the measures that the Prime Minister will describe will impose a huge burden on the whole country. However, he alludes to a hope that I am afraid cannot be borne out in practice, because we have seen, in country after country, that after prevalence follows hospitalisation and mortality, as night follows day. There is an immediate and strong connection between the rise of mortality and the rate of prevalence in the country as a whole. Children see their parents, and parents see the grandparents, so if we really want to protect all those in society, we have to lean into the disease at every level. In addition, it is emerging that the long-term effects of Covid on young people can be profound. Even those with relatively low or asymptomatic reactions to the disease can be affected by fatigue, loss of memory, breathing difficulties and other long-term effects. It is for those reasons that I ask all young people to ensure that they take every step to avoid catching this disease.