Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Self-Isolation and Linked Households) (England) Regulations 2020

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

Thursday 7th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op) [V]]

My Lords, these statutory instruments deal with protecting us from the virus—an area where the Government have, as others have said, a record of overpromising and underdelivering. An example is the test and trace scheme, which was hailed by Ministers as world beating but has turned out to be a miserable failure—except of course for some of the friends of those Ministers, who have made a fortune out of it. Maybe the Minister can tell us in his reply where the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, is and what she is up to now.

Now, as many others have said, success in defeating the virus depends on the efficient delivery of the vaccine. I fear that this is beginning to look like another government debacle. Therefore, first—a question asked also by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie—can the Minister tell us how many vials of each vaccine have been delivered to each of the three devolved nations? Secondly, when does he expect all the vaccination centres to be operational? Thirdly, when does he expect them to achieve the vaccination of 2 million people each week, as promised? Finally, what will the arrangements be for reporting regularly to both Houses on the progress of the rollout? From the reports of what happened when the Health Secretary visited Bloomsbury today, and from the letter from MPs of all parties in Birmingham, I fear that things are not going quite as well as the Government hoped and that we will fall behind on the delivery of this vaccine, in spite of the bombastic claims of the Prime Minister that we are again world beating.