Covid-19: Wuhan Institute of Virology
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I entirely agree with the sentiments expressed by my noble friend. We are absolutely calling for a timely, transparent and evidence-based phase 2 study, including further investigation in China, as recommended by the experts’ report. We agree with the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness & Response that member states should give the WHO greater powers to investigate outbreaks of pathogens with pandemic potential within member states.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I commend the Minister for an excellent reply to the noble Viscount’s Question—a reply obviously informed by the excellent staff at the Department of Health and Social Care. In the light of that, can I gently ask why, as a Minister, did he feel it necessary to have a parliamentary research assistant?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I have written to the commissioner for standards in response to that precise question and I should be glad to share that correspondence with the noble Lord.
COVID-19 Variant: Travel Guidance for Local Authorities
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Bethell (Con)
We have not banned smoking; lots of smoking is going on among the British public.
This is where the public have a role to play. They have agency, they are able to make their own decisions and they can make the sensible distinction between meeting inside when they could be meeting outside and making unavoidable decisions of the kind the noble Baroness alluded to.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
I will have a go now. The latest advice to people in these areas is to minimise travel and use their common sense. If a family have booked a trip away for the weekend, how would the Minister advise them?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I would ask them to use their common sense. I am a parliamentarian; I am not telling them or legislating for them on that particular decision. They can see the rising infection rates around them, they know for themselves how this disease spreads and we are asking them to make a sensible, reasonable, common-sense decision about whether that journey is necessary. That is not something we are legislating for, it is what we are putting in guidelines, and I think that that, at this stage of the pandemic, is a reasonable response.
Covid-19 Internal Review
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Bethell (Con)
I am enormously grateful for my noble friend’s kind comments. On his point on vaccines, I emphasise the enormous contribution of the whole union behind the vaccine project. It has been a union project to deploy vaccines to every person in the UK at amazing speed and with consistency right across all parts of the union. For that we should be enormously grateful.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, while we all here respect that health is a devolved responsibility, does the Minister not agree with me that one of the problems that arose was the confusion arising from different rules in different parts of the United Kingdom and different messages throughout the United Kingdom? In the inquiry, will the United Kingdom Government talk with the devolved Administrations to make sure that, in future, there is a more co-ordinated response? The virus knows no boundaries.
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, the Prime Minister will define the terms of reference and the chair will define how the inquiry deports itself. On the noble Lord’s point about the rules and the suggestion of confusion, I agree that there was a lot of heat and smoke around differences but the truth is that 99% of everything that we did between the different parts of the union was exactly the same. There was a lot of focus on very small differences, but what I celebrate is how much common ground there was in our responses.
Covid-19: One Year Report
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts(3 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op) [V]
My Lords, I too thank the Minister for his introduction, but I join others in expressing my concern about the way in which Parliament has not been given proper opportunities to scrutinise the provisions to deal with the pandemic, some of which have really major effects and serious implications. I join my own colleagues in expressing real concern at the haphazard way in which this emergency has been dealt with by the Government. I share the view that many lives might have been saved if the plans to deal with the epidemic that were there had been updated and there had been quicker appreciation of the serious danger of the pandemic and the action that needed to be taken by the Government.
We will have an inquiry of some sort, and I hope that it will start soon. I also hope that this inquiry, as well as looking at the detail of how the pandemic has been dealt with, will also consider whether, by declaring a state of emergency, more decisions could have been taken on a UK-wide basis—as the Minister said in his introduction, if we had used the civil contingencies provision instead of the public health provision.
I am a long-standing and very enthusiastic supporter of devolution, and I would have liked more aspects of implementation to have been devolved to local authorities, not just in England but in Scotland and Wales. But there has been confusion resulting from different dates of restrictions and different levels or tiers, as they were called in some places, and above all by different messages in different parts of the United Kingdom, where the media still broadcast principally on a UK-wide basis. In fact, there was little difference in the level of infection or the speed of dealing with it or, most recently, in the mistakes made in different parts of the United Kingdom. There were far too many avoidable deaths in care homes, while there were similar levels of infection and almost the same level of vaccine rollout in each part of the United Kingdom. But it has been regrettable that some have used their power to make political capital out what should have been a united effort to fight the pandemic.
On another matter, I urge the consideration of vaccine passports or certificates to speed up a return to as near normal as possible. But we need to differentiate between passports or certificates for overseas travel and those for access to venues here in the United Kingdom. The issues, both practical and in principle, are different in each case. I hope that the Minister can update the House on progress on consideration of both of these and, again, I hope that they will be implemented on a UK-wide basis.
I express concern and disgust that some wicked people are taking advantage of the epidemic to cheat people, particularly older people. The Action Fraud unit has reported over 6,000 cases, totalling £35 million of losses. What is being done by the police and the cyber- security unit to counter these scams?
Finally, I will ask about pay in the NHS, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield. The Minister will have seen that, in Scotland, workers in the health service—not just nurses but all workers—are to receive a 4% pay increase, backdated to the start of the pandemic. Since both the health and financial situations are much the same north and south of the border and since the funds to cover the cost come from the Treasury and ultimately from the same taxpayers, will the United Kingdom Government now think again and agree to give NHS workers in England the same increase? It is totally hypocritical of the Prime Minister and others to stand on their doorsteps and applaud the commitment of the workers in the NHS but not to reward them properly in their pay packets. The Government of the United Kingdom must think again.
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Self-Isolation and Linked Households) (England) Regulations 2020
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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.
Covid-19 Vaccine Rollout
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts(3 years, 11 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I join my noble friend in paying tribute to the MHRA. We have all seen Dr June Raine in her flawless presentation and authoritative explanation of the authorisation of the vaccine. I am sure that, if she were here today, she would want to pay tribute to her incredibly impressive team at the MHRA. I also pay tribute to Kate Bingham and the very many people from the private sector who have stepped forward during the pandemic to take on onerous, sometimes high-profile and sometimes quite controversial roles in the battle with the pandemic. We owe them a huge tribute. They have often given up their time and put themselves in the firing line in order to do this work. Kate Bingham has massively delivered for this country and I am grateful to all those, either at the top of the task force or in local community work, who have stepped forward and made a contribution to our battle against Covid.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that there is a danger that this whole programme could be undermined by crazy anti-vaxxers, particularly on social media? What are the Government going to do to counteract this?
Lord Bethell (Con)
The noble Lord speaks truth, as always, in this matter. We are naturally concerned by those who deliberately seek to undermine the integrity of the vaccine. However, we are also considerate of those who might have quite reasonable questions about it or might even have what we think are completely unreasonable ones but who have concerns about, or an emotional response to, vaccines. Our approach is to handle those doubts and questions in a dialogue and a spirit of partnership, trying to answer them as considerately as we possibly can. Yes, we should battle those who seek to profit commercially or are acting in their own narrow, national interest to undermine the vaccine in this country. But we want to answer those in our community who have questions about the vaccine with transparency, reassurance and science.
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers) (England) Regulations 2020
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts(3 years, 11 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I will indeed consider voting for either the fatal or a regret amendment. Despite this, I want the Minister to note that many of us here understand that he and the Government are under huge pressures. I also appreciate that in a period where “gotcha” blame games are the way we go in politics, politicians can become terrified, defensive and reactive. They often will not admit mistakes and therefore cannot learn from them. They make every pronouncement black and white, delivered with a definitive certainty with no nuance and certainly no room for disagreement. One tactic is to avoid blame by attempting to hide behind the science, and the reliance on what passes for irrefutable evidence. As we all get bamboozled by data, graphs, charts, forecasts and infection rates, no mention is made of the wider principles undermining decision-making. When evidence substitutes for judgments, policies are ring-fenced off from accountability and it can create a fatalistic mood in society where people are told that there is no choice.
It was not ever thus, even in this Covid period. Remember that, at the start of all this, hundreds of thousands of people were mobilised as NHS volunteers, eager to help to take on Covid. Even if lots of them never received an email, they showed that there was a willingness to actively create a shield around the vulnerable and act in social solidarity. Contrast that with now, when people are at the end of their tether. The Government’s policies have demobilised people, demanded passivity and compliance. People are told, “Shut up and put up—we know best”, but is that true? Surely in an emergency more than ever, politicians could do with a hand. I urge Ministers to draw on the resources, intellect, intuition, common sense and intelligent criticisms of millions of people in order to move forward.
I want noble Lords to imagine, for a minute, what it feels like to be in Wales at the moment. The people have endured a lockdown, and their reward from Welsh Labour is a 6 pm curfew—more puritan prohibition than science—with utter indifference to the destruction of hospitality jobs. By the way, I give a shout-out to the 100 north Wales publicans who banned the First Minister from pubs for 18 months—hear, hear to them. This illustrates the infuriating way that citizens are treated: they are victims of arbitrary diktats from on high and never involved in any debate—
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
You think I am mad? That is a good start to a civilised debate. Anyway, all this is unnecessary and not the way we should move forward, because I think that the technocratic approach is bad for science and democracy. Science is in danger of being turned into a dogma set in a stone tablet; the very strength of the scientific method is challenging and testing hypotheses, and it is being corrupted by an adherence to “the science”.
Those scientists who raise concerns about the official narrative have their professional reputations traduced as fake experts and shills, have their interviews censored and dubbed misinformation—and are heckled as “mad”. Surely with a new virus, we need to hear all scientific views, not just those of SAGE. All scientists, pro and anti lockdown, should be prepared to have their work rigorously scrutinised and critiqued. None should be silenced, or important questions will not even be asked, let alone answered.
The technocratic approach is also bad for democracy because it narrows down the debate to solely assessing responses to Covid through quantifiable measures. I confess that we all get dragged into reducing the debate to its most narrow parameters. We have all wasted hours on the minutiae of the differences between tiers 2 and 3 and what they allow. That crude, utilitarian approach even means that we are all tempted to parade death figures to make our case: pro-lockdowners state Covid deaths while anti-lockdowners emphasise neglected cancer patients, heart disease victims and suicides.
This counting-the-bodies approach is available only if the Government allow us to think of health, longevity and safety as the only value in this debate, but it means that we miss the bigger picture. Yes, we can count the horrifying number of job losses due to lockdowns, not Covid, but there are more immeasurable aspects to this: unemployment, losing one’s savings and bankruptcy. It is not just about money; it robs people of dignity, agency and sense of worth. It demoralises people: they feel useless.
Yes, we can count the number of elderly and vulnerable lives allegedly protected by lockdowns, but how do you measure the cruelty of locking up so many people in, effectively, solitary confinement, deprived of love and stimulation? You can count the rising number of Covid cases, but it is not a sign of libertine recklessness that millions are bereft because they are denied conviviality, civil society and time with their mates in the pub, football and so on—it is called civil society; it is called society.
However, the greatest value sacrificed is our attack on freedom: it is not just the frightening number of new laws, micromanaging our lives, or the relentless attacks on freedom of association in churches, our own homes or on protests; it is worse than that. It is political leaders behaving like little emperors, throwing the public scraps of freedom for good behaviour, expecting them to be grateful and then grasping them back for misdemeanours. Citizens are rendered helpless, expected to be happy that they have been given a mere five days as a Christmas dispensation. Do you know how demeaning and frustrating it is to feel that one’s destiny is in the hands of SAGE behavioural psychologists who believe that board games and Christmas shopping are an existential threat to society?
All this seems so counterproductive—that is my point. Remember, politicians are asking society to do something historically unprecedented.
Food Hygiene Rating Displays
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I cannot commit at this point at the Dispatch Box to a date, as the noble Baroness has asked. However, I will express an enormous amount of warmth towards the idea. I acknowledge that only 55% of businesses in England display their ratings for their premises, whereas in Wales, where it is mandatory, the number of businesses with the highest rating of five has increased by 25% since the introduction of mandatory displays in 2013. That is surely good evidence that the scheme has impact and works.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, but is the Minister aware that in Uxbridge, of 263 food outlets, 21 have not been inspected and 30 scored only between zero and two and, as my noble friend Lord Rooker said, are unlikely to display that? If this is replicated throughout England, there will be thousands of outlets not displaying it. Until it becomes mandatory, what are the Government going to do about it?
Lord Bethell (Con)
Well, my Lords, the situation in Uxbridge is clearly one of grave concern, and I share the noble Lord’s concerns—but that is not the national picture. As I said earlier, in England generally 55% of businesses display their rating. This is not enough, which is why we are considering the measure with the scrutiny that we are.
Covid-19: Tracking
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op) [V]
My Lords, is not this new system available only on newer smartphones, which older people and poorer people are less likely to possess? They are the most vulnerable. Is there not a danger of this becoming yet another expensive and useless gimmick?
Lord Bethell (Con)
Perhaps I may reassure the noble Lord that the NHS app is usable by nine out of 10 smartphones. On average, 87% of Apple and Android phones can download the NHS app. The Apple express service uses a smaller segment of the population because it requires more modern software in the phones.
Coronavirus Act 2020: Temporary Provisions
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op) [V]
My Lords, it is a real privilege and a pleasure to follow—I was about to say the Member of Parliament—my noble friend Lady Clark of Kilwinning and to congratulate her on an excellent maiden speech.
As she has already revealed, I have known my noble friend for over 40 years—I hope that I am not giving too much away there—and I know her family, a great socialist family in Ayrshire, very well. We have heard an excellent maiden speech from her, and I would like to pay tribute to the work that she did as the Member of Parliament for North Ayrshire, which is almost as beautiful as South Ayrshire. I look forward to many more speeches from my noble friend over the many years that I know she will spend in this House. I am sure that, in future speeches, she will be a bit more controversial, as she was advised not to be in her maiden speech—she stuck to that injunction tremendously.
I, however, am allowed to be controversial, so I return to the issue before the House. If there is one word that summarises the Government’s record on the coronavirus pandemic, it is “failure”. First, there was the failure to anticipate the seriousness of this virus, following clear experience in China, Italy and elsewhere, not to mention the scrapping, during the austerity years, of the previous plans to deal with epidemics. Further, there was failure to recognise that transferring all the people with the virus from hospitals to care homes would result in deaths that could, and should, have been avoided. I fear that we are about to repeat this. There have also been multiple failures with the test and trace system, which the Prime Minister bombastically claimed would be “world-beating”—it is certainly not that. The decision to outsource to private firms such as Serco, instead of using the tried and tested local health network, and the cronyism of appointing the unqualified noble Baroness, Lady Harding, to oversee it means that the system is mired in controversy and ineptitude.
There is also the double failure of the much-heralded app, first with the trial on the Isle of Wight and now with the national scheme, which only works on a minority of smartphones. In recent weeks, there has been a total failure to recognise and prepare for the dangers associated with thousands of young people criss-crossing the country as they start, or return to, university. Many are now imprisoned in their lodgings, having to pay thousands for fees and rent while receiving mostly online learning, which most of them could have had from home. It is okay for the vice-chancellors and for the student hostel owners, but it is a raw deal for the students. There is also a failure to provide consistent messaging: “Work from home”; “No, go back to work”; “No, stay at home”. It has been simply one U-turn after another.
Finally, there has been a massive failure to co-ordinate with the devolved Administrations and to provide some consistency of approach. There should have been daily meetings, convened by the UK Government, recognising devolved responsibilities but seeking to get an agreed approach throughout the United Kingdom. We are now told that we face at least six more months of coping with the pandemic. I hope that, in his reply to this debate, the Minister finally gives an assurance that the Government will at last recognise the mistakes that have been made and will learn from them, so that future action is better than their past record.