Covid-19: Dental Services
Lord Fowler Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord’s analysis, but it is too early to make commitments on funding.
The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)
I make the point that I say at the beginning of every Question Time that two points are the maximum that should be made.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
In my view, the Government have offered little support to dentist practices: not exempting them from business rates, even though book- makers and vape shops are exempted, and not offering them key worker status, which has caused problems with childcare. Can the Minister commit to early access to Covid-19 vaccines for all high-street dentists who are NHS contractors, rather than employees? Can the Minister give them key worker status?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, the bottleneck around the training of new dentists, an incredibly important priority for the nation’s teeth, is one that the CDO is extremely concerned about. The question of simulation machines is not one that I was aware of but I will be happy to look into it and reply to the noble Baroness on how we can make progress.
The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)
My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has now elapsed.
Covid-19: Contracts and Mass Testing Programme
Lord Fowler Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Bethell (Con)
We have published 80% of the contracts to date and are working on publishing the rest. I hope that that will meet noble Lords’ expectations.
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I do not want to give the impression that absolutely everything is perfect. Those were desperate days and we had to do extraordinary things to protect our healthcare staff. I remind noble Lords that other countries were flying in their representatives with bags of cash on private jets in order to seal contracts and some of our supplies were literally taken from under our noses on the runway at Hong Kong airport. They were extremely difficult times and I do not pretend for a moment that everything was absolutely perfect, but I reassure noble Lords that the right procedures were put in place by officials, and I reassure the noble Lord that these figures are currently being validated with the National Audit Office.
The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)
My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed and it brings Question Time to an end.
Covid-19: Intensive Care Treatment
Lord Fowler Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I share my sympathies with the noble Baroness for the loss of her friend, for which we are all very sad. However, I take exception to her implication of a fiasco in the use of algorithms. I do not accept the implication that it is regular practice for clinicians somehow to give up on patients who stand a chance simply because their reading of an algorithm says that they should move on to someone else. That is not how we run the NHS; it is not how we had to run it during the first wave and it is not how we intend to run it during the second.
The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)
My Lords, all supplementary questions have been asked and both Private Notice Questions have finished.
Covid-19: Charitably Funded Hospices
Lord Fowler Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Bethell (Con)
The issue raised by the noble Baroness is one that I am aware of. Who can think of a more moving cause than hospices for children? This will be definitely be on the agenda for 4 November and I will raise the issue with my honourable friend the Minister for Social Care.
The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)
My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed, which brings Question Time to an end.
Social Care
Lord Fowler Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, we all acknowledge the power and intellectual insight of the Economic Affairs Committee report, which was welcomed on the Floor of the House and speaks for itself in terms of its authority and insight. But my noble friend is, I am afraid, not being reasonable when he says that Covid is not an excuse for inaction. There is an enormous focus on the front line and by the management of the NHS and the DHSC on preparing the winter plan, which is ambitious but also extremely stretching. There simply is not the management or political capacity to take on a major generational reform of the entire industry in the midst of this massive epidemic.
The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)
My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed and we now come to the fourth Oral Question.
Covid-19: Test Results
Lord Fowler Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Bethell (Con)
I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord—I am never embarrassed—for giving me the opportunity to say a massive thanks to those tens of thousands involved. They take a huge amount of heat from the criticism targeted at test and trace, but many of them are working through the night to hit our targets, because people often take their tests during the morning or the afternoon. A lot of them work at the weekend and during holidays, when people often want their test results. It is arduous, tough, technical work and we are enormously grateful to those concerned. On local testing, we have in place 100 local test partnerships between local authorities and the national test and trace system which are proving extremely valuable, particularly in targeting hard-to-reach communities. We are putting an enormous amount of resources into them and they are proving extremely successful.
The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)
My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed. That brings Question Time to an end.
Cancer Task Force
Lord Fowler Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Bethell (Con)
I thank the noble and learned Lord for sharing that moving testimony. The broad point that he makes is entirely right—that Covid has an impact on our healthcare system that goes way beyond those who have Covid. It has an impact on the care and outcomes of all sorts of people who need important places in the healthcare system. That is why this Government are committed to the suppression of the virus and to protecting the NHS, and it is why, on behalf of everyone, we wish both the noble and learned Lord and his grandson well.
The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)
My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed.
Covid-19: Information Sharing with Police Forces
Lord Fowler Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Bethell (Con)
I am grateful for that important question. At no point would I ever wish to cast any aspersions or slur at the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who I count as a close colleague and someone whose opinion I respect enormously. However, I was replying in response to his question about BAME communities. We are deeply involved in talking to a large number of those communities, which have traditionally been hard to reach. We are engaged with them on many levels to talk to them about how we can address the marketing challenge of getting our messages to them, how we can shape our messages so that they are fully understood, and how we can address any concerns they may have about the test and trace programme.
I can report to the noble Baroness that we have been extremely pleased by the very encouraging responses that we have had from those communities, which is why I do not think it is reasonable to assume that any particular community would be more or less suspicious of this programme than another.
The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)
My Lords, all supplementary questions have been asked, and that brings the Private Notice Question to an end.
Covid-19: Great Barrington Declaration
Lord Fowler Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Robathan (Con)
My Lords, the scientists from Oxford, Stanford and Harvard who are behind this declaration should surely be listened to as much as, for instance, the discredited Professor Ferguson or indeed SAGE. We know that NHS waiting lists are at an all-time high and that 3 million cancer screenings have been missed. We know that the average age of those dying from Covid is 82.4 years—higher than from other causes—and that a total of 313 people under the age of 60 and without comorbidities have died in English hospitals from Covid. Current policies are not working. Will the Government stop digging, get out of their hole and go back to first principles to determine the objective of their Covid policy, and then change tack to achieve that objective?
The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)
My Lords, I remind noble Lords to keep supplementary questions brief.
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I note that the 16,000 scientists supporting the Great Barrington declaration include “Dr Brian Blessed; doctor in winged flight, Z-cars and booming laughter”, “Dr Johnny Fartpants” and “Dr Johnny Bananas”. The serious point, however, is that the idea of “focused protection” is both unethical and impractical. Even if it was not, growing evidence of the impact of long Covid on the fit and young is mounting every day. On herd immunity, we currently have 8% sero-positivity, but we would need 70% for herd immunity, and it is completely improper to ask the young of Britain to suffer the risk of long Covid in order to achieve that. Winter is coming, and cold temperatures and more inside activity will raise prevalence. The great protection is simply not a conscionable option.
Lord Bethell (Con)
The noble Lord is entirely right in his analysis. The briefings from the Vaccine Taskforce to the Prime Minister are encouraging. One of the striking things about the updates is not only the promising nature of the Oxford vaccine, which is progressing very well, but the substantial pipeline of a dozen or more other vaccines that are coming through. Six of those have already been contracted by the Vaccine Taskforce on four different vaccine platforms. I am afraid that I cannot provide a firm schedule as such things are not in the gift of Ministers, but I am informed that progress is substantial.
The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)
I call the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, who I forgot to call before.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab) [V]
My Lords, is the Minister aware that this so-called declaration is principally the work of the American Institute for Economic Research, a libertarian think tank funded by the Koch foundation and best known for its denial of climate change? As the Minister said in an earlier answer, a large number of the signatories are completely bogus. Does he agree that we should have nothing to do with fake science, which provides cover for a cull of the elderly and the disabled under the guise of herd immunity and promotes an American far-right agenda?
Lord Bethell (Con)
The noble Lord is entirely right: the impact on the economy of a full national lockdown has been learned already. We know what that looks like. It is a very tough decision and it is my hope and expectation that the British public and the health system will respond to the challenge they face and will step up. I would like to guide the noble and gallant Lord to the publication by the Government Actuary’s Department, the Office for National Statistics and the Department for Health and Social Care Direct and Indirect Impacts of COVID-19 on Excess Deaths and Morbidity. It spells out in very clear terms the economic and mortality effects of letting the disease rip. Those costs are simply unconscionable.
Food Hygiene Rating Displays
Lord Fowler Excerpts(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Bethell (Con)
Well, the noble Baroness makes a strong case. I think a lot of consumers would like to see the kind of rating that she describes. I am not sure whether it is rightly the responsibility of food inspectors to provide that complex service, but we are working very closely with the hospitality sector on both tracing and the implementation of Covid-friendly measures. The response from the sector has been extremely strong, but we are maintaining a close analysis of progress.
The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)
My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed. We now come to the fourth Oral Question.