NHS Staff: Food Banks
Lord Hain Excerpts(1 year, 9 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Markham) (Con)
I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Hain, that we are working to support the welfare of NHS staff. We continue to support all NHS staff during these challenging times; individual employers across the NHS are best placed to prioritise support for their staff. Information on food banks set up by NHS trusts is not held centrally, but from March 2023 the Family Resources Survey will track food bank usage.
Lord Hain (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer, but it was not really an answer. An NHS Providers survey last autumn found that 27% of trusts had food banks for staff and 19% were planning to have them. That is nearly half the trusts in England. At least one trust was providing food vouchers as staff were going without meals, and the cost of living has severely worsened since then. Are the Government not utterly ashamed? Why do Ministers not start paying nurses, ambulance workers and other staff properly, instead of forcing them to go on strike for better wages to feed themselves properly?
Lord Markham (Con)
I thank the noble Lord. The lowest paid, who are obviously most at risk in this category, we have sought to protect the most. They received a 9.3% pay increase. In all these circumstances, we have been looking to follow the guidance from the independent bodies, which we will continue to do.
Diabetic Prevention Programme
Lord Hain Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Kamall (Con)
I am not entirely sure that I can give the noble Lord what he asks for, but I suggest that he asks me a Question about progress in six months’ time. Given that the noble Lord asked this Question, I will go back to the department and see what answers we can give.
Lord Hain (Lab)
My Lords, is there any link between patients with diabetes and other ailments and the drop-out rate? Can the Minister give any evidence for that?
Lord Kamall (Con)
I apologise, I did not hear what the link was: between diabetes and what, sorry?
Lord Kamall (Con)
I am not entirely sure of the answer to that. I will check and write to the noble Lord.
Covid-19 Update
Lord Hain Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Bethell (Con)
The noble Lord will remember that, when we spoke about masks the day before yesterday, I re-emphasised my personal commitment to wearing masks. In no way do I want to leave noble Lords with the impression that I do not think that masks can play a role—I just do not think that we should be guilty of displacement and assume that masks will somehow solve all of our problems. The thing that will solve all our problems is the vaccine, and, when a larger proportion of the country is vaccinated, that will make an impact. But the noble Lord is entirely right: aerosols do hang in the air for a long time. You can breathe and cough into the air now, and someone can walk into that cloud minutes or even an hour later and catch the disease, as happened in the famous incident in Australia. We are very conscious of the point that the noble Lord makes, but a proportionate strategy on masks is reasonable.
Lord Hain (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I accept of course that the choices for Ministers such as the noble Lord are very difficult, but, with just half the population fully vaccinated, experts say that the 100,000 daily Covid cases predicted by the Secretary of State after he lifts restrictions could mean around 200 deaths daily. Is that an acceptable price to pay for living with the virus, when Professor Anthony Costello predicts a rampant third wave?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, the Secretary of State did not predict 100,000; he accepted that it was a possibility. I do not accept that we should welcome any deaths in any way. Our hope is that, in the race against the disease, the vaccine will win, R will be brought to below one, the spread of the disease in the UK will be brought under control and any third wave—there will be one of some kind—will be focused on the unvaccinated young, whom the disease largely passes straight through. That is what we are planning on, but we accept that there are risks; that is why we look at the situation daily, and we will change our policies if necessary.
Covid-19: Government Handling and Preparedness
Lord Hain Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I am not sure whether I have the data that the noble Baroness has asked for. I also contest the premise of her question. We have moved extremely quickly when presented with clear data, as my noble friend rightly pointed out, and I hardly need go over the timelines for the decisions around Pakistan, Bangladesh and India, which have been gone over many times indeed. I reassure the noble Baroness that we are absolutely determined, at this delicate phase of the pandemic, to ensure that our borders are extremely tough and that we do whatever we can to keep the variants out. At the same time, we are cognisant that people do have commitments overseas and we are leaning, wherever we possibly can, to opening up the borders.
Lord Hain (Lab) [V]
My Lords, does the Minister recall the independent review by Dame Deirdre Hine, presented to the coalition Government in 2011, which said:
“The planning for a pandemic was well developed, the personnel involved were fully prepared, the scientific advice provided was expert, communication was excellent”?
She reported on the exceptional level of preparedness the UK had attained. Why, by 2020, had all that careful preparation by our Labour Government been so catastrophically eroded, despite the fact that the pandemic remained top of HMG’s risk register?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I am not sure that any Government, even the Labour Government in the noble Lord’s time, could claim to have some kind of forecasting ability that could possibly have predicted the precise shape and impact of this pandemic. Even now there are things about this virus that we do not know. At the beginning, in January, February and March, the precise features of this virus were not fully understood, and it was not possible to prepare for this particular pandemic in its precise shape and nature. To pretend otherwise is doing this House a disservice.
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Self-Isolation) (England) Regulations 2020
Lord Hain Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Hain (Lab) [V]
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lady Finlay of Llandaff and to agree with the thrust of her remarks.
Can the Minister respond to the interview given to last Sunday’s Observer by Graham Medley, a member of SAGE, the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, and chair of its sub-committee on modelling? He argued that a massive expansion of testing will still leave Britain struggling to keep Covid-19 infections under control unless the system can inform people within 24 hours that they are positive. Ministers are fond of quoting rising figures on numbers tested, but surely returning test results within 24 hours is as critical as capacity in a successful test and trace system. Graham Medley said that, if necessary, capacity should be curbed in favour of speed.
The latest figures show significant delays in the test and trace system. In the first week of October, just 33% of tests conducted at regional test sites were returned within 24 hours. The figures were 24% for local walk-in sites and 42% for mobile testing sites. The number of home-testing kits received within 48 hours was a measly16%. Graham Medley told the Observer:
“The length of time it takes to get the test result is critical for the contact-tracing. And so there has to be a potential compromise between the volume of testing done and the ability to return the result, ideally within 24 hours … Suppose you could treble the number of tests you did, but only at the expense of returning them in a longer period of time, then that’s not really going to work. The volume is important, but only if it can be done promptly.”
Surely the system is still a shambles. Almost 250,000 contacts of people who tested positive in England had not been reached by tracers since the end of May. And that has still not improved very much.
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Local COVID-19 Alert Level) (Very High) (England) Regulations 2020
Lord Hain Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Hain (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I agree with what my noble friend Lady Thornton said, as these regulations need to be seen in the context of a failed and still failing government policy. There is still no coherent government strategy. “Where is the plan?”, the Labour leader Keir Starmer rightly asked. The introduction of a mass-testing programme, checking everybody for the virus on a regular basis, would be one way to endure the crisis while minimising the damage to the economy and the risk to life, but there is still absolutely no sign of such a programme. When people are tested they have to wait ages to get their results, often making the tests out of date. In September, nine in 10 care home tests in England got back late.
The Government are pinning all their hopes on a vaccine but cannot say when there will be one. Nobody can; the answer cannot just be locking down continually, given the large economic and social cost this involves. A recent Lancet peer-reviewed paper identified three key elements essential for bringing the virus under control; none of them is really happening. As Professor Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, has written:
“Most important is a robust system for testing, tracing and isolating, where test results are returned within 24 hours, at least 80% of people’s contacts are reached and there is high adherence to a rule of 14 days’ isolation for those exposed to the virus.”
We will otherwise be locking down, lifting and locking down continually, with massive economic and social costs. I fear that these regulations do not address that key question.
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (North East of England) Regulations 2020
Lord Hain Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Hain (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I agree in particular with my noble friend Lord Hunt about the Government’s failure to consult locally and that countries using locally rooted strategies are far more effective than those using centralised ones. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves—a friend from a past political life—made similar points. Ministers are guilty of incompetent centralism, for two central reasons. First, outsourcing to Serco, Deloitte and Boots testing and tracing tasks that they have never undertaken before has not worked. It was an astonishing thing to do when there are ready-made primary health and care systems in place, with one of the most respected local GP networks anywhere in the world. We could have utilised this network and resourced it better, rather than cutting it, as has happened remorselessly over the last 10 years. We could have poured into it all the money that has been given to Deloitte, Serco, Boots and other agencies. They have failed for six months and are still failing in the second wave.
The second major mistake has been imposing decisions on local councils and mayors. In recent days, we have seen an explosion of protest from Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester. We have seen similar sentiments from Steve Rotheram, Metro Mayor of Liverpool City Region. Other leaders of English regions, including some Conservatives, have expressed similar protests that Westminster keeps varying the rules by Whitehall diktat, and that they learn what the Government intend to do, not through Ministers consulting them—the people on the ground who know their areas and communities and what is happening—but from the newspapers.
The other day, the leader of Gateshead Council complained on the BBC that the rules are just dumped on them. He pointed out that in Newcastle and Gateshead, although cases in student populations have soared, Covid cases elsewhere in those communities have actually been falling, so it makes no sense to lock them all down, at great cost, especially to local hospitality businesses and jobs. Manchester City Council’s leader, Sir Richard Leese, told the BBC this morning that it had a much more granular system of local intelligence and information than Whitehall could possibly have, and so were better placed to judge what to do and how to do it. Importantly—I hope that the Minister might respond to this—he also wanted more local powers to enable these to be deployed selectively, for example to close a particular pub if it was transgressing the rules or being responsible for a crowding experience that might spread the virus, not the whole lot in a blanket approach
Precisely what has this incompetent centralism achieved? It has pushed us back to where we started: lockdowns, and rising infections and hospital admissions. How many lockdowns are still to come? Are we condemned to continuous lockdowns, lifting them and then reimposing them? There is no clear strategy. The strategy must surely be to localise testing, tracing and isolating and resource them properly, rather than having these failed, centralised diktats sprayed down on local communities by Whitehall, which are having the reverse effect and condemning the country to many more months of misery.
Covid-19: Tracking
Lord Hain Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, there is no particular target where the app becomes relevant or non-relevant. Some 14 million downloads to date is a remarkable number and the app is already proving effective, with a substantial number of people having received notifications from the proximity device and who are now abiding by isolation measures. We have a massive marketing campaign that has been seen by 97% of the population and ongoing activity, particularly among hard-to-reach communities and the young, to support the downloading and use of the app.
Lord Hain (Lab) [V]
What is the point of the new Covid app if testing takes seven days to produce a result and, by the time the person is notified that they were in contact with someone infected, they are likely to be displaying symptoms already and will know for themselves?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, the point of the app is to support our tracing efforts and provide security among those who are in areas that are not socially distanced in order to alert them when they have been near someone who has recently had a test. The test results are not, as the noble Lord described, typically available after seven days. The figure is much lower and we have already found enormous support for the use of the app.
Coronavirus Act 2020: Temporary Provisions
Lord Hain Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Hain (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I agree with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Bridges said, and say what a pleasure it is to welcome my noble friend Baroness Clark of Kilwinning, with whom I worked in the Commons, especially on trade union issues, supporting postal workers. I also welcome the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham, who has been a beacon of sanity for his pro-Europeanism, and with whom I once raced wheel-to-wheel in an MPs v Lords motor race in the early 1990s at Brands Hatch.
I thank the Minister for his invariable courtesy and hard work, but I ask him these questions. Why does he think my niece living in Dorset, a young working mother of three whose husband is a firefighter, speaks for so many citizens throughout the country in expressing her outrage in these terms at last week’s shambolic announcement by the Prime Minister: “It’s a mess, he didn’t discuss the fact that no one can actually get tests, which is causing people to be off work for ages. We’ve just had an email from the kids’ school, saying it may have to close, as the tests for staff are taking too long”?
Why did the Government not accept the offer from Swiftair, an airbase company, to test everybody landing at Britain’s airports from other countries for £115 and give them the results quickly? Surely that is common sense, and it would take the enormous load off airlines facing bankruptcy and the travel industry as well.
Instead of imposing an expensive, incompetent system of testing and tracing through privatised agencies and outsourced corporates with no experience of this sort of thing, why did Ministers not rely on our excellent system of local care and primary healthcare, using GPs, for example, who often have the friends and the sort of people we would all have made contact with on their books as well as us? Why do they not use care workers and primary healthcare workers and resource them properly, instead of cutting local budgets so remorselessly? Why was the money not spent on them? Why were local councils not properly consulted? The leader of the Leeds City Council was on the radio only a few days ago, asking—pleading—to be properly consulted and properly resourced. There is a real danger that without a proper test, trace and isolation system, like Germany’s, for example—a much more efficient and cheaper one than ours—we could lurch from lockdown to lockdown at terrible cost to our economy and social fabric. I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, said in this respect.
Finally, if I am permitted a rant, I am astonished that anybody agreed to a different regime for bars in the House of Commons from the 10 pm closure for everybody else. Surely this is a Dominic Cummings case of “Do as I say not as I do”. I am thankful that that did not apply in the Lords, as our digital Lord Speaker has just confirmed in his announcement on Twitter.
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 2) (England) Regulations 2020
Lord Hain Excerpts(4 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Hain (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his hard work, but I ask him: why are pubs opening while schools remain shut? Why, after children in Wales returned safely to school a month ago, can the Government not even guarantee that that will happen in England in September? Why are theatres and concert halls unable to open when passengers can spend hours crammed together on flights? Why can you take an overnight ferry to Spain, but not a cruise around the UK? Why is England’s test and trace system contacting far fewer than 80% of the close contacts of infected people—in Luton just 47% and in locked-down Leicester under 65%? Why does Germany, a similar north European country with an even larger population, have so many fewer deaths and infections than the UK, which has one of the worst records in the world?