Contact Tracing: Personal Privacy

Lord Hain Excerpts

Thursday 11th June 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Hain]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to protect personal privacy in the trial on the Isle of Wight of the NHSX COVID-19 contact tracing application.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Bethell) (Con) [V]]

My Lords, we have prioritised privacy and security in all stages of the app’s development, working in partnership with experts across government and industry, including the Information Commissioner’s Office and the National Cyber Security Centre. Demonstrating our commitment to transparency, we have published a data protection impact assessment and a privacy notice.

[Lord Hain (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, there have been numerous failings over the Isle of Wight contact tracing app meeting its promised deadlines, alongside other serious errors in the Government’s track and trace system. Also, the NHS failed to carry out its legal data protection obligations prior to the launch and entered into data-sharing relationships on unnecessarily favourable terms to large companies. Will the Government now give full disclosure on every aspect of how its track and trace currently works, and commit to fully disclose details of any changes to that scheme, including the app, before they are rolled out?

[Lord Bethell [V]]

My Lords, we have agreed up front to an enormous amount of transparency. We have open source for the code, we have published the data protection impact assessment and the privacy notice, we have committed to publish the privacy and security models, and we have published numerous blogs setting out the approach we are taking. The approach towards the app completely embraces transparency and we will continue down that path.

Care Homes: Covid-19 Testing

Lord Hain Excerpts

Thursday 14th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell]

I am aware of that guidance. It is sensible guidance. It is necessary to free beds in our NHS hospitals to make them available to those who need them more. It is also necessary to isolate people when we are not sure whether they have Covid. These are 80uncomfortable truths and I do not deny that this will result in uncomfortable outcomes for some patients. One aspect of the disease is that it targets care homes and I make no apology for those arrangements.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

Following the question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, why in an English care home where a close relative of mine lives do staff and patients—including, astonishingly, patients discharged from hospital—still have to wait up to 21 days for the results of their Covid-19 tests?

[Lord Bethell]

The noble Lord gives powerful personal testimony. I cannot possibly argue with the details of his story, but I reassure him that the data I have is that the turnaround time for tests is, in the vast majority of cases, radically less than what he described. We are on course for hitting the target of 48 hours for a very large number of tests and 24 hours for a lot of tests.

Covid-19: Social Care Services

Lord Hain Excerpts

Thursday 23rd April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, I should declare that my wife is a board member of two care providers.

Even before this pandemic hit, social care in this country, with a bigger workforce than the NHS, was in crisis. During the past decade of austerity, more than £7.7 billion has been cut from adult social care budgets, leaving 122,000 vacancies, or 9% of care roles unfilled. Many providers struggle to remain financially viable despite their increased needs.

In 2017, the Care and Support Alliance highlighted that 29% of disabled people had seen a reduction in their package of care, leaving many without adequate personal care and preventing disabled people leaving the house or attending work. A full 25% were left without food. Covid-19 has massively accentuated this social care crisis, with funding pressures spiralling out of control—especially for charities and smaller care providers as they have been hit by rising operational costs, staff shortages and the collapse of fundraising overnight. Staffing shortages are severe. Between 10% and 25% of care staff are self-isolating, forcing more costly agency workers to be hired.

Costs of sourcing PPE are soaring, with government rhetoric to increase supply not matched by reality. Care providers report that the Clipper service is not delivering, with the Government’s four main suppliers of PPE all out of stock. Carers have had to source their own PPE, often at inflated prices. The charity Leonard Cheshire is spending an additional £250,000 a month sourcing PPE such as gloves and face masks; a south Wales care provider is spending £100,000 extra monthly. They are all struggling to find specialist PPE such as gowns and face masks due to national shortages, placing 4,700 Leonard Cheshire care staff and their 3,000 disabled residents at risk of infection.

Care homes and carer organisations are always on the edge of viability. That is immeasurably worsened because people are now reluctant to move into care homes, just as they are to visit A&E, for fear of infection. Managers are reluctant to take them in without proper testing. Every empty bed pushes a care home closer to financial collapse. NHS beds become clogged up and the additional £1.6 billion pledged to fund local authorities is nothing like enough to guarantee that social care can be sustained throughout the pandemic. The Government must act quickly to deliver PPE to the 1.5 million social care workers and rapidly increase access to testing. Then they must provide many billions more pounds of adequate funding to ensure quality care for all.

Instead of his shamelessly Trumpian attack on the Welsh Government yesterday, Dominic Raab should heed the latest Treasury statistics showing that public spending on social services for older people in Wales is 48% higher per head of the population than in England. Surely if the UK Government had followed the Welsh model of prioritising elderly care investment despite major austerity cuts, the truly terrible Covid-19 crisis in care homes could have been alleviated.

Covid-19: Extent of Infection

Lord Hain Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare that my wife is a board member of care providers. How on earth will the Government lift restrictions without universal testing, especially in care homes, where there is virtually no such capacity at all and not even enough personal protection equipment? The charity Leonard Cheshire Disability has been forced to spend an additional £250,000 a month sourcing PPE such as gloves and masks, and a South Wales care provider is spending £100,000 extra monthly. The Government need urgently to give billions more to care homes, instead of leaving them so badly in the lurch during this crisis,

[Lord Bethell]

I reassure the noble Lord that testing has been opened up to all care homes. I pay tribute to the CQC, which played a pivotal role in providing access to Britain’s 12,000 care homes in this regard. Mass testing is an option that we are looking at, but I remind the noble Lord that South Korea, where there is an extremely energetic track-and-trace facility, carries out on average 20,000 tests across the country—fewer than we do in Britain on an average day.

Coronavirus Bill

Lord Hain Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 24th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bates. We all owe a massive debt to the brave and skilled workers who are battling this crisis, including a close relative of mine on the NHS front line who is trying to keep her patients, as well as her husband and three small children, safe. Care workers who are without proper personal protective equipment are looking after another close relative who is in her 90s and in a care home under lockdown.

I thank my noble friend Lady Thornton for her diligent leadership, expertise and hard work, because key questions affecting this Bill remain. First, everyone in government has known for years about the probability of a pandemic at some point. Although I was never a Health Minister, as a Cabinet Minister 17 years ago I recall being alerted during the SARS outbreak. My noble and learned friend Lord Falconer might remember that too. Given that, why was it only last week that the Health Secretary appealed for companies to help produce many more ventilators? Why was this not done much earlier, especially after Chinese scientists gave deadly warnings about the pandemic? Why were plans not put in place for proper testing, especially for front-line NHS staff and care workers? Why were no preparations made to ensure the supply of sufficient personal protection equipment for doctors, nurses and carers?

Secondly, there have been mixed messages. For instance, the Prime Minister suggested that he would be seeing his mother on Mother’s Day, but that was later hastily corrected by No. 10. The contrast with the sober authority of Wales’s First Minister, Mark Drakeford, Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon and the Mayor for London, Sadiq Khan, has been striking.

Thirdly, although I congratulate the Chancellor on acting quickly, providing hundreds of billions of pounds in extra and vital funding to protect employees and businesses—although the self-employed still remain to be protected—and surely with even more to come, the Government must promptly make much more funding available to local councils and voluntary groups because they too are on the front line. However, they have suffered budget cuts of around a third over the past 10 years.

In his novel, The Corridors of Power, C.P. Snow wrote that,

“political memory lasts about a fortnight.”

A fortnight since the Budget, its contents have been eclipsed by the Chancellor’s subsequent coronavirus announcements. He is rightly injecting hundreds of billions of pounds of Keynesian stimulus into an economy that is facing certain recession and perhaps even depression. The scale bears comparison with our Labour Government’s response to the 2008 global banking crisis—a response lambasted by Conservatives ever since. The Chancellor has rightly abandoned all the Tory borrowing rules and spending ceilings because the urgent action needed to stave off disaster requires intervention on a scale that only government can provide. The Chancellor was right to turn away from 10 years of Tory austerity and to throw the power of the state at the most acute crisis we have faced since World War Two.

However, that previous Tory insistence on non-intervention and shrinking the public sector has left us battling the coronavirus with an NHS in England that is short of 10,000 doctors, 40,000 nurses and 110,000 adult social care workers. It did not have to be like this. The Government have been able to borrow at record low interest rates for years and there was no need to wait until catastrophe stared us in the face before discarding the financial straitjacket. Why start spending and investing only in a terrible crisis like this? Despite gargantuan levels of national debt and borrowing to defeat Hitler, Keynesian policies after World War Two—led by both Conservative and Labour Governments—rebuilt this country through huge public investment and spending, generating healthy growth and a buoyant private sector. When the coronavirus outbreak is over, let us not repeat the mistake made after the financial crisis in 2010 of reverting in knee-jerk style to austerity and starving public services of support in a futile attempt to balance the budget, with only feeble growth accompanying it.

After the 1956 Suez debacle, Tory Minister Anthony Nutting wrote: “It has taught us no end of a lesson. It will do us no end of good.” The Conservative Party did not thank him for saying so. Today, after 10 years of avoidable austerity, this coronavirus crisis has reminded everyone what Keynes taught us about the vital role for an active, investing state in a modern enterprising economy.

Covid-19 Update

Lord Hain Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell]

My noble friend is entirely right to ask about the exact guidance. I will be clear: everyone in the country is being asked to cut out non-essential social intercourse and to work from home where possible. In the case of over-70s, that is particularly true. If you are over 70, the guidance is very clear: you should take great care of yourself because you are in a very difficult position. Those who have underlying conditions, whether they are over 70 or not, must take particular care of themselves.

As the CMO explained very clearly earlier today, the advice is moving towards those people distancing themselves or even shielding themselves completely from social intercourse. My noble friend Lord Lamont is entirely right that that comes at an enormous cost. Isolation and loneliness will be extremely difficult challenges for those involved. There is a massive mental health issue on the horizon. As a community and as a country, we are going to have to figure out how we come together to provide support for those who have made the entirely right and responsible decision to stay away from society.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, can I press the Minister on the question of financial support? In 2013, a parliamentary report stated that taxpayer outlays direct to the banks were £133 billion. People were not told then not to fly or not to go to restaurants, theatres or any kind of hospitality outlets. Now, we hear from the Chancellor that there will be £12 billion: £7 billion support for businesses and £5 billion for the NHS. This is nothing like the scale of financial support that is needed from Governments, either globally or particularly in Britain, to meet the challenge that he has described so eloquently.

[Lord Bethell]

The Government are under no illusions about the size of the challenge. The package announced in the Budget was an initial commitment. Whatever funds are needed will be made available, in particular to support the NHS and our social care but also to support hard-working businesses and those that provide employment and sustenance to the country.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Hain Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, I too congratulate my noble friend Lady Blower on an excellent speech and look forward to her regular critiques of this Government’s dreadful schools funding record.

In the election, I campaigned for candidates in Cardiff, Newport and Gower in south Wales, and in Battersea and Putney in south London. There was a clean sweep for Labour in each but a truly terrible result across the entire country, our loss of 59 MPs leaving a mountain of seats to win and form a Government again. But Labour’s fundamental values remain, in my view, by far the best ones for the country, including ending the economic idiocy of 10 years of grinding, completely unnecessary and massively damaging austerity.

Some of us, including the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, made the case for ending austerity years ago. We did so in 2013 when George Osborne was squeezing the UK economy tighter than any in the advanced western world, and in 2015 when he was preparing to increase the Tory cuts in national spending from the £140 billion, which he and his successor Philip Hammond actually undertook, to the £200 billion by 2020 that Osborne planned in his last Budget, and which David Cameron endorsed in his memoir. In his September 2019 spending review, the new Chancellor pledged to raise public spending next year by nearly £14 billion. This is a miserly, derisory 10% of the total cut in national spending due to public spending cuts and tax rises since the Tories took office in 2010. Frankly, it is insulting to pretend that we are witnessing the end of austerity.

Moreover, 80% of the Government’s 10-year austerity programme has been in public spending cuts. Yet Downing Street is already briefing that the highlight of the new Chancellor’s budget will be tax cuts. With the NHS stretched to breaking point, with social care criminally underfunded—as my noble friend Lord Hunt pointed out—with millions desperate for housing, with volunteers overwhelmed by demand at food banks, with Britain’s skills, productivity and infrastructure poor, with schools reducing teaching days during the week to keep going, with all of these spiralling problems crying out for public investment and spending, it says everything that needs to be said about Boris Johnson’s priorities in the Queen’s Speech by going for tax cuts.

Labour has pressed consistently over the last five years for faster, fairer and greener growth, for a big boost to public investment in infrastructure, skills and green initiatives to stimulate Britain’s slowing economy, so that national output once again expands at the 3% annual rate it grew at during the last Labour decade before the global financial crisis. We are the ones who insisted that the squeeze on public services had gone too far and that current spending on staff numbers and facilities needed urgently to be raised, if Britain’s social safety net and the basic features of a civilised society were to be restored. We accepted that paying for better public services would mean higher taxes for some. I made the case for reforming national insurance by scrapping the upper earnings limit and introducing a financial transactions tax, to make the tax system fairer and lift the burden of paying for public services off the low paid.

The Queen’s Speech says that the Government’s top priority is to take Britain out of the EU at the end of January. Actually, we will still be in the EU until at least the end of the year—but no matter. Boris Johnson has never been one for sticking to the facts. Plenty of hard bargaining lies ahead before Britain’s future trading relationship with the EU is settled. There will be a big price to be paid for frictionless trade with a club of which we are no longer a member. No one expects the EU to stand idly by while the Prime Minister pursues his vision of a post-Brexit Britain: a low-tax, lightly regulated Singapore-upon-Thames haven on the EU’s doorstep, intent on winning a race to the bottom. Boris Johnson did not get his EU withdrawal agreement by suddenly becoming a shrewder poker player than Michel Barnier. He got an agreement by doing a deal and giving ground that he swore he would never concede, notably and shamefully on Northern Ireland. I expect him either to do more of the same by the end of this year or to end up with the hardest of hard-right Brexits, or no deal—both utterly disastrous.

Healthcare (International Arrangements) Bill

Lord Hain Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 21st February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, in following the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, I strongly support Amendment 42 and the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys. She made the very important point that the Welsh Government have not given their legislative consent. I know that there is considerable concern in the Welsh Government, and I say that as a former Secretary of State for Wales.

By the way, I welcome the Minister to her place as a refugee from the House of Commons—as I am, except that I was not defeated.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Hain]

I resigned. However, she is very welcome and I wish her all the best.

What worries me about this—and I hope that the Minister can give us concrete assurances—is that, on the Brexit agenda, it seems to be in the DNA of Whitehall not to have regard for the devolved Governments. The only reference I can find in the Bill to the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Ireland devolved legislative bodies comes right at the end, when it says that it applies to them. At the very least it is essential that a requirement to seek legislative consent and to consult is written into the Bill, because of course health policy is devolved to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The Government have form on this issue in the way that they approached the Brexit legislation earlier in the process. As your Lordships will recall, there was a crisis and a real confrontation with the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Government—and there might well have been with the Northern Ireland Assembly if it had been up and running. It must be in the DNA of Whitehall, because it has simply done it again. That really worries me. I hope the Minister can give reassurances which mean that we do not have to vote at Report on something very similar to these amendments. If a major concession is not made, we will need to do that and seek to defeat the Government.

I endorse what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, and the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys, said. I ask the Minister to give very specific assurances, spelling out that, if she does amend the Bill—and I hope she will assure us that she will—she will do so only having agreed those amendments in precise terms with the Welsh Government and the Scottish Parliament, and having consulted officials in the Northern Ireland departments.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

My Lords, it may be useful if I reassure the Committee in response to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Hain. There was extensive engagement with the devolved Administrations in advance of the Bill, not just by officials but by me as a Minister. I spoke to my counterparts in Scotland and Wales, although of course it was not appropriate to do it in quite that way in Northern Ireland, for obvious reasons—there not being an Executive. That happened before, and subsequent to, the publication of the Bill, so this has been going on for several months. It is one reason why we were very pleased to get the legislative consent Motion in advance from the Scottish Government. Clearly, everyone had recognised the benefits that flow from this for the inhabitants of all parts of the United Kingdom.

It is useful for the Committee to know that this is not an activity that has simply been undertaken as a bolt-on in response to concerns raised during the passage of the Bill; it was baked in from the beginning and it has been our intention to move in the appropriate way with no procedural or constitutional novelty of the kind that the noble Lord fears.

[Lord Hain]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Why, then, are the Welsh Health Minister and the Welsh Government still so concerned about this Bill? I am encouraged that these consultations took place, but why is there this evident concern?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The different Governments have clearly taken different approaches. The noble Lord will know that it does not automatically follow, even if you know where you all want to get to, that you can agree it overnight. I am sure that my noble friend the Minister will be able to update us.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Jolly and Lady Humphreys, for Amendments 30A and 30B, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, for speaking to Amendment 42 on behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, and for the opportunity to address this important issue of engaging and working with the devolved Administrations. As we take the Bill forward at pace, we endeavour to do so in a way that is collaborative and respects the devolution settlement and the conventions for working together.

To that effect, the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Hain, was rather disappointing in implying that the Government have anything but the highest regard for the role of the devolved Administrations in this matter. Indeed, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, described, the department has had, and continues to have, constructive discussions both at ministerial and official levels with all the devolved Administrations, on the Bill and on the underlying policy.

As your Lordships have already noted, the regulation-making powers in this Bill provide us with a legal mechanism to implement international agreements into domestic law for the benefit of UK nationals; this is a UK competence, but we recognise that in some parts of the Bill, powers may be used in ways which relate to devolved matters; namely, the domestic healthcare elements. With that in mind, as my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy has said, we are delighted that the Scottish Parliament has granted the legislative consent Motion to the Bill. We have had positive and constructive engagement with colleagues in Northern Ireland’s Department of Health and in the Northern Ireland Office, and we are grateful for their support and their agreement to ensure that the Bill applies and extends to Northern Ireland.

We are working very closely with colleagues in the Welsh Government to secure their support for a legislative consent Motion, and to that end, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, will I hope be pleased to hear, we will be introducing a government amendment on Report which places a statutory duty to consult with the devolved Administrations, where regulations under Clause 2 would make provision that would be within the legislative competence of the devolved Administrations.

Furthermore, I confirm that we have now agreed a memorandum of understanding with the Welsh Government to accompany the amendment. This MoU sets out how we intend to work with each other, and how the UK Government intend to work with all the devolved Administrations in respect of this policy area. In response, we expect the Welsh Government to lodge and support a consent Motion in the Welsh Assembly very shortly.

We have also been working to secure the support of colleagues in both Northern Ireland and Scotland to the terms of that memorandum of understanding. We hope that colleagues in both of those Administrations will agree to the measures provided for in the MoU, following some very recent final discussions and changes with the Welsh Government. The MoU sets out a pragmatic and mutually beneficial working relationship to ensure that the devolved Administrations will continue to have a vital role to play in delivering reciprocal healthcare for the benefit of all UK citizens. In addition, it will enable devolved Ministers to set out their views at an early stage of reciprocal healthcare policy formation. Where they relate to devolved matters, we will share the draft regulations we intend to make under Clause 2 with the devolved Administrations before they are laid.

This agreement is both pragmatic and practical, allowing us to move forward in a collaborative way. I thank my colleague, Stephen Hammond, the Minister of State, who has taken the lead on this engagement, and acknowledge the positive relationships that he has sought to build with his counterparts in the devolved Administrations. He has been speaking to them this very week. We consider that amendments to the Scotland Act 1998, the Government of Wales Act 2006 and the Northern Ireland Act 1998 would be outside the scope of regulations made under this Bill, and it would therefore be unnecessary to place a consent requirement in the Bill in this regard, but the UK Government are committed to working closely with the devolved Administrations, now and in the future, to deliver an approach that works for the whole of the United Kingdom.

I hope that now that I have reported these positive developments, the noble Baroness will be moved to withdraw her amendment—

[Lord Hain]

I am grateful to the Minister, and reassured by what she has said. Perhaps I will withdraw the tone of some of my earlier remarks, which were made without knowing what she was going to say.

I ask the Minister to bear in mind, in terms of advice to Whitehall officials working on Brexit legislation of this kind, that it is not an accident that these extra consultative arrangements she is now describing were not in the original Bill. This has been true all the way through the Brexit process, and I am afraid that when I said that it seems to be in the DNA of Whitehall, it is as though the default position is that these consultative rights are not put on the statute book. I ask the Minister to use what influence she has with the rest of the ministerial team to say that this must not happen again, in any other legislation.

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

Part of the reason that this amendment has come at this stage is because it has been part of a negotiation, and we wanted to have agreement with the devolved Administrations to ensure that it was in a manner which suited them. That is why it has been part of the process: because it was in agreement and in consultation, rather than us putting it in at the beginning and then consulting afterwards. I hope that as the result of that discussion and agreement, I have reassured—

Personal Social Care: Funding

Lord Hain Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

What I said was that we need a sustainable system, and that will be the goal of the Green Paper.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, am I the only Member of your Lordships’ House who is not just frustrated but deeply angry that the Government, with all their warm words, consultations, Green Papers and the rest, will not grasp the nettle and recognise that we have to pay for proper elderly care? That will require taxation and taxpayers’ money to be invested in providing respite and a decent future for people who are living in miserable conditions with families stressed beyond belief. The Government ought to get on with it.

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

I agree with the noble Lord that we need to get on with it and to decide what is the fair burden of “who pays?”. I remind the noble Lord that for many years he served a Government who had umpteen reviews, Green Papers and royal commissions, and did not act. We are trying to grasp the nettle that his Government avoided.

UK Ebola Preparedness

Lord Hain Excerpts

Monday 5th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I am happy to pass on my thanks to the staff of the Royal Cornwall—in fact, I spoke to someone from that hospital this morning and I know that they are very focused on this issue, as are all NHS hospitals. We have introduced information at all ports and, where necessary, screening. My hon. Friend makes an important point—it is never actually possible to put every single person through a screening process. We are one of the most open economies in the world and people constantly come in and out of the UK. We depend on public knowledge, so that people who have been to the affected areas know to present themselves to get immediate assistance if they develop any feverish symptoms.

[Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)]

Has the Secretary of State had the chance to consult the British Medical Journal editorial of 13 October, which insisted—more than two months ago—that the Government’s airport screening policy for Ebola was illogical? I spoke to the author yesterday and he argues that we have missed the one case to have been imported while thousands, many at low risk, have been delayed, detained and made to fill in a form just because they have been to west Africa. Experts such as the author insist that what the Government should have been doing is ensuring that all those at risk, especially health workers such as Pauline, know exactly what to do if they start to feel unwell. Might it be sensible to keep health workers away from direct patient contact for 21 days after they return?

[Mr Hunt]

Perhaps I can reassure the right hon. Gentleman on that point. Health care workers are kept away from direct patient work for that incubation period, so that protocol has been put in place. The BMJ article to which he refers is based, I think, on the misunderstanding that screening is the same as testing. The reality is that the tests for Ebola show up only when the virus has reached a certain level, at which point the patient will have become feverish and started displaying symptoms, so testing before that point is a waste of time. The purpose of the screening process is to identify those at highest risk so that we can make sure that they are actively monitored when they go home and that they know exactly what to do if they do develop symptoms. That is exactly what happened with Pauline Cafferkey.