Integration White Paper

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, in the almost five years that I have been doing this job, we have been waiting for a social care White Paper. My noble friend Lady Wheeler, month after month, asked where it might be and was told that it would be in the summer, the spring or the following winter, and it did not arrive. Indeed, in desperation, the House’s Select Committee, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, brought forward its own proposals for the future of social care, and extremely good they are, too. But here we are—the Government are now spoiling us with a third White Paper in a year. However, this one is a disappointment, I have to say, given the importance right now of the future for social care. Given the Government’s commitment to fixing social care, it is even more of a disappointment. We know that integration of health and social care, however it is defined, is extremely difficult, but I fear that its integration will not be delivered by this White Paper. It is long on description and has really great examples and aspirations, but it is very short on actual solutions and action.

Before I ask the Minister some questions that we need to address, I should also say that what is very disappointing in the White Paper is the lack of attention it gives to carers. They are not mentioned very often, even though the NHS and social care depend heavily on unpaid carers supporting people with long-term conditions and disabilities in the community. Some 1.4 million people in the UK provide more than 50 hours a week of unpaid care, and while unpaid carers provide the bulk of care, they are still not systematically identified, supported or included throughout the NHS. We have one system, social care, that recognises carers legally as an equal partner, while the other, the NHS, does not. That has been discussed in your Lordships’ House very recently, in the passage of the Bill before us, and is still not resolved. If there is going to be an integration of health and social care, one of the first things that needs to happen is the integration and legal recognition of the role of carers and our duty to support them and their well-being.

Moving on, it is not clear how this White Paper fits with the Bill before us. Even the experts involved repeatedly trip over the crucial issues, such as the relationship and responsibilities of integrated care boards, integrated care partnerships and integrated care systems, as well as the new joint committees and how they will work with the statutory health and well-being boards, which as we know have no commissioning powers, as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has said on at least one occasion. What is the role of health and well-being boards? If they are necessary, why are they not integrated into the system being proposed in the Bill before us? Now that we have a new Joint Committee, my first major question is, how will it work with the health and well-being boards, and with the ICBs and ICPs? Where will the clinical leadership sit, and where is the accountability to local people?

It is not clear how this latest offer fits with the proposals before us today. I suggest to the Minister that this is not really a plan. It is a description, an aspiration, but it is not a plan. It does not tell us which bit is responsible for what. If the new individual proposed in this White Paper is to take responsibility for shared outcomes, who will appoint them? How will they get there? Will NHS England, which is appointing the ICB chair and chief executive, be accountable to this new super-leader? Will they be inspected by the CQC? What if a huge local foundation trust misbehaves? What powers will the new leader have to act? That is why it is not a plan.

The second reason this is not a plan is that it has no workforce component—an issue that we are very seriously concerned with in the Bill before the House now. There is no workforce strategy or a commitment to one. If we want integration, it has to be a workforce strategy that covers health and social care, and it has to be long term.

The aspirations and vision are fine, but we have signed up to strategies before—for example, the NHS plan in the noughties; we thought that would be good. I regret that it almost feels as if this document has been put together as part of finding lots of new things to say to detract from the issues facing the Prime Minister and No. 10, which is a huge missed opportunity.

So, the issues the Minister needs to address include the workforce and the question of how you integrate and pool two systems which operate in different ways. One is means tested, and the other is not. One has national criteria for entitlement, and the other does not. The ways they are governed and funded are totally different, and they are kept going by two separate workforces with no aligned terms and conditions.

The White Paper talks about local initiatives and building things locally, but unless the infrastructure is there to produce the alignment needed, those local initiatives—many of which are very successful—will not be the pattern for how this works. So, I leave the Minister with a series of questions I hope he might be able to address.

The White Paper also does not help children and young people. It does not address the challenge of how to care for and support working-age adults with a disability. As I have said, it does not value or assist the informal workforce or carers. For an NHS under enormous pressure after years of austerity funding and then the impact of Covid, this is a disappointment. I am afraid that I could not decide whether it should get a C or a D.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Haskel) (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is taking part remotely. I invite the noble Baroness to speak.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice president of the Local Government Association. Both the Statement and the White Paper set out a laudable ambition to integrate health and social care and communities, but I am afraid that we echo the disappointment of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, especially at the glaring omission of children, young people and disabled people who need care.

While reading the White Paper, I had a sense of déjà vu, and I dug out my copy of the White Paper Integration and Innovation: Working Together to Improve Health and Social Care for All, which was published on 11 February last year—almost exactly one year ago. The tone and the ambition were remarkably similar. All noble Lords know that the Health and Care Bill we are debating at the moment sets out in part how the Government believe that the White Paper from last year is going to be turned into legislation and changes in practice. The Minister knows the real concerns across the House about that practical implementation, and I do not believe that this new White Paper takes matters further forward.

From these Benches we also ask: where are carers? There is zero mention of carers in the Statement but 13 in the White Paper, two in the index and two as part of headings. The remaining nine in the text relate only to the people carers care for. There is no formal recognition of the role and no mention of support directly for them as carers. It says:

“People will move seamlessly between health and care settings because people and those supporting their health and care, including … unpaid carers, will be able to see and contribute to their care record and care plans.”


Is that the best on offer for carers—that they will actually be able to see the care plans? They can usually see them now, although most, I must confess, are still in paper format.

That was one example; I want to go on now to a couple of other issues. Much of the paper talks about how data will transform care in the future. On page 14 it says:

“A core level of digital capability everywhere will be critical to delivering integrated health and care and enabling transformed models of care.”


Can the Minister say—because the White Paper is absolutely silent on this—whether there will be funding for fast broadband across the country, especially in rural areas, to deliver that capacity to every single home? Without it, this entire system will fail before it even starts.

The White Paper also says that

“the data and information required to support them should be available in one place, enabling safe and proactive decision-making … We will aim to have shared care records for all citizens by 2024 that provide a single, functional health and care record which citizens, caregivers and care teams can all safely access.”

Can the Minister say how citizens’ data will be protected so that only those who need access to it will see it? As the Minister knows, this is another area where there is real concern over the Bill.

The paper talks extensively about leaders but in a generic way. There are muddles over NHS leaders, social care leaders and leaders of ICBs. Is it referring to council leaders or just leaders? I have to say that the organogram on page 37 makes the classic assumption of councils being single-tier metropolitan authorities, ignoring the plethora of two-tier council arrangements as well as other key stakeholders such as housing associations. It talks about

“3-5 local authorities within an Integrated Care System”.

Even at upper-tier authorities, that number is way too small with the shadow boards at the moment, and dwarfed when you add in district councils, which have key roles in delivering support for care. Unless this is hiding a proposal from the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, this is another massive reorganisation for local government.

Housing is vital to the aims of the Bill. The paper says:

“People’s homes should allow effective care and support to be delivered regardless of their age, condition or health status.”


But housing is not mentioned in the “Next Steps” section. I ask the Minister whether there will be specific funding to ensure that housing can be improved at a local level for people who will need it for the next stages of their lives.

The Statement and White Paper recognise the importance of the workforce—in theory. The section in the White Paper talks about continuous development and joint roles, some of which is very laudable, but what is actually happening in the Health and Care Bill at the moment, where the Government will not commit to proper planning for the workforce, makes this unattainable too.

Above all, from our Benches, we want to know where the resources are that will enable this transformation to take place. Even before this week’s announcement about the patient backlog, the levy for health and social care was already prioritised for the NHS. Every time we have asked the Minister when the social care sector will get the resources it so desperately needs—and what they will be—we are told that it will happen at some point in the future.

We need to know when social care and councils will get the support they need, particularly councils with extra responsibilities in this White Paper and the Bill. The LGA has said, correctly:

“Adult social care is in a fragile position, with councils struggling to balance their budgets … A long-term funding solution is urgently needed.”


Can the Minister tell the House what, where and when resources from both departments will be announced and made available to at least give this White Paper half a chance to get going?

Social Care: Family Carers

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

Yes, I would endorse that sentiment. That has been one of the learnings of the pandemic. It is instinctively true in any case, and the evidence base during the pandemic was quite right. They are interlinked; that is one of the reasons we are bringing forward a Health and Social Care Bill that brings both services much closer together and brings a responsibility on the ICSs to combine health and social care at the same time. Our population-wide measures will try to bring those care responsibilities much closer together, as the noble Lord suggested.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Haskel) (Lab)]

My Lords, we will now have a virtual contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, the Disabled Children’s Partnership reports that parents of disabled children say that two-thirds were not able to access care at home during the pandemic. In the two years prior to the pandemic, large numbers of respite care beds for disabled children had already been shut down. Given that none of the new social care levy is targeted towards disabled children and young people, can the Minister say whether urgent funding will be provided for this vulnerable and too-often forgotten group, where unpaid carers are often on duty 24/7?

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[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I recognise the challenge referred to by the noble Baroness. Some 2.9 million carers are employed; that is more than half of all carers. One can only imagine the pressure that they feel trying to juggle their roles as carers and employees. The consultation has been tied up by the pandemic, but we are keen to get a response out soon. Now that we have announced this package, it makes that all the easier. I very much look forward to bringing the response to the House.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Haskel) (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Bhatia, was not present in the Chamber so all supplementary Questions have been asked. We will now move on to the next Question.

Coronavirus Act 2020 (Early Expiry) Regulations 2021

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Monday 5th July 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, implied, no issue is more important to the process of the easing of restrictions nor more conducive to ensuring public support than consistency in the application or expiry of regulations. In referring to Section 15 of the Coronavirus Act on local authorities, I will cite one example which is so important to the motivation behind this SI, which I support. Without consistency in interpreting the rules and guidance relating to the road map out of lockdown, we are in danger of creating a public backlash.

The approach taken by Bath and North East Somerset Council makes little sense in the context of holding graduation ceremonies at the University of Bath—ceremonies which generate so much revenue and create numerous service and supply jobs in the town; and which, with appropriate controls confirmed only last Thursday, led the university authorities to announce that they could deliver safe, socially distanced experiences in line with all the restrictions currently in place. On Friday, with only a few weeks’ notice, they were arbitrarily cancelled with nothing in their place. This last-minute decision, apparently to stop people coming to Bath, leaves many students and families who have already booked non-refundable accommodation stranded. Some are already quarantined in town.

The recent decision by the director of public health of Bath and North East Somerset Council—made despite the UK government guidance allowing for distanced graduation ceremonies, which have been safely carried out by Cambridge and other universities across the UK—makes no sense.

I have a son who is graduating this year from that university, but his experience pales into insignificance when considered alongside that of Wasif Anam, who on Saturday wrote, when adding his name to a petition presented to the university and the council:

“I came here all the way from Bangladesh along with my parents only for this reason. They have had to go through so much trouble with all the paperwork and all and we’ve had to spend over £3000 just on hotel quarantine. It’s a once in a lifetime occasion for all the graduates. They can’t just postpone it like that 3 weeks before the event. Should’ve at least informed us 2 months ago if they were planning to take such a big decision.”


Other students wrote:

“The graduation would be carried out within the strictest of Covid guidelines. I feel if this event cannot go ahead then the council must consider that tourism is a risk therefore need to close all tourist attractions in the city to make this decision fair and equal.”


Inevitably, the mental health of students has been kicked down the road for too long this past year. They have been asked to make sacrifices for the vulnerable and elderly in society, which they have done with remarkable understanding, particularly since they are the least likely to suffer from Covid. Many have been asymptomatic yet have correctly isolated during 18 months in which their university experience has been decimated by Covid. Many are emerging into one of the toughest employment markets on record, with exams and interviews on Zoom, overseas study years cancelled, and undergraduate sporting and social events deleted from their experience and exchanged for the scant comfort and isolation of their digs—while the financial costs they face have remained high.

Worse, the cancellation of graduations conflicts with government guidelines. With 60,000 people in Wembley on consecutive nights this week and bars full, it is tough and unacceptable to give only three weeks’ notice to all students, particularly international students such as Wasif Anam, who bear the cost and the pain, which are neither shared with the rest of the population nor consistently applied.

Here, unusually, I ask the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, as a seasoned local government leader who is sensitive to the relationship—in his case between Sheffield City Council and the university, where significant advance notice was given to students, as well as virtual graduation ceremonies—to speak to his colleagues who control Bath and North East Somerset Council. I also ask the equally excellent and experienced politician, the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, who is respected across the House, to talk to her colleagues and ask them to think again.

I ask my noble friend the Minister to ensure that there is consistency in the easing of restrictions in the statutory instrument before us, for without consistency how can we expect public support to remain strong—especially the support of the young people of this country, including the thousands of schoolchildren who are isolating at the moment? We need to be resolute as we emerge from this crisis together—and always in step. It is right to move to personal responsibility but we must look to government and local authorities to provide leadership and consistency if we are to win public confidence.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Haskel) (Lab)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Fox.

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Motion agreed.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Haskel) (Lab)]

The Grand Committee stands adjourned until 4.55 pm. I remind Members to sanitise their desks and chairs before leaving the Room.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Steps and Local Authority Enforcement Powers) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his thorough introduction to these regulations. These amendments were necessary at the time, and therefore need approval, albeit retrospectively, as we go into step 3 of the journey. But journeys are rarely irreversible, and the road map may at some stage, at least in part, have to be reversed.

What analysis is being conducted of the effectiveness of the various regulations and restrictions so far? We cannot wait for the eventual inquiry to produce its results; we need to know now what has been effective and what has not.

Step 2 saw the opening of non-essential retail and gyms. Personally, I have always thought that gyms had to be a risk if the virus was around, but I would like to see some analysis of whether gyms have been responsible for carrying Covid. As the Minister knows, I really do not understand why non-essential retail could open and galleries and museums could not. Can we have some analysis of that? It would be useful, in case we have to return to level 2-type restrictions.

Can the Minister give us an indication of where the Government really stand on the importance of continuing to work from home if one can work from home? For instance, what guidance has been given to civil servants? It is important for our town centres that people return to the office. Are we really to wait until step 4 before that happens?

On travel, my understanding was that having an amber code for a lot of countries meant that those who wished to travel there and were prepared to quarantine on their return could do so. But we now hear the Foreign Secretary say that people should certainly not take holidays in amber-list countries. Understandably, the travel industry is unhappy about this and would like firm guidance on the Government’s position on foreign travel.

Finally, I read over the weekend that the Government are in talks with airport operators about how to deal with travellers coming in from red-list countries. Surely, at this stage, to be in talks with the authorities is fairly ridiculous. The stories from Heathrow about the intermingling of travellers are quite terrifying. Can the Minister give us some indication of when talks might turn into action?

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Haskel) (Lab)]

The noble Lord, Lord Robathan, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Rooker.

Covid-19: One Year Report

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Thursday 25th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Haskel (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, like other noble Lords, last week I received a letter from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, asking me to support its White Paper, which is designed to restore trust in corporate governance through increased transparency and directors taking more responsibility for the probity of their business and accuracy of their accounts. After the current and recent business failures leaving the taxpayer to pick up the tab, who could not support this? But I put it to the Minister that seeking more accountability, integrity and probity applies to the Government as well as to business, particularly regarding the legislation that we are debating today, such as that on placing contracts without proper scrutiny.

Recently, the High Court ruled that in relation to this legislation the Government had acted unlawfully on both transparency and clarity by not publishing contracts on time. When details were published, it turned out that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, reminded us, companies given referrals by MPs and Ministers were 10 times more likely to win contracts resulting from this emergency legislation. When challenged, the Government said that these contracts were on the record for everybody to see, but it emerged, again in a recent court order, that 100 contracts are still waiting to be published, one from as far back as March 2020.

Officials have also raised questions about value for money. For instance, contracts worth millions have resulted in unsafe and unusable face masks. The normal practice is to claim clawback payments for faulty goods, but that does not seem to be happening, at great expense to the taxpayer and, I might add, at great personal risk to front-line staff who, in some cases, had to create their own protection equipment out of plastic bags. Indeed, emails revealed in the High Court quoted one civil servant saying that the Government were

“procuring merrily and to hell with the consequences”.

I put it to the Minister that if the Government apply the principles and values of their own White Paper, they should demonstrate transparency by publishing the approximately 100 outstanding contracts. They should claw back the money spent on faulty goods and goods not delivered, and future contracts under this legislation should be awarded using the normal competitive tender procedure with details published within the 30-day limit, as the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, suggested. This would not only save the taxpayer money but give some comfort to our overstretched NHS staff and would be in keeping with the higher corporate governance standards proposed by the Government in their White Paper.

However, I am not optimistic. Why? It is because only last week the Government proposed legislation that would curtail the power of the courts to review ministerial decision-making. This would put some ministerial decisions beyond questioning, a direction of travel completely opposite to the one called for in the Government’s White Paper, making it yet more difficult to deal with the problems connected to the Government’s coronavirus legislation. I hope the Minister’s response will put our minds to rest over this.

Health and Social Care Update

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Monday 22nd March 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Haskel) (Lab)]

My Lords, the House will now resume with questions on a Statement made in the House of Commons on 18 March: Department of Health and Social Care Update.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con) [V]]

My Lords, what contingency plans do the Government have in place should the EUC/EU pursue its outrageous threats to prevent the export of vaccines under a legal contract with the NHS? In that event, can my noble friend say what estimate he has made of the delay, if any, to completing the undertaking he gave earlier that all adults in the UK will have had their first dose by the end of July?

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[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, we very much hope that the vaccination programme being delivered today will lead to an inflection point in the whole country’s approach to vaccinations overall. That is not just for Covid, but for flu, HPV and other prophylactics. We are on the brink of a massive change in our mindset regarding preventive medicine. There is an opportunity here for us to completely change the way in which we do healthcare—from an emphasis on late-stage and acute medicine to preventive early-stage medicine. The stakes are enormous. We are determined to grab this opportunity with both hands and we will take our friends in the devolved authorities with us.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Haskel) (Lab)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, have both withdrawn, so I call the noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso.

[Lord St John of Bletso (CB)]

My Lords, I would like to probe the Minister outside the question of the vaccine supply and its admirable rollout. While welcoming the Government’s workplace testing scheme, in which lateral flow tests will be given to businesses until the end of June, what established workplace testing infrastructure is in place? What measures are being taken to ensure the high uptake of this strategy and that it is as safe and accurate as possible?

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[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, the policy on sports is best left to colleagues at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, but on a personal level I emote complete sympathy with my noble friend’s sentiments. I may be naive in this matter but I cannot help hoping that this pandemic will have led to a feeling across the country that the health of the nation has to change—it has to change emphatically, not only through diet but the amount of activity taken. This nation has an opportunity to embrace a lifestyle with more outdoor activity and exercise and a greater commitment to healthy living. That is a reasonable ambition, not just for my noble friend but for the whole country, and I support it entirely.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Haskel) (Lab)]

My Lords, that completes the questions.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, International Travel) (England) (Amendment) (No. 7) Regulations 2021

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Monday 22nd March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, may I first—unusually—pay tribute to my noble friend the Minister? At the weekend we had what I thought was a rather unpleasant article in the Sunday Times about hereditary Peers. Well, he is without doubt one of the most industrious and diligent Ministers in place and I think he justifies the presence of at least one hereditary Peer in this Chamber. Also, we agree entirely on the need for healthier lifestyles—referred to at the end of the previous business—and tackling obesity, which is closely linked with death rates in this pandemic.

I do not enjoy agreeing with the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton—she probably does not much enjoy me agreeing with her—but the lack of parliamentary scrutiny and the use of emergency procedures to bring in these draconian measures are frankly not acceptable in a democracy. It is a year since this started and we really should have sorted this out by now. Furthermore, perhaps I might say to my noble friend the Minister—in less congratulatory tones, although it is not necessarily his fault—that there is terrible confusion and inconsistency in these regulations. Can anybody be surprised that the public are confused? I am confused, and I think that Ministers are confused. Nobody is really sure about what country is on what list, and what countries they are allowed to visit.

I certainly regret these regulations, although I am not going to vote for the regret Motion. Furthermore, like my noble friend Lady Altmann, I fear that they are unlikely to make much difference to the spread of the virus.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Haskel) (Lab)]

The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, has withdrawn so I call the noble Lord, Lord Empey.

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[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I offer a very warm welcome to the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman of Darlington, and hope to work with her cross-party. I suspect that we will hear a lot more about Darlington than we ever have before.

I wholeheartedly support the regret Motion in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton; I only wish we could do something stronger. A year into the pandemic, it is only now that the Government have started implementing any kind of rigorous quarantine measures for international travellers. It is a little over a year since Boris Johnson was boasting of shaking hands with everybody and of how Britain would be open for business. How things have changed, yet the Government have been consistent in their failure to restrict the international spread of the virus. First, restrictions were called ineffective and unnecessary, then the Government advised against unnecessary international travel because of the risk of other countries implementing travel restrictions while abroad. After that, of course, it was too late as the virus was already running rampant.

What has most annoyed me is that all this seems to stem from a wider obsession with unfettered international air travel. We have gone in such a short time from air travel being an almost unaffordable luxury to it becoming so embedded in our way of life that we allow air passengers to spread the virus all around the world and trash our climate at the same time. It is about time the Government took a deep look at their obsession with air travel and realised just how much harm it is causing to the planet and to the future of humanity.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Haskel) (Lab)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, has withdrawn so I call the noble Lord, Lord Addington.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers and Self-Isolation) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Monday 1st March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, as the Minister has noted, retaining public trust is key, especially if we want people to go along with incredibly draconian and invasive tools in terms of isolation. It feels as though this is a one-way street. The Government asked the public to trust the police and the authorities rather blindly and yet, they will not trust people to make the most basic decisions, such as allowing them to assess any level of risk or threat that they might face. They then use threats of criminal conviction far too readily.

As we have heard from noble Lords, there is a lack of imagination when it comes to offering a generous settlement that would allow people to isolate without causing them and their families great hardship. I know many people who cannot afford to isolate; that is the reality and we have to face up to it.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, I worry about signing up to data sharing, privacy issues, a likely form of ID cards and police access to our most intimate information. These are anathema to a free society. This emergency should not blind us to the dangers of a constant expansion of police powers. Over the weekend, I noted that the Home Secretary and the Policing Minister are looking to extend some of the emergency restrictions on the right to protest. I fear that, unless there is a full public debate about the consequences for freedom of association and redrawing the relationship between the state and the individual, it will, in the end, fuel distrust.

I have one chilling piece of data, as the Government are interested in data. As of 26 February, a few days ago, 356 coronavirus-justified statutory instruments had been made law, without a draft presented in advance to Parliament, and therefore without scrutiny of their justification or proportionality. I want the Minister to understand that if he wants trust, he needs to assure us that there will be an emergency stop on the road map of this kind of democratic government as soon as possible. I am afraid that I am nervous about the rules that they keep bringing in after the effect.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Haskel) (Lab)]

As the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, is not available, I call the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud.

Covid-19: Vaccines

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

When you go to have your vaccine, as several noble Lords have done, you are given a card like the one I am holding, on the back of which the date of your second dose is printed. That is how we ensure that people know where and when to go for their second dose. We are working extremely hard to ensure that there are supplies of the second dose, and I am confident that we have the arrangements in place. It is not our policy to give anyone a second dose of an alternative vaccine to their first dose.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Haskel) (Lab)]

I call the noble Lord, Lord Willis of Knaresborough. No? I call the noble Baroness, Lady Deech.

[Baroness Deech (CB) [V]]

My Lords, how can the Minister overcome the reported suspicion of the Covid vaccines among ethnic minorities and, of course, the anti-vaxxers, no doubt fuelled by President Macron’s unfounded attack on the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca vaccine?

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[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, the noble and gallant Lord touches on a number of connected issues. The first vaccination does take a little bit of time; depending on which vaccination is administered, it takes between one and three weeks before it is truly in the system and protects the patient most effectively. It is, of course, possible to subsequently catch the disease without showing symptoms. One of the most emphatic results of having a vaccination is not necessarily that you do not catch the disease but that it saves you from serious disease and hospitalisation. That is where the vaccines are making a massive difference. We are expecting a dramatic fall in the number of hospitalisations and deaths as a result, but it is possible that people will still carry the disease. That is why the advice to all people, including noble Lords, is that just because you have had the vaccine, it does not mean that you can travel around the community as you did previously.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Haskel) (Lab)]

My Lords, all supplementary questions have been asked.

Personal Protective Equipment: Procurement

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for this opportunity. We take transparency extremely seriously. We share the same values about doing things in the proper way. I stress “the proper way”. The NAO report does not say that the way in which the pandemic was responded to was “improper”, as she suggested. In many ways, the report is supportive of the point that we were facing an unprecedented global pandemic that posed a massive challenge to the entire country. We needed to procure contracts with extreme urgency in order to secure vital supplies. The shadow Health Secretary called on the Government to “move heaven and earth” to get needed PPE to staff. The leader of the Opposition quite rightly called on the Government to get rid of blockages in the system, saying:

“The Government must act to ensure supplies are delivered.”


We did everything we could to do that and I am proud of the achievement of those involved.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Haskel) (Lab)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Balfe.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, the report does not make for happy reading, to put it mildly. There is a perception that the reality is some way away from where the Minister thinks it is. That may be fanned by the press, but the image of a tawdry chumocracy is to the fore in many newspaper reports. There were five recommendations in this report, all of which would benefit from the disinfectant of sunlight. My question to the Minister is quite simple: will the Government accept, implement and investigate the five recommendations?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I simply do not accept the assumption of that question. I think that the public see a Government who stepped up to an enormous challenge and did their best under very difficult circumstances. Many of the public individually stood up as volunteers and many professionals returned to former jobs to help out. Many businesspeople turned over their capacity, their staff or their focus to help out in the pandemic, and the Government took on a huge amount of support from members of the public. These sweeping assumptions that somehow everything was done in a negative way are very unhelpful and in fact do not chime with the mood of the public at all.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Haskel) (Lab)]

My Lords, the time allowed for this Private Notice Question has elapsed.