Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Leicester) Regulations 2020

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Wednesday 29th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the Minister and refer him to the report of Sir David King and colleagues in Independent SAGE, who concluded that:

“The situation in Leicester was both predictable and avoidable.”


This derived from the premature lifting of lockdown restrictions when the virus was still circulating widely in some areas, when there was no functional system of find, test, trace, isolate and support, and when the Prime Minister then sent an implied message that things were getting back to normal. Independent SAGE further stated:

“The current situation arose out of a failure to respond to the increase of infections in Leicester … at an early stage and before they reached crisis levels. This was a result of several factors”,


including

“excessive centralisation and unavailability of data”.

The Minister said just now that megabytes of data were given to local directors of public health, but why did it take so long for all the data to be given to Leicester’s director of public health?

On Monday in his Covid-19 Statement, and he repeated it today, the Minister was very clear that the Government were in constructive dialogue with dozens of directors of public health. If that is the case, can he explain why, on the test and trace system, directors of public health have expressed frustration that local expertise has been sidelined? Of course, he is right in saying that data alone will not deal with the virus and that what counts is local action. However, does he not agree that for local action to be effective, you have to trust people locally and give them the full facts?