Covid-19 Update

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Monday 14th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, we have embraced the “test, test, test” recommendation in a very big way, and the noble Earl is entirely right to aspire to using testing to enable a return to the economy, theatreland and all sorts of public gatherings. We are looking energetically at this, working with suppliers, academia and the NHS to figure out ways of using the new testing technologies in the way he describes.

However, we are at a relatively early stage and I am not able to make announcements on this here today. We have funded—to the tune of £500 million—a huge amount of investment in these technologies and, when they are right, we will roll them out in the theatres and airports of Britain.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, we have heard a lot from the Minister today about the importance of obeying the law, yet a Bill has been introduced in the other place today that essentially sees the Government seeking to break the law. I refer him to what Geoffrey Cox, the former Attorney-General, said this morning:

“When the Queen’s minister gives his word, on her behalf, it should be axiomatic that he will keep it, even if the consequences are unpalatable. By doing so he pledges the faith, honour and credit of this nation and it diminishes the standing and reputation of Britain in the world if it should be seen to be otherwise.”


He went on to say:

“It is unconscionable that this country, justly famous for its regard for the rule of law around the world, should act in such a way”.


Does the Minister think this a good example to the public, and does he not fear that the appeal to the rule of law regarding the rule of six might just fall on rather stony ground?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I am here to support the regulations before the House, not to comment on the issues about which the noble Lord asks.

Covid-19 Update

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, that saliva testing is a massive priority for the Government. I reassure her and Professor Spiegelhalter that the positive error rate in the saliva test trials in Southampton has been incredibly low—virtually zero. From that, we take great reassurance that this will be an effective vector for testing.

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

My Lords, will the Minister accept that the reason for scepticism about the Moonshot gimmick is that the Government have a consistent record of overpromising and underdelivering? The Minister will know that the latest test and trace stats are not good: they show that 69.2% of close contacts of people who have tested positive with Covid-19 in England were reached—that is the lowest percentage since the scheme was launched. What would he say to Bridget Phillipson, the MP for Houghton and Sunderland South? Because Sunderland has a rising number of cases, she checked online this morning the availability of tests: no home tests were available and no drive-through tests could be found. Later in the morning, the only test offered was a two-hour drive away in Scotland. Why should anyone believe the ideas that the Government float from week to week?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I completely and utterly reject the noble Lord’s suggestions. I remember well the nay-sayers, the sofa epidemiologists and the sceptics who, when we had testing at the level of 5,000, poured cold water on the idea we would get to 100,000. We hit that target. We have made amazing progress since and we will continue to push for more testing.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) (No. 3) Regulations 2020

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Thursday 3rd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

I hope I am not cut off like that, my Lords.

I certainly welcome the opportunity to debate these regulations, which show up the inadequacy of our procedures to scrutinise such instruments. Last night, the Minister, in the Second Reading of the medicines Bill, extolled the virtues of regulations. He said they come to Parliament and we can scrutinise them effectively, but this afternoon we can see how scanty that scrutiny actually is. These regulations came into force on 18 July. It has taken until today to have a debate on it. There are many more Covid regulations that we still have to debate, which are in power. As Big Brother Watch has pointed out, the regulations have a major impact on how people live their lives and they deserve much tougher parliamentary scrutiny. I would also remind the Minister that very few SIs have been defeated and, the last time the House defeated an SI, we were threatened with abolition by his own Government. Coming back to the medicines Bill, the idea that regulations provide a degree of parliamentary oversight and scrutiny is, I am afraid, very much mistaken.

The noble Lord who got cut off was talking about the importance of local authority leadership—I agree. The trouble is that Regulation 3 gives the Secretary of State power to override local councils. That might be justified if the intervention was based on science or some other rational explanation, whereas we have seen, in the north-west, that the decision of the Government was based on lobbying by Conservative MPs, which had to be reversed when the data came to light.

The noble Lord quoted Regulation 3. Can he explain to the House—so far today he has had two opportunities—what representations his department has received, in the last few weeks, from Conservative MPs in the north-west, to ease the lockdown? Did the Minister take account of the advice of the Chief Medical Officer or Deputy Chief Medical Officer?

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)]

The House will be pleased to know that we have managed to recover the noble Lord, Lord McCrea.

Medicines and Medical Devices Bill

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 2nd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister and declare my interests as a member of the GMC board and as president of GS1, the barcoding organisation responsible for the Scan4Safety programme. The Bill is of great importance for patient safety, but also for the health of the life sciences sector, yet it is striking for its brevity and, as the Minister acknowledged, for the extensive powers given to Ministers without the exceptional justification required for the skeleton approach taken. The Minister said he was listening, but he will know that both the Delegated Powers Committee and the Constitution Committee were highly critical, and I believe there is a strong argument for the Bill’s powers in relation to medicine and medical devices regulation to be subject to sunset clauses.

Leaving the EU’s regulatory regime brings significant risks that companies will choose somewhere other than the UK to trial and launch medicines. At the moment we are nowhere near knowing whether our new regulatory system is to be aligned with the rest of Europe—the policy statement published yesterday by MHRA on devices and clinical trials regulation from 1 January 2021 is silent on this. I have to say to the Minister that I am not impressed that his department thinks it is acceptable for such a publication to be produced hours before our Second Reading debate. There is certainly no room for complacency. The European Medicines Agency covers 25% of global pharmaceutical sales; the UK on its own makes up just 3%. The odds are that companies will want to submit applications for new drugs to the EMA before the MHRA, meaning that the UK will lose its advantage and UK patients will risk getting slower access to the latest medicines.

As Sarepta pointed out to me, for many companies the attractiveness referred to in the Bill equates to speed of decision-making at every stage. That means being able to approve clinical trials faster than in the EU, maintaining swift decision-making on medicines approvals and getting approved medicines to patients faster. Yet the Minister will know that the NHS record in uptake of new medicines is very poor indeed, and I would like to hear from him what is going to be done to improve access for NHS patients to these new medicines.

On patient safety, Ministers are silent on whether they will accept many of the recommendations of the Cumberlege review. In particular, will the Minister support the appointment of a commissioner for patient safety, which the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, argued for very persuasively in her report?

Finally, I turn to the abhorrent practice of forced organ harvesting taking place in China today, and to the importance of ensuring that the UK is not in any way complicit in these crimes. In a letter to me last night, the Minister referred to the World Health Organization’s view that China is implementing an ethical voluntary organ transplant system. That is simply not credible, and in fact it is based on a self-assessment by China itself. A much more objective assessment comes from the China Tribunal, which concluded:

“Forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale.”


At the moment, human tissue and organs can be imported into the UK from countries such as China without traceability, documentation or consent. Marie Rimmer MP tabled an amendment in the Commons to deal with this. A similar amendment will be tabled here and I very much hope that the Government will agree to it.

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?

Covid-19: Response

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Monday 27th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell [V]]

My Lords, the relationship with local authorities is extremely good, and I recommend that noble Lords do not believe everything they read on this subject. I completely commend those who work closely with PHE, the test and trace programme, the joint biosecurity team and all the sectoral parts of government that reach out to local authorities, DPHs and local infection teams. A very strong bond is forming, and we have a very large number of outbreaks up and down the country that you never read or hear about, and which are not celebrated either for being good or bad because that partnership works well. The intelligence and data are put into the hands of the people who need them, and the teams move quickly and effectively to deal with the outbreak. I am extremely grateful for this; a huge amount of progress has already been made, and we continue to invest in those relationships.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab) V]

My Lords, it is clearly good to hear that the relationship with local government is on a good level, as the Minister has said. However, why is it that directors of public health have been complaining for weeks about the lack of information? The Minister says that they are getting all the information they need, but this has occurred only in the last few weeks. If it is a question of data protection legislation, why was emergency legislation not put through in the spring to enable local authorities to have all the information they clearly need?

[Lord Bethell [V]]

My Lords, it is put to me week in, week out that our relationship with directors of public health is in some way troubled. I reassure noble Lords that, every single day of the week, we are in contact with dozens of directors of public health in amicable, constructive dialogues that lead to concrete action, local interventions and sharing of data. These conversations happen in a cordial and friendly fashion. The message may have got through to some noble Lords that there is some huge acrimony and difficulty between us, but that is not the perspective that I have. The data has got through. It is a hell of a thing to have put up a huge track and trace system in a few months. That we can get such detailed data to a large number of people within the envelope of reasonable data security legislation is nothing short of a miracle. I am extremely proud and pay tribute to those involved.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 2) (England) Regulations 2020

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Friday 24th July 2020 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, I know we are working under difficult circumstances, but to have one minute to debate these important regulations does not do them justice. We need more time to consider these regulations in a more timely fashion. Even now, further regulations have been made: SI 750, made on 17 July, enables local authorities to restrict access to close premises events; and SI 754, made on 20 July, amends the Leicester lockdown arrangements, which we have not even debated yet. We still have not debated two regulations on the restrictions on people travelling to this country, SI 567 and SI 568. As the Minister said, new regulations on lockdown generally were laid on 23 July. Last month, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee pleaded with the Government to ensure that legislation more closely follows any announcement. We really must do better.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) (Amendment) (No. 3) Regulations 2020

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2020 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, we are once again in the unsatisfactory situation of debating regulations that are already in place and, following the Prime Minister’s announcement early this week, now somewhat academic. I listened very carefully to what the Minister said in opening this debate. We are, of course, in exceptional circumstances and the Government have had to act very quickly, but I would draw the Minister’s attention to the report today of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which urges the Government to ensure that legislation follows on more closely from any announcements they make. As the committee says, even a short gap between regulations being laid and their coming into effect would better enable those affected to prepare, having seen the law’s actual, detailed requirements, rather than just the headline announcements.

Public confidence would also be enhanced with the timely publication of the full scientific advice available to Ministers. When the crisis first occurred, Ministers were very fond of saying that they were following the science. This was much in evidence in the Downing Street briefings, with the presence of the Chief Medical Officer and Chief Scientific Adviser. They have been less in evidence recently, although they did come to the last briefing in Downing Street this week.

The standing down of the Chief Nursing Officer when she would not endorse the behaviour of Dominic Cummings was a standout moment that did great credit to the Chief Nursing Officer—rather less so to Downing Street. Scientists are not above criticism, but surely, we are entitled to see the full advice going to Ministers. In the case of the ludicrous 14-day quarantine period for visitors to this country, we are still awaiting even a summary of the advice. Will the Minister say when it is going to be published? Would he accept that, if the public are to regain confidence in the Government, the full advice should be published?

Covid-19: Test and Trace App

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell]

My Lords, the decision to change strategy was taken ultimately on operational grounds. The regulatory environment was not necessarily relevant for that. We cannot avoid the fact that there have been technical issues with both the Apple and the NHS apps. We are still some way from resolving those issues, but we hope to overcome them, in partnership with Apple, and the House will be updated when we do.

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

My Lords, the SAGE minutes of 1 May indicate that 80% of contacts should be isolated within 48 hours of the original case becoming ill. The SAGE meeting on 19 May included the summary point that a test, trace and isolate system would be necessary, though not sufficient on its own, to allow changes to distancing measures without pushing R above 1. Given the failure of the Government’s app, and their intention to reduce the two-metre social distancing rule, has SAGE now changed its mind?

[Lord Bethell]

My Lords, the Government have the two-metre rule under review, but no decision has been made on it. Enormous progress has been made on reducing the turnaround times of tests. A large proportion of them now take place within 24 hours and we remain focused on this important index.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2020

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Monday 15th June 2020 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, debating these regulations, which came into effect on 13 May, does seem a little academic because further easements have already been brought in, with more on the way, as the Minister has kindly explained. One can only wish that we could see that as part of a coherent strategy, but the contrast between the opening of shops and zoos today and the scaling back of school opening before the summer holidays, along with the introduction of a 14-day quarantine period for all new arrivals, is striking and difficult to fathom.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the 14-day quarantine policy, which was described in the Sunday Times on 7 June as

“one of the most economically damaging policies the Government has yet unveiled. It cuts the travel industry off at the knees and makes the country look isolationist and ridiculous.”

As Professor Michael Baker, Professor of Public Health and adviser to the New Zealand Government has said,

“The UK’s new 14-day quarantine rule only makes sense if you go for elimination of the virus as your goal”,


and all the necessary measures are in place. But the Government are now removing many of those measures.

The confusion is being compounded by the continuing failure of the Government to publish the evidence to justify their decisions. All we have been promised in relation to the 14 days is a summary at some point in the future. As Sir Paul Nurse and the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, said last week,

“Trust has to be earned if the public are to have confidence in their political leaders and the scientists advising them. Trust is only possible if the scientific advice given is open, transparent and properly communicated.”


Unfortunately, much government activity is more about managing the media, polling and focus groups than anything else.

The so-called review of the two-metre rule announced yesterday is a case in point, since it appears to be a softening-up process designed to legitimise a decision which has already been made. As the respected Professor Sir Chris Ham, the former director of the King’s Fund, wrote this morning,

“Boris Johnson was complacently late to grasp the gravity of the crisis and then animated by a panic-driven urge to try and impress the public by throwing out pledges he could not deliver.”


That typifies the Government’s whole approach: slow into lockdown; the sacrificing of the care sector; the shortages of PPE; the dubious testing targets and the world-beating app that never quite appears. When will the Government get a grip?