Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Self-Isolation etc.) (Revocation) (England) Regulations 2022

Lord Hutton of Furness Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I want to make it clear that this amendment to the Motion is not a discussion about plunging the UK back into lockdown or imposing mass restrictions on individual liberties. I am talking here about the Government’s decision to scale back sensible public health measures—measures that would help us to continue to manage and monitor this pandemic, which is far from over.

Last week, the WHO reminded nations such as the UK that even when a virus is endemic, it needs managing, including testing, self-isolation and mask wearing. Even if not required by law and regulation, the WHO says that messaging and communications from Governments are vital in ensuring that people can take personal care. I am talking about clear and consistent messaging from our leaders about what they mean by “personal responsibility”. I am talking about support and guidance for those who still want to do the right thing and avoid spreading Covid-19. We still need to protect our NHS and ensure that those who are most likely to get severe disease, even if vaccinated, are also protected. I hope that we can all agree on these principles.

By the way, the Government keep changing the terminology for the group who have variously been called shielders, the clinically extremely vulnerable, immunocompromised and immunosuppressed. I hope the House will forgive me if I just refer to them as the CEV as a shorthand; otherwise, it becomes a real mouthful.

Time and again over the course of this pandemic, we have seen boom and bust policies relating to controlling Covid, stretching our NHS and care systems to the brink of breaking point and then introducing half-baked policies to tackle a fire that is already raging. Now we are seeing the bust again, with the withdrawal of almost all our tools to tackle this pandemic.

While we continue to allow Covid to spread through our hospitals, we cannot possibly hope to tackle the backlog of over 6 million patients waiting for treatment. The weekly average for Covid hospital admissions last week was 1,500 per day—an increase of 18% on the previous week. I am hearing that the NHS in the east of England and in London regions is already at level 4, and cases are still rising extremely quickly. Can the Minister say what plans there are if hospital admissions continue at this pace, and, given that they are a lagging indicator to cases, which have risen over 50% on the government dashboard in the last few days, how will people be protected from infection without access to test and trace from 1 April?

Sickness absences everywhere are also rapidly increasing. What are Ministers doing specifically to help keep infection levels lower among key workers, especially, but not only, in the NHS and social care sectors? Today, the Health Service Journal reports that Covid sickness absence in the NHS is up 20% in one week. What is the contingency plan if that continues to rise?

Those against any precaution say that we have to learn to live with Covid, but many people with omicron BA2 are saying that it is more like a cold at the start, and then it is like flu and worse. The problem is that it is ultra-transmissible when it is asymptomatic and in those early sneezing days. Would Ministers consider a campaign to strongly encourage wearing face masks, and at the very least try to protect key workers and the clinically extremely vulnerable?

The difference between what is being said at the Dispatch Box and in the Government’s living with Covid plan and guidance published at the end of February is most concerning. The UKHSA webpage is very clear: you must self-isolate if you have symptoms and are unwell. But this is not a clear message coming from our leaders, with statements such as “Stay at home if you can” and “Take personal responsibility”. Can people afford to? Can they manage to arrange deliveries? Can they even be bothered? Will the Minister today state in clear terms that, even though the legal requirement to self-isolate has ended, it is still absolutely expected that anyone who tests positive for Covid-19 will self-isolate? Will employers be told that they should not tell staff—as Wilko and Asda have already done—that they must work even if they test positive?

Speaking of testing, the policy document on living with Covid mentions the continued availability of

“limited symptomatic testing available for a small number of at-risk groups”.

As for who is included in these at-risk groups, yet again the public are still in the dark. We are only two weeks away from 1 April and we still do not know. We are told that information on who will have access to tests is coming. Surely this has to have been decided already. Why are we left waiting for this vital information yet again? We know already the groups that should have access to tests: the clinically extremely vulnerable and their close contacts; pregnant women; NHS staff; those working with vulnerable patients; those who attend hospitals regularly; unpaid carers; and, frankly, at the moment, our military as well. These groups will make up a sizeable proportion of the population, and I wonder how the Government are planning to identify those who will qualify for free tests.

Portsmouth City Council is so concerned at the 74% increase of positive Covid cases in just one week—to 630 cases per 100,000—and the 50% increase in cases at the Queen Alexandra Hospital to more than 150 Covid beds that it took the decision yesterday to provide free lateral flow tests to residents for three months if the Government will not. This is really tough, given that local authority public health budgets this year have not even covered inflation, and there is no extra money for any Covid mitigations such as test and trace. By the way, the Minister said on Monday that local resilience forums will now cover test and trace as the central ones are being closed down. But what are they going to do that with? No money at all. But in Portsmouth, a city full of key workers, the council feels that it has to do it.

By not providing tests for asymptomatic contacts of the clinically extremely vulnerable, we are placing them in perpetual lockdown. Not providing asymptomatic testing in hospitals also puts patients at risk. It is interesting that PPE is still going to be provided free of charge for NHS trusts until March 2023. But why has PPE been prioritised over testing? We need to know where the Covid is, and we need to protect our patients and staff. Can the Minister please confirm that this “limited free testing” will be only for people with symptoms and that the plan is to end all asymptomatic testing?

From these Benches, we have talked about the lack of financial support for those who should be self-isolating, and the revocation of that means that many people will have no choice but to go into work unwell. We ask again for this to be reinstated. By taking away the little support that was offered, the Government are clear that people’s self-isolation sacrifices are not worth anything to them—it just does not matter. Ministers talk about personal responsibility but people need to be supported financially to do the right thing, especially with reinfection rates as high as they are.

To conclude, the Government are determined to tell everyone that we have to learn to live with Covid. But by throwing away all surveillance testing and tracing, leaving individuals, employers, our NHS and even the Government completely blind about what is happening, and standing down SAGE at exactly the time that we have the highest level of infection rates, with spiralling cases and hospital admissions and, sadly, a likely increase in deaths in the next couple of weeks, how on earth is the country meant to assess and take their own responsibilities? I hope that the Government will change their mind on these epicentral precautions and mitigations. I beg to move.

[Lord Hutton of Furness (Lab)]

My Lords, I have some sympathy with the arguments that the noble Baroness has just made, but I think this is probably not the time to have a general debate about the Government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

These regulations are fairly narrowly drafted and are designed to repeal the earlier regulations that required vaccination against Covid-19 to be a condition of deployment in the NHS. I support the repeal of these regulations. The Government have made a good case for the repeal in the Explanatory Memorandum, but none the less, it represents quite a significant and dramatic U-turn in government policy.

I do not think it made a lot of sense to require compulsory vaccination; there were other ways of ensuring the protection from harm of NHS patients. Of course, the loss of critical front-line NHS staff which the earlier regulations might well have produced would itself have represented quite a significant risk of harm to NHS patients.

Today, I have only one question I want to ask the Minister. Again, it is something that is contained in the Explanatory Memorandum. Paragraph 7.29 says that the Government will engage with NHS employers to review their policies on the hiring of new staff and the deployment of existing staff to take into account their vaccination status. I ask the Minister what the Government want to see change in NHS hiring and employment practices. Will new employees in the NHS, for example, need to have been vaccinated against Covid-19? What does this paragraph in the Explanatory Memorandum actually mean?

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I speak in support of the amendment from my noble friend Lady Brinton. One of the main reasons I am doing so is that I think the messaging being put over at the moment is entirely wrong and out of sync with where we are in this pandemic.

I watched a very short World Health Organization video this morning. It was only a minute long and it was called “Moving from Pandemic to Endemic”. The clear message was that endemic does not equal good. During an endemic, you actually require strong health control programmes if you are going to continue to reduce infections, hospitalisations and deaths—something I am sure we all want to do. In my view, there is a pressing need to maintain some of the public health measures that can help us control this virus as it becomes endemic. You can change the label but that does not change the challenges facing us, which, in my view, require sustained protections, particularly for the most vulnerable, and a very strong public health system.

Looking back at the Statement from the Prime Minister when the living with Covid plan was introduced, I was perplexed. He set out the rationale that cases were falling, hospitalisations were falling and the number of excess deaths from omicron was actually in negative territory. Were that still the case, I suspect I would feel quite a lot more relaxed than I do at the moment. This morning, I reviewed the figures and the latest stats from the ZOE study, the ONS and the Government’s own dashboard. Just on the Government’s dashboard we are seeing an increase of 52% in people testing positive over the last seven days and an increase of 18% in patients admitted to hospitals over the last seven days. That is not a virus in retreat.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 2) (England) (Amendment) (No. 4) Regulations 2020

Lord Hutton of Furness Excerpts

Tuesday 6th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hutton of Furness (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope that the measure we are discussing today will have the effect that the Minister and the Government intend—that it will limit the spread of the coronavirus in our society. But anyone who thought that the rule of six was going to inject some clarity and simplicity into the regulatory framework needs only to read the 25 pages of these regulations and the seven new definitions, along with the interesting new legal concept of “mingling”, which has never before surfaced in British legal history; good luck to the judges in making sense of that particular term.

I hope that the measure will have some impact—we all want it to. I have three brief points to make; many of them have been made already. First, the Government now have to find a different way of legislating to impose these restrictions. I do not believe that the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 is a viable platform for this legislation because we need more parliamentary scrutiny. I echo the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, in inviting Ministers to reconsider the use of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. As a minimum threshold of parliamentary scrutiny in this field, where our cherished personal freedoms are being overridden, the minimum requirement of 30 days’ duration for any new law is a threshold that we should follow.

Secondly, but better still, the Government should consider again devolving much more of the responsibility for imposing local restrictions to tackle the Covid epidemic to local authorities. I do not think that central government can manage the workload of doing this. The Government have centralised everything in their response to the Covid pandemic and that is failing. They have to find a different way of proceeding. If we go on this way, we will run the risk of civil disengagement and, worse still, of civil disobedience, which would bring disrespect for the law into mainstream public behaviour in the UK, which would be a tragedy.

Thirdly and finally, at the very least, we must avoid examples of last-minute lawmaking behind closed doors. Now that Parliament is sitting again, there can be no justification whatever for laws which impact on the lives of so many people being introduced with 30 minutes’ notice from behind closed doors.

Ageing: Public Services and Demographic Change Committee Report

Lord Hutton of Furness Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hutton of Furness (Lab)]

My Lords, it is always a great pleasure to follow a speech from the noble Lord, Lord Mawhinney, as indeed it was for me to serve under the leadership of my noble friend Lord Filkin on the Select Committee. I am grateful to the House for giving me the opportunity to serve in that capacity.

I should start my remarks by drawing the attention of the House to the interests that I have declared in the Register of Lords’ Interests.

It will probably not be a surprise to any of your Lordships that a Select Committee of this House took the unanimous view very early on in its deliberations that the fact that Britain was becoming an ageing society did not mean the end of the world as we know it. Far from it—it is going to be a blessing, not a curse. However, one thing was very clear to all of us: that if we are to respond to the quite significant challenges that the ageing nature of our society is going to present, then we expect—and we are right to demand—vision, leadership and a coherent strategy from government. So, too, are we right to expect that from all those parties that aspire to government. Nowhere is that more obvious and clear than in the area of pensions, and that is where I want to concentrate my remarks this evening.

We tried to draw attention to two very significant problems that we face. We all know that not enough people in Britain are saving for their retirement and that those who are generally tend not to be saving enough. That led us to conclude that nearly 11 million people of working age are, on current trends, likely to be heading towards inadequate retirement incomes. That will be a significant social and economic problem for our country and we need to address it with urgency.

As my noble friend said, there are plenty of positive signs that the Government are now beginning to address this problem. The previous Government set in train the implementation of the important recommendations of the noble Lord, Lord Turner, and the present Government have taken those forward. That is to be welcomed. However, we also took the view that, in their present guise and format, defined contribution pension schemes are unlikely to be able to discharge the very heavy responsibility that we are about to place on them. In the future, millions more people will be saving not in final salary or career average defined benefit schemes but in defined contribution schemes. Of course, the one characteristic of those schemes is that there is no guaranteed level of retirement income.

We all know the history of the demise of defined benefit. We will not be able to recreate new defined benefit schemes in the UK or, for that matter, in any other developed nation. That is part of the pensions past. I hope that we can sustain defined benefit pensions in the public sector for as long as possible. We know that the millions of people who will be enrolled automatically into new workplace pension schemes will be saving in defined contribution schemes. It was the committee’s view that they are not fit for purpose; they are not going to be adequate in their current form to address the expectations that millions of people have for the level of income that they can aspire to in retirement. How we respond to that is the crucial challenge in the pensions world today. We have obsessed in this House and elsewhere about how we can prolong defined benefit schemes. That debate is concluded—we will not be able to do that in the private sector. But there has been insufficient attention until recently about the inadequacies of defined contribution schemes. I, and I am sure all members of the committee, would welcome the Government’s new focus on addressing the shortcomings in defined contribution schemes. That is the big challenge that we face.

The Government’s response to date in its defined ambition pension plans and proposals have some promise and potential, but there is a warning to the Government that I would like to give tonight—to avoid the gimmicks and expensive flummery, as well as the false promises of guarantees and other devices that have been floated. In the world of defined contributions, it is unlikely to be possible to construct anything that looks like a defined benefit-style guarantee of retirement income. That is simply not a possibility, and we should not mislead people somehow into thinking that it is possible.

What we felt was possible was that the Government could convene on a much more urgent basis the attention of the industry and employers on how the current structure of defined contribution pensions could be improved—and I think that they can. From my experience, I believe that we have to focus in future on outcomes from defined contribution schemes and work to ensure that there is greater confidence in those outcomes. That is a challenge primarily to the pensions and investment industry as to how those improvements could be brought about. I personally do not believe that there is a case for some legislative solution or some magic wand to be waved over this problem by government. That is simply not a possibility; it is not the world that we live in. But there is an urgent case for more focused action and intention, led by government, as to how the current failing platform of defined contribution could be improved for millions of people going forward. We have a special responsibility now that we have decided, as successive Parliaments, to automatically enrol people into defined contributions, as to how we can improve the way in which those schemes work for future generations. This is a pressing problem, and it is incumbent on government and others to address it as a matter of urgency. I welcome what the committee had to say about that matter.

I want to finish with a quote, not a quote from your Lordships’ Select Committee but a comment from the National Audit Office, in a report that it made in July 2013, when it said:

“Measures to encourage people to save for retirement are not being managed by Departments with enough coherence or accountability”.

Sadly, I think that that is true, but the Government have time to put that right. I hope that they pay attention to our report as well as the work of others, and begin to address with more urgency this chronic problem of how to improve the performance of defined contribution schemes. If they can do that, I hope that a beginning of a stronger coherence and consensus around pensions policy will emerge as a result.