Health and Care Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Tuesday 18th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kakkar (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Mawson and others, and in so doing congratulate him on his thoughtful introduction. It is clear that one of the most important aspects, and the purpose, of this Bill is to ensure integration at a local level. But the purpose of that integration must surely be—as has been confirmed by the Minister—to improve health outcomes for the entire population. It is well recognised that that can happen only if the social determinants of health in local communities are addressed appropriately and effectively, in a way that our health system has not been able to do to date.

If we accept that to be the purpose, then local integration—that focus on and understanding of the social determinants of health—and responding to local needs must be secured in the organisation of the integrated care systems and their boards. As we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, and others, to achieve that, one must not only understand, appreciate and hear the local voice, but be clear that the culture that is established in these systems is responsive to those voices and is determined to act on them and the understanding of the local situation—particularly those social determinants that extend far beyond what has been and can be delivered through healthcare alone—and focus on other issues such as housing, education and employment. It would be most helpful if the Minister, in answering this debate, could explain how that is going to be achieved in the proposed construction of the integrated care boards.

Of course, one recognises that Her Majesty’s Government are deeply committed to this agenda. But it is clear that if these boards are not constructed in such a way that they can change the culture and drive, in an effective and determined fashion, a recognition of those social determinants and create opportunities at a local level to address them, much of the purpose of this well meant and well accepted proposal for greater integrated care at a local level will fail.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I did not originally intend to contribute to this debate. However, I would like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, for his Amendment 41A, which, although modest in scope, has initiated an extremely useful debate and raised a lot of important issues. I do not want to add a lot of material to the debate, but I want to focus on the questions that have emerged from it.

Health and Care Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Tuesday 11th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 21, and I support the other amendments in this group. Before I reach the meat of my remarks, it seems a long time ago, but two hours ago we were discussing mental health. I did not intervene in that debate, although the issue is very close to my heart. I totally support everything that was said in that debate, but I was gearing myself up for this contribution, not knowing that I would have a two-hour interlude.

This Bill in general is not the answer to the immediate and long-term crisis in the NHS and social care sector, but the particular concern I raise through my amendment is the widespread fear that the new arrangements being proposed will lead to the growth of the private provision of healthcare, with multi-million-pound private sector service contracts leading to the loss of the public service ethos of the NHS. I have no doubt that the Minister is well aware of these concerns. It is no secret; they have been widely discussed in the columns of the national press and professional journals. For example, Jan Shortt, the general secretary of the National Pensioners Convention, has said:

“This Bill truly represents a creeping backdoor privatisation of health care services, which despite government claims, will badly impact on the patient care across the UK.”


So I do not think that there is any question that these concerns exist.

The Government have promised that there are no plans to privatise the National Health Service, but that is quite different and distinct from the privatisation of healthcare services, shown specifically, or most starkly, by the increasing number of US-owned private companies which already provide them for the NHS and obviously seek an expanded share of the market. It is worth noting the not sufficiently reported or commented on fact that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, was unable to attend a meeting with our hard-pressed services sector because he was busy in discussion—according to a report in the Financial Times—with US healthcare providers when he was in California recently. The Government should not insult us by suggesting that there is not an issue here of the growth in the provision of healthcare by commercial interests.

Even with the amendments to limit private companies being represented on integrated care boards, there is absolutely nothing here to stop private companies playing a part in other ways—for instance, clearly at the sub-system level via place-based partnerships and provider collaboratives. There is this whole word salad of different ways of describing these organisations operating at that level below, for or with the integrated care boards in providing services. This is the Trojan horse that will bring private provision within the walls of our publicly provided NHS.

NHS England states clearly in guidance:

“Independent sector providers can be members of a provider collaborative, but the extent of their participation may depend on the specific form and governance arrangements and the nature of a particular decision being taken by the collaborative.”


Dig through these words and they mean that we just do not know what arrangements will actually be established in this new world of provision. Guidance from NHS England also states:

“The Health and Care Bill, if enacted, will enable ICBs to delegate functions to providers including, for example, devolving budgets to provider collaboratives.”


It is this uncertain nature of the exact administrative arrangements that will apply under the new scheme that leads to the level of concern. As place-based partnerships and provider collaboratives are allowed to include private companies, the Government’s rhetoric about protecting the independence of ICBs is hollow. For all the talk from the Minister in the House of Commons of recognising that

“the involvement of the private sector, in all its forms, in ICBs is a matter of significant concern to Members in the House”—[Official Report, Commons, Health and Care Bill Committee, 14/9/21; col. 258.]

the Government have not taken the action needed to stop private companies exerting excessive influence in decision-making in the health service.

The defence against such developments will be in the hands of the ICBs, hence the concerns expressed today about their membership. This is the Minister’s opportunity to assure me, your Lordships and the many bodies outside this House which have expressed concerns that our concerns are misplaced. Simply dismissing them will not work. I note the remarks of my noble friend and maybe my amendment is not the best way of achieving my objective of getting the Government to put boundaries on commercial development within the health service, but I hope that the point of principle will be addressed and will not hide behind the limitations of my amendment.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to intervene on this group, in particular to support Amendment 19. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, for tabling it. As the noble Lord said, it gives us an opportunity to probe the arrangements for the commissioning of specialised services in the future. I hope my noble friend will be able to clarify that tonight and perhaps add further clarity as we go on.

I want to talk about this because I remember that a decade or more ago, even though the NHS was a single organisation with a single responsibility for specialised commissioning, most of this was in fact delegated to strategic health authorities. My experience was that, with the separate budgetary responsibilities of strategic health authorities and their ability to commission those services themselves, we ended up with considerable disparities and inconsistencies in the commissioning of specialised services. We know this must be the case because, after NHS England took over the responsibility in 2013, one of its most challenging tasks, not least in financial terms, was to secure a common specification and common service standards. The objective was of course not to level down, but level up, in the finest traditions of the present Government, and that levelling up was expensive. As we will all discover as time goes on, levelling up is expensive by nature. It was challenging to NHS England at a point when resources were highly constrained.

That having been achieved, we are all very clear that we do not want to go back to the bad old days but—I thought the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, was very fair about this—there is a counterargument. Many patients, even if they have a less common condition, actually receive much of their healthcare locally, from local providers through local commissioning arrangements. They need to be integrated, and things such as access to chemotherapy for common cancers or diagnostics through the community diagnostic centres, as they are created, may be more appropriately commissioned for those patients by a local integrated care board rather than NHS England directly.

However, as the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, referred to, there is the principle of setting commissioning at appropriate population levels. As I know from experience, the NHS can consume endless time and energy trying to work out the geography of these things and what population is right for what purpose. If nothing else, even if they multiply the tiers from place-based to ICSs to regional teams to NHS England, the present arrangements at least give specialised services a chance to be commissioned and led at an appropriate population level. For many specialised services, that is not at the level of an integrated care board, as the population may be too small for them.

We know that highly specialised services will be retained by NHS England. If some services that need to be integrated locally, for the benefit of patients, are with the ICSs, there is none the less a question, about which we need to hear more, on the extent to which NHS England will manage the commissioning by using regional teams to try to maintain national specifications and service standards through their own responsibilities.

An opportunity that has not been referred to and is not in the Bill, but may be useful in practice, is to learn from the experience and, I hope, capability of the specialised commissioning team at NHS England and have a specialised commissioning support unit. It could stand behind the regional teams or even the ICSs, if appropriate, to help them have the capability to commission effectively. Amendment 19 asks the right question: this responsibility should not be delegated to individual integrated care boards unless NHS England is clear that the capability subsists at that level. We have to accept at the start that it probably does not.

I referred earlier to outcomes which, for providers in the NHS, are often at their highest in specialist hospitals. We have a dozen or more specialist hospitals, of which the majority of services—up to 80% in one or more cases—are commissioned as specialised services. We want them to have a more coherent structure of commission; we do not want them to have dozens of contracts with integrated care boards, all over the country. I hope that NHS England, in the regime that puts commissioners and providers close to one another, at least looks out for specialist hospitals and says, “We should have a lead commissioner of these services”. It may well be that the lead commissioner is in NHS England and sets up the contract there.

My final point is on the very reasonable question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, about budgets. Why were strategic health authorities differentiating in the way they did? Their budgets forced them into different decisions in different places and, over time, that increased the degree of divergence and inconsistency. The same will happen with ICSs, unless some very clear countermeasures are taken. They could be ring-fenced budgets or some other such mechanism, but the budgets might have to be held not locally but centrally, even if some of the functions are delegated more locally. We have to be aware that, when you start to shift and delegate budgets, it is very hard then to maintain national service standards. That should be done only when it is very clear that the safeguards are in place. I hope we can use the debates on the Bill as a mechanism to give those who rely on specialist services and the providers of them greater clarity and assurance about how they will go about that in the future.

Health and Social Care

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

This has been an intractable issue. If all parties had managed to deal with it better, people in the situation the noble Lord mentioned—for whom we have a lot of sympathy—would have been helped. Unfortunately, that is not the case. We have announced a package that will begin with the new cap in October 2023.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I very much welcome the additional resources for the NHS and social care, but will the Government increase and accelerate the resources for social care? Everyone in the NHS knows that only by increasing the capacity in local authority-funded social care can they relieve the pressures on the NHS. The House will recall that we legislated in the Care Act 2014 for a Dilnot-style plan. It is now more than 10 years since he submitted that plan to me as Secretary of State. We should bring it into force, and we can and should do so by April 2022.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I am afraid I have already set out the timescale on which we are doing this. This is a complex area and, as I said, the new cap will come in in October 2023. As I said, the funding in this package covers the cost to local government of implementing the charging reforms, including the cap, the increased capital limit moving towards paying a fair rate for care and the associated implementation costs. We will be working closely with local authorities to make sure that we can implement this to the benefit of all our citizens.

Covid 19: Winter Plan

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I agree with the noble Lord, and that is exactly why we are offering all local authorities in tier 3 areas the opportunity to participate in the sort of programme that he has suggested. It will be called the kick out Covid testing challenge and will build on the positive results from the Liverpool pilot.

[Lord Lansley (Con) [V]]

My Lords, my noble friend will be aware of the risks associated with large numbers of students returning home in the run-up to Christmas, and of course in some cases travelling between higher tier areas to lower tier homes. Will she ensure that the Government will work with universities so that all of them provide two tests for each student to ensure that they return home only when they have a negative test result that is immediately available?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I can certainly reassure my noble friend that we are working closely with universities. As he will know, between 3 and 9 December, students will be allowed to travel home on staggered departure dates set by universities. Tests will be offered to as many students as possible before they travel home for Christmas, targeted using a range of factors, including local prevalence rates, whether a testing history is already available, and the percentage of high-risk students in each institution.

Covid-19 Update

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

Both the pots of money the noble Baroness mentions are under the control of local authorities, and it is entirely up to them to decide which sectors or types of business to support in their area. It is within their gift to provide support, if they have businesses in those sectors, as the money is for them to provide to local businesses, which they know best.

[Lord Lansley (Con) [V]]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that we must now plan for several months of constraining transmission of the virus before a vaccine is widely available? Such a plan must mean very limited social contact if we are to keep schools and businesses open and the economy moving, so does she also agree that it will not help to talk of a return to normal any time soon?

Business and Planning Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 20th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, and her three co-signatories to Amendment 15. As she rightly said, it is only by virtue of their bringing forward the amendment in Committee that we had the benefit of a very good and persuasive debate last Monday. They won the argument, as evidenced by the Government’s Amendments 13 and 14 and what they said about the guidance that will be issued alongside the no- smoking condition. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, for that.

I might say to the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox of Newport, that the Labour Party did not put down such an amendment. I welcome what she said about maintaining positive forward pressure on this vital public health issue, but I remind her that as a result of the coalition Government’s activities—in which we were all participants, including my noble friend Lord Howe—this country was regarded as having the toughest tobacco control regime in the world, perhaps bar Australia, although I think there was a debate about that. The point is to maintain that pressure. The Government’s commitment, which I wholeheartedly support, is to secure a smoke-free England by 2030. The point of this temporary legislation is to support the hospitality and leisure industries, and our debate was about ensuring no retrograde steps away from our objective of banning smoking in public places. We do not want families who expect to go to a public house and have a smoke-free meal to find that they are exposed to second-hand smoke.

Like my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, I would have liked the Government to have gone a bit further and the guidance to have been more specific—particularly on the points he mentioned, which for brevity’s sake I shall not repeat—but I share his view that the Government’s Amendments 13 and 14 are significant victory. He and his cosignatories to Amendment 15 can take credit for that. I welcome what the Government have done, I hope the House will support Amendments 13 and 14 and that, in consequence, the noble Baroness will not see the need to press Amendment 15.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly in support of Amendment 15, which was so cogently moved by my noble friend and spoken to so persuasively by her co-signatories. In Committee, the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, said:

“The Government recognise the vital importance of health and safety concerns but we do not believe that imposing a condition to prohibit outdoor smoking would be proportionate.”


He also said:

“The case is now incontrovertible that there are dangers from second-hand and passive smoking.”—[Official Report, 13/7/20; col. 1482.]


I acknowledge that the Government have come part way to meet the amendment, but I hope that, even now, they will change their mind.

I want to address the Minister’s proportionality point, especially in the light of his second statement and this Government’s plans for a smoke-free England by 2030. A new survey conducted between 15 April and 20 June 2020 for ASH and UCL has found that more than 1 million people in the UK have stopped smoking since the Covid-19 pandemic hit the country. A further 440,000 smokers tried to quit during that period. Younger smokers have quit at a much greater rate than older ones: around 400,000 people aged 16 to 29 have quit, compared to 240,000 aged over 50. The rate of quitting for 16 to 29 year-olds is more than twice the rate for those over 50. This is quite unprecedented and hugely encouraging for the health of our nation. Given what the Minister has said about the dangers of passive smoking—and given that smoking-related illnesses linked to worse outcomes from Covid-19 include chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, stroke and other heart conditions—is it not proportionate to want to build on the success during lockdown by restricting smoking in public areas in this way, especially as it applies only to these newly permitted outdoor spaces, as my noble friend pointed out?

As fewer people are smoking after lockdown, is it not right to do everything to attract non-smokers back to the outdoor spaces of our hard-pressed pubs, bars and restaurants by providing a smoke-free environment? We are not yet seeing customers return in great numbers—that much is clear from restaurant owners quoted over the weekend. Would this assurance not be of huge benefit in luring them back?

The Government’s amendments are welcome so far as they go, but they are very much half a loaf. I remember only too well that Forest was the principal opponent obstructing my tobacco advertising and sponsorship Bill, and I am sorry that it has been given any credence by this Government.

Amendment 11, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, is also disappointing. It is very disappointing that Labour is not supporting this cross-party amendment, especially when the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, quotes the research from UCL and ASH, and the latter is supporting Amendment 15.

I am not going to rub salt in the wound by reminding her why I had to introduce the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Bill in the first place in 2001. I hope, therefore, that the Government will go the whole way and ensure that the adoption of Amendment 15 will be an important staging post towards a smoke-free Britain.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lansley]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 61 in my name. Indeed, in this group, there are nine amendments, Amendments 61, 62, 64, 68 to 70, 72, 76 and 77, which, in relation to Clauses 17, 18 and 19, all have the effect of moving the extension of planning permissions and listed building consent from three months to four months. I will not, at this late hour, repeat what I said at Second Reading and in rather more detail in Committee. All I want to say is that I very much appreciate that my noble friend the Minister took very seriously what I said in Committee.

We have had some extremely productive conversations on a practical level about what the construction industry’s difficulties might be with the delays in the pipeline. In pursuance of those conversations, I tabled these amendments in the hope that the Minister will tell the House that he is able to accept them. Were he to do so in response to the debate, when the time comes, I will formally move those amendments in my name.

[Lord Campbell of Pittenweem (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I propose to speak only to Amendment 56, tabled by my noble friend Lady Pinnock and to which I have added my name. It is approximately seven hours since this stage of proceedings began. Throughout, I have been reminded endlessly of two lines of a poem by Robert Frost:

“But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep.”

However, noble Lords should not be apprehensive, because I hope only to make some comments in addition to those of my noble friend, to underline what I believe is the very strong case for this amendment.

At Second Reading and again in Committee, I raised the question of the impact on amenity of extending construction hours. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, will forgive me if I say that I have been a little disappointed in the responses, both from him and his noble friend the Minister who has dealt with other parts of the Bill. It is worth reminding ourselves that an extension could go on until 1 April 2021, could be seven days a week and could extend to a whole day. It does not take much to realise that there is considerable potential for impact on the amenity of households, churches, hotels, hospitals and care homes.

It is helpful to ask why planning authorities imposed conditions for working hours. As my noble friend has already indicated, the purpose is to provide a balance, and part of that balance is the protection of amenity. In every instance, an authority will have been required to reach a judgment about how that balance should be constructed. It seems to me that it follows logically that any increase in hours will tilt that balance against amenity and in favour of the applicant.

The difficulty with what we are considering is that we do not know to what extent that may occur on any one of the occasions in which an extension is sought. That is why I believe it is a matter of necessity to require applicants to produce an impact study to the planning authority, together with plans for mitigation. I believe it can reasonably be argued that that is in the interests of both the planning authority and the applicant. First of all, the planning authority is working against a very tight timetable, and, so far as the applicant is concerned, it is obviously in their interest that as much information as possible can be provided to the planning authority. I believe therefore that an impact study is a necessity.

Indeed, I go further than that: the decision of the planning authority is an administrative one, and any administrative decision of this kind could be subject to judicial review. It would be much easier to resist any such application for judicial review if it could be demonstrated that the applicant had produced the impact assessment to which I have referred and that the planning authority had taken it into its considerations.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

61: Clause 17, page 27, line 23, leave out “April” and insert “May”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment will extend the time limit for planning permissions to which subsection (1) applies to 1 May 2021 instead of 1 April 2021.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

64: Clause 17, page 30, line 41, leave out “April” and insert “May”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides for subsections (1) to (5) to expire at the end of 1 May 2021, rather than 1 April 2021.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

68: Clause 18, page 31, line 41, leave out “April” and insert “May”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that a relevant outline planning permission with a reserved matter application time limit as specified under subsection (1) is deemed to have that time limit extended to 1 May instead of 1 April 2021.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

72: Clause 18, page 35, line 32, leave out “April” and insert “May”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides for subsections (1) to (5) to expire at the end of 1 May 2021 instead of 1 April 2021.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

76: Clause 19, page 36, line 32, leave out “April” and insert “May”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides for listed building consents to which subsection (1) applies to have their time limit extended to 1 May 2021 instead of 1 April 2021.

Business and Planning Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 6th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interests in the register as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. I welcome this Bill; I also welcome my noble friend Lord Greenhalgh to his first legislative responsibilities—I hope he enjoys them.

I will talk about the element of Part 3 relating to planning—not the very welcome ability to extend construction working hours; I think local authorities had the ability to do this, but the legislation will equip and encourage them to do so on a much more uniform basis for the benefit of the industry, to keep it moving. I will talk principally about Clauses 17 and 18. If you imagine development as a pipeline of activity, the industry has lost time in it; that time was not intended to be lost under the Government’s guidance, but in practice most businesses and developers were off-site by late March and back on-site only in late June. Clauses 17 and 18 are essentially constructed around the proposition that three months were lost and that, therefore, three months must be added to the pipeline, hence the end of the December has been replaced by 1 April.

Although there is a balance to be struck between keeping development moving and allowing for the delays experienced by the industry, I think three months is insufficient for two reasons. First, when the industry has got back to work, it has not been at 100% capacity. To start off with, it was at 50%; some housebuilders had supply-chain problems; even on Friday, a number with which I checked were operating, at best, at 80% capacity. Additional time will be lost between now and the end of the year. Secondly, the three months lost were April, May and June. The three months added are January, February and March. It is obvious that these are not the best months in which to undertake and commence activity on-site in the building industry. I will come back to this in Committee, but will the Government recognise at this stage that more than three months of additional time must be inserted into the Bill?

Also, why do we have such a wide-ranging requirement for “additional environmental approval”? As things stand, all planning permissions which have expired between 23 March and probably the end of August will require additional environmental approval from local authorities to be extended or revived. That is too much. The industry will feel that it has been promised an extension that turns out to be no more than the ability to apply through a new process with its local authority. More should be done. I will question that in Committee.

Finally, on Clause 20, I share my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham’s desire to reinvigorate the process of enacting the reforms in the Rosewell review and getting the Planning Inspectorate’s time for appeals down. It had come down to about 22 weeks; we need to get it down to that and below. We also have to look hard at what these delays are leading to for local plans. There are many reasons for the delays to local plans—it is not just the Covid-19 crisis—but having so many is not good enough in a plan-led system. It is progressively making development more and more difficult.

Covid-19 Update

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I assure the noble Baroness that they are at the forefront of our mind. Attention is being given to them and further work is ongoing. One thing that I have not mentioned so far is that from 1 August shielding will be paused. Therefore, people who have had the most intense experience during the lockdown will be able to start having social contact again, which we know is incredibly important, and I am sure that they are looking forward to that. From 6 July, those shielding will be able to spend time outdoors in a group of up to six people, including people from outside their household. Of course, support will also continue from the fantastic NHS volunteers, who have done so much to provide some contact for particularly vulnerable people who might not have relatives or family with whom they have been able to have contact.

[Lord Lansley (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interests as entered in the register. This is a health crisis and, for millions of people in this country, visiting a gym or going to a swimming pool is an essential part of their health regime. Can my noble friend now reiterate the Culture Secretary’s aspiration that gyms and leisure facilities will be reopened by mid-July?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I am happy to reiterate that, subject to public health advice, it is indeed our aspiration to reopen gyms and leisure facilities by mid-July.

Covid-19: Strategy

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Tuesday 12th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

If people have symptoms, they should of course self-isolate, along with their household. As we have said all along, it is extremely important that people look after themselves, follow the advice and self-isolate if they think they have any symptoms. We are moving forward from the lockdown in an extremely cautious manner, and it is absolutely imperative that everybody puts their health, and the health of everyone around them, first.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, there is limited evidence about the extent of transmission of the virus between children and between children and adults. Returning to the issue of schools, I wonder whether my noble friend will ask the Government to publish their evidence on transmission of the virus between children. The Government must also look to France, which today is allowing the youngest children back into schools, in a way similar to that proposed for this country from the beginning of June. The Government should perhaps try to acquire data that would give reassurance, not least to teachers, about the safety of young people returning to school.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

We will certainly look at international evidence. As countries come out of their lockdowns at different rates and through different measures, we will of course all learn from that. I assure my noble friend that the Government Office for Science is working to regularly publish the evidence, documents and studies that have formed the basis of SAGE’s discussions and advice to Ministers. We expect that to include the data raised by my noble friend on the reopening of schools.

Prorogation Recall

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

The technical position would be that, if a deal is reached, a withdrawal agreement Bill would be introduced, hopefully for approval by Parliament. We are absolutely clear that there is time to do that. There may be a need to obtain the consent of Parliament to sit at rather unusual hours to do that, but we are clear that it can be done.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My noble friend will recall that the 30 days referred to in the press conference at which the Prime Minister spoke with Chancellor Merkel expire on 21 September. Can he explain by what means this House and the other House might look at any proposals brought forward by the British Government and comment on them?

[Earl Howe]

My noble friend makes the point that during Prorogation it is impossible to do that. The point I was making earlier was that, once Parliament reconvenes, there is in fact ample time for it to consider any proposals that may be on the table.