Covid-19: South Yorkshire

Lord Scriven Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, the last few days have been very unfortunate. Arrogance, spitefulness and divisiveness seem to be the characteristics of the Government’s approach to attempting to control the Covid infection these days. If I were being charitable, I might say that this is a product of panic and not actually knowing what to do next. If I were being less charitable, I would say that it is a characteristic of order by diktat, punishing and humiliating—or trying to—those who will not do as they are told when championing their communities. Thus, instead of dividing communities and bargaining with people’s jobs, there needs to be a one-nation approach to bring this country together, get control of the virus and protect the NHS. We have not seen that this week.

The Mayor of Greater Manchester said that he felt that the Government were

“playing poker with places and people’s lives through a pandemic”.

He asked what that is about. Is that the politics of the Prime Minister, Mr Cummings and the Cabinet?

To underline what we are facing, on Tuesday, the number of UK deaths rose by 241—the highest daily reported rise since the first wave of the pandemic. Noble Lords might remember the ridicule Patrick Vallance suffered when his chart suggested that an unchecked virus would lead to 200 deaths a day by mid-November; we are in mid-October and we are at 241. Similarly scary were Jonathan Van-Tam’s charts showing rising hospitalisation of the over-60s and the NHS medical director Stephen Powis saying that, on Wednesday, Liverpool hospitals will have as many Covid patients as they did at the height of the pandemic in April, and that Manchester hospitals will face the same record in two weeks’ time.

If I might be political about this, I remind the Minister that many of the new MPs from those seats on which the Government’s majority depends are learning the hard way what they signed up for: a great deal more than an oven-ready Brexit and quite the opposite of levelling up. They will have to go to their communities and justify: what the Government are doing and not doing; why children might not be properly fed over the winter months; why there will be a huge unemployment rate and businesses going to the wall; and, indeed, why the Covid infection rate is not responding to the sacrifices already being made in South Yorkshire, Manchester and other places in the north and the Midlands.

I will repeat some of the questions put in the Commons by my right honourable friend the leader of the Labour Party; perhaps I might get more coherent responses than he achieved. He asked,

“how does an area which goes into tier 3 restrictions get out of those restrictions? … If the infection rate, R, in a tier 3 area has not come below 1, will it be possible in any circumstances for that area to come out of tier 3”?—[Official Report, Commons, 21/10/20; col. 1053.]

If the criteria is not the R rate being under one, what is the criteria for moving from one tier to another? Millions of people need to know the answer to that question; millions of them are in tier 3 and millions are more likely to go into tier 3.

Last Friday, the Chief Scientific Officer said that tier 3 on its own would certainly not be enough to get the R rate below one but, on the same day, the Prime Minister said that there was only one chance of getting the infection rate down. So I repeat my right honourable friend’s question: which is it? Let us try to find some clarification on the confusion. There is still no clarity about how any local area gets out of tier 3 restrictions, nor any guarantees that communities will get the funding that they need to save jobs and businesses. I hope that they will but I am not sure that they will.

Sheffield went into tier 2 restrictions a week last Wednesday. Did Ministers make the wrong judgment a week ago or has new evidence that was not apparent then come to light, because it has now been put into tier 3? How many other areas in tier 2, such as those that neighbour South Yorkshire—including Bradford, my hometown, North East Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire —face the same fate as Sheffield? Can the Minister tell us how long South Yorkshire will be in this tier 3 lockdown? I repeat again: does the nationwide R number need to fall below one? What happens if Doncaster gets below one? Will it be able to leave lockdown?

Finally, I turn to shielding because it was suspended a few months ago, as noble Lords might recall. As we move into tier 3 and while all the science seems to suggest that the infection rate is creeping up the age groups, what will happen to shielding? Dr Stephen Griffin, associate professor in the School of Medicine at the University of Leeds, said:

“Critically, I am aghast that shielding remains paused. Whilst it saddens me to see that this is once again our only recourse to protect those most vulnerable to COVID, they must be enabled both socially and financially to protect themselves once more. Whatever transpires as a result of policy, it must be accompanied by a return to the commitments made earlier this year. Most importantly, testing”


has to work properly. His comments came after the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Jonathan Van-Tam, expressed his concern for the rate of change in infections among the over-60s across the nation.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a resident of Sheffield and, knowing the area well, as a former leader of Sheffield City Council. I note that I will not be the only former leader of Sheffield City Council who will speak on this Statement; unusually, we will probably both agree with each other again.

We have to remind ourselves that going into any of these tiers, particularly very high, and a blanket lockdown is a failure of one thing: an effective test, trace and isolate system. Countries that have that do not have to have blanket lockdowns; it is absolutely vital that the Government understand that.

There is beginning to be a feeling of a north/south divide on this. It is ironic that Greater Manchester has not had any extra support for jobs when it has been in the equivalent of tier 2 for quite a few months. It is telling that, just a couple of days after London goes into tier 2, suddenly the Chancellor is on his feet talking about a tier 2 system for extra job support.

Having spoken to a number of people in South Yorkshire over the last 24 hours, let me tell you what the feeling is: anxiety, fear and uncertainty. I have spoken to people in tears, who have a business and who just do not understand why they are asked to do things. I reiterate the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton: you cannot plan a business or your life if you have no idea of the criteria and the trigger points for being released from tier 3. This cannot be left to a number of suits in an office, deciding the livelihoods and the businesses of many areas. What are the criteria and the trigger points for release and for going into a certain tier—not just tier 3? They need to be public, not the private judgments of people in a private meeting.

Also, why is the support package per head and not more nuanced? The support package for people in Sheffield is £29 per head—£30 million for business and £11 million for public health—but why is it a flat rate? When we know that older people, BAME communities and deprived people are more affected, why is there not a weighting in an area for those particular issues? They are the ones who will be greatly affected and more spending will be needed. Again, why is the business support package per capita? Why is it not based on the number and type of businesses that will be affected? Why does the formula seem so out of sync with what local areas will need to do?

I am pleased that there is support, at only £8 per head, for public health, which includes a local test, trace and isolate system. From this support, apart from money, what extra resources and expertise will local areas in South Yorkshire be able to call on to implement an effective localised test, trace and isolate system? We want to do our bit in South Yorkshire but we want to see fairness and a package that will minimise the effect of this high-level rate on both businesses and people.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Bethell) (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, put the sense of jeopardy and anxiety about the current situation extremely well. Anyone providing for their family or running a business will feel a huge amount of anxiety or even deep concern about the prospects for the next few months, and that is completely understandable. That is why we take all these matters incredibly seriously, why we are focused on it as a Government, and why we have made it such a large priority. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, put the grave sense of jeopardy extremely well when she referenced the Vallance graph, which was so derided when it was first posted and which has come to haunt us since then, the clear sense of concern from Jonathan Van-Tam, and the description of the state of our hospitals and intensive care units from Steve Powis. All those were grave warnings and have come to play out in a way that I am afraid worries us all.

At the heart of this debate is a question about the local lockdowns. They are necessary for those very reasons I just described. The infection rates have gone through the roof, they are profound, and they are having an impact right through all the demographics. In many cases they may have started in universities and with young people but they have moved relentlessly through the age demographics and are leading to hospitals filling up in a way that any mathematician, or anyone like me with an O-level in maths, can see is completely unsustainable without a major intervention. Our priority is to try to manage those interventions in a way that strikes the right balance, preserving the economy, keeping the schools open and keeping our lives as normal as possible, but which has an impact on the transmission of the disease. That is why these local lockdowns are so very important, because they are a way of introducing targeted measures to populations in a way that can close down the spread of the disease within a community.

When we say “community”, one of the lessons we have learned is that people travel within their regions a great deal, so we cannot be laser-like and targeted and just shut down a street, a town or a village. We have learned that we have to apply it to substantial regions; otherwise, the disease rolls from one small community to the next. Making these local lockdowns work is not in any particular government interest but in all of our interests. I ask noble Lords to step back from the temptation to introduce party politics into a subject which is driven by genuine public health concerns. It does not help anyone to talk in terms of north-south divides, people being at each other’s throats, scum, or any of the other political rhetoric that has been associated with the last week.

I come back to something that I have said many times at this Dispatch Box. It has been derided by those on the Benches opposite but it remains true and I see it every day of the week. There is a huge amount of bilateral and multilateral dialogue between central government and the agencies of central government—including the Cabinet Office, the DHSC, BEIS, MHCLG, NHS Test and Trace, and the NHS—and those in the regions and in the DAs. There are massive weekly calls, such as the one between the CMO and the DPHs, the one between the BEIS Secretary of State and the business community up and down the country, and the Thursday call between the MHCLG and 350 council chief executives and leaders. There is a relentless drumbeat of engagement and a huge amount of engagement on a one-to-one basis, as was shown by the revealing telephone logs of those on the phone to the mayor of Manchester on Wednesday, which seems to suggest that he was much more in touch with central government than perhaps was apparent from his photo call. I reassure the Chamber that that spirit of partnership to get the local national partnership working is genuine, backed by substantial amounts of money—£1 billion has been pledged for local authorities to support the local lockdown policy—and it is in all our interests to get this to work.

If it does not work, and if there is not the political leadership and trust at a community basis in the efficacy of this approach, we have only one choice. I am looking at the SAGE table which I have in front of me, and it is really clear. These kinds of tactical interventions can knock a point or two off R. However, the only way of knocking an integer off R is a national, home-based lockdown. That is the alternative: that we all go back to March and April, to being at home, with shops closed and no travel. If this local lockdown policy does not work, that is where we will end up, and that is why we are committed to working as hard as we can.

I pay tribute to the large number of those involved in local government at all levels who have worked really hard in their communities to make it work. We are here to talk about Lancashire, and I pay tribute to those in Lancashire who have agreed to and in fact called for the lockdown there. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, and the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, are right on the exit strategy. It is absolutely critical that everyone understands what the exit strategy is, and our focus needs to be on that. But I can tell your Lordships that it takes a lot longer to get out than it does to get in. The ramp up is a lot steeper than the ramp down, and it is a big struggle that will need the support of individuals, households, streets, communities, local authorities, regions, mayors and the national resources to make it work. I very much appeal for collaboration in this matter and hope that we can move on from what the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, rightly characterised as a bit of an unseemly scramble this week.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton asked about shielding, which is incredibly important. We wrote to the shielding list on 13 October. That letter struck the balance between the need to protect those who are vulnerable and to take on board the feedback from many, including those in the Chamber today, that extreme shielding—locking up those who are vulnerable —does not support their mental health and will have massive consequences for them personally and for their communities. Therefore, the advice we have provided, in consultation with charities and groups representing those who are being shielded, strikes the right balance.

The noble Lord said something that I need to knock on the head in a big way, because it is a very destructive and counterproductive idea. He said that the fact that we are bringing in local lockdowns is itself proof of the failure of test and trace. That is simply not true. The only way to beat the virus is through the principal interaction of “hands, face, space”. You cannot break the virus’s spread entirely by isolating those who, retrospectively, you have identified as having the disease. That will never work, and we have never claimed it will work. SAGE and the Royal Society have been very clear that the impact of test and trace is complementary but it is not unique. The idea that local lockdowns are somehow solely and uniquely caused by the failure of test and trace takes the responsibility for beating the virus away from individuals, communities, employers, local authorities and the Government. With the greatest respect, I plead with the noble Lord to move away from that rhetoric, because it undermines the public communication of the importance of “hands, face, space”.

I return to my opening remarks. No one could take the development of these local lockdowns more seriously than the Government. It is done with huge regret. We can see perhaps the flattening of some numbers in some places that would indicate that local lockdowns are having an impact. It is too early to call at this stage. However, I live in hope that they will have the impact that we desire, and I live in fear that they will not.