Public Health

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Steve Brine]

I do not think I would call directors of public health “activists”, although I understand that some of them play it very differently from us. It is the job of this place to get legislation and regulations right, and if we draft them in a way that makes them so wide, so loose and so flexible that any director of public health could be an “activist” if so minded, it will lie at this door, not that door. I should like the Minister, in summing up the debate, to define “suspected”, because I think there is an element of the Salem witch trials in this. What is a “suspected” case? I should like an answer from the Dispatch Box, please, before I am asked to vote for this measure.

I said in the House yesterday that the regulations, in and of themselves, were relatively mild. I have already talked about face coverings. What concerns me is the chilling effect that this is having on the rest of our society. The fact that No. 10 Downing Street, the centre of government, has taken to the national newspapers today to ask head teachers not to cancel nativity plays because of the announcement that we made on Saturday night makes me ask, “What on earth are we doing?”

We should think of the effect that this is having on confidence, on society and on hospitality. Those in hospitality have put everything into this Christmas in order to survive and to save their year. There is nothing in these regulations that says Christmas parties must be cancelled—unless, of course, Dr Harries is in charge—but there is everything in the language and the narrative coming out of the Government right now that is causing Christmas parties to be cancelled left, right and centre. I have seen organisations in my constituency cancel events that were due to happen within the next few weeks, on a “just in case” basis. These regulations will have a chilling effect, and we should not underestimate that just because it is not written in black and white.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Business Secretary should have been involved in these decisions? Does he share my concern about that? I have received several emails from travel companies in my constituency whose potential bookings have dropped off a cliff because of the cost of PCR tests. My hon. Friend mentioned a “chilling effect”, but it goes deeper than that: there is also a huge impact on business. If these regulations are to be implemented, it must surely be done hand in hand with the Chancellor and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

[Steve Brine]

Having been a Minister of the Crown, I hope that the regulations have been through the right-round process, albeit an accelerated right-round process, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right. It will worry the travel industry that the regulations that have not been subject to a motion today are not being debated in the House—and yes, I am greatly concerned. I have to say that I agree with the Opposition about departure testing. Other countries, such as the Netherlands, have introduced it. I do not think that the Opposition have had an answer from Ministers about why they have not chosen to do the same, and I should like to hear an answer in the Minister’s winding-up speech.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

The Liberal Democrats will support the regulations, but we have grave concerns about whether the Government are doing enough to protect people, to protect the NHS, and to buy scientists the time that they need in order to learn more about the new variant.

We know that masks are effective. We know that they reduce transmission, and they are a small price to pay for the guaranteeing of all our other freedoms. They also allow the clinically extremely vulnerable to leave their homes, which many of them have not done for a very long time. They continue to shield, cut off from society, because they do not have the confidence even to enter a shop or board a bus. I am worried by the Secretary of State’s pledge to abandon masks in a few weeks’ time if omicron proves to be no more dangerous than the delta variant, because the delta variant is still dangerous, and the NHS is already on its knees before we go into the worst of the winter.

I wish there were more support for those in self-isolation. For too long, the support has been too stingy and too hard to access. We must create a sense among people that it is their civic duty to self-isolate if they are asked to do so, and if the Government ask people to self-isolate, they must step up and provide proper financial support. I would also like to see the reintroduction of the encouragement to “work from home if you can” from the Government. The colleagues have also mentioned ventilation, on which the Government have been far too slow to act. In schools right across England, people have been crying out for ventilation for months and months, but the Government have been dragging their heels.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I want to pick up on the hon. Lady’s comment about working from home. I say gently to her that a great many of my constituents have businesses that thrive on footfall in the city centre of Leeds, and that the working from home encouragement had a devastating impact on their ability to earn a living. When people say, “Let’s just work from home again”, they must recognise that there would be a very large economic impact on a great number of my constituents if that were to happen.

[Daisy Cooper]

I take that point. We know that many of these measures often result in a lose-lose situation. A real problem over the past 18 months has been the way in which people have tried to frame this as public health versus the economy, because for me, having a strong and healthy workforce and a strong and healthy economy are two sides of the same coin. Notwithstanding that, I am encouraging the Government to ask people to work from home where they can, in order to strike the right balance that would reduce levels of transmission. I am not suggesting a blanket mandate for everybody to stay at home; I am suggesting encouraging people to work at home where they can, in a balanced way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I hope the hon. Lady accepts that people should be free to make their own decision on whether they wish to be vaccinated. I am therefore extremely nervous about backdoor proposals to require vaccine passports. I do not believe people’s freedom should be conditional on taking compulsory medication, which is why I am against the provisions in the Health and Care Bill on compulsory fluoridation. To that extent, I am probably on the same side of the argument as she is.

A mood of increasing intolerance is being engendered towards those who have a reasonable excuse for not wearing a face covering. Paragraph 7.8 of the explanatory memorandum makes it clear

“people do not need to show proof of this reasonable excuse”

but that is not being promoted by the Government. Regulation 5 says:

“For the purposes of regulations 3(1) and 4(1), the circumstances in which a person (“P”) has a reasonable excuse include”—

this is the important point—

“those where P cannot put on, wear or remove a face covering because of any physical or mental illness or impairment, or disability…or without severe distress”.

That is one reasonable excuse, but there are many others. The Government seem to be rather conflicted or muddled, because paragraph 7.8 of the explanatory memorandum says:

“Nobody who has a reasonable excuse and is therefore not wearing a face covering should be prevented from visiting any setting because of the requirements in these Regulations. Furthermore, people do not need to show proof of this reasonable excuse under the Regulations.”

In other words, people do not have to show a face covering exemption certificate, such as this one from Hidden Disabilities. I see quite a lot of people wearing these certificates but, as soon as people have to wear them, they are asked questions, “Well, what are your disabilities?” Most of my disabilities are well hidden, and I intend to keep them hidden. It is unreasonable that we should be creating an environment in which people are being challenged, and being encouraged to be challenged, on their personal and private health.

That brings me to the conflicting content of paragraph 12.3 of the explanatory memorandum. It may just be a misprint, but it says:

“The Department has also included a range of exemptions to ensure that this policy does not unfairly discriminate against those with protected characteristics. Furthermore, the policy will be supported by a communications campaign that will make clear that some people are exempt from these regulations and people should be challenged by members of the public for not wearing a face covering.”

Surely it should say “should not be challenged”. I do not understand it, because paragraph 15.3 says:

“Maggie Throup, the Parliamentary under Secretary of State”—

she is sitting on the Front Bench—

“can confirm that this Explanatory Memorandum meets the required standard.”

If it was indeed a misprint, the explanatory memorandum does not meet the required standard. If it is not a misprint, it is a serious contradiction within the explanatory memorandum and seriously undermines people’s freedom to go about their business without having impertinent remarks and questions put to them by busybodies acting on behalf of enforcement authorities.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

My hon. Friend has been a Member of this House far longer than I have. Is there a mechanism where that could be clarified before today’s vote?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

The mechanism is for the Minister to intervene on me, and I am happy to give way to her, to say that it is a misprint, or it is a deliberate confusion—it is to confuse the punters, so we can have it both ways. That might be the response of a Liberal Democrat, were there one on the Front Bench. I hope that the Minister will be able to respond to that serious point.

Obviously, people out there will be wondering about exemptions and reasonable excuses. The hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who chairs the Select Committee on Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, drew attention in his intervention to the fact that young people are going around in shopping centres saying that they have a reasonable excuse for not complying with the regulations and for not wearing face masks. What is the problem with that? If people have a reasonable excuse for not wearing face coverings, let us not get too fussed about it. That is why these regulations are part of a scaremongering propaganda campaign on the part of the Government that is designed to try to stop or restrict social interaction between social animals who happen to be living in the United Kingdom. That is potentially the most damaging aspect of the regulations before us today: they are designed to suppress freedom of the individual and to suppress social contact and they are doing that through unreasonable fearmongering.

[Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

Yesterday, I intervened on the Secretary of State and during his statement he repeated to me:

“we will not keep measures in place for a day longer than necessary.”—[Official Report, 29 November 2021; Vol. 704, c. 679.]

With that assurance in mind, I thought I would come to listen to this debate and speak on behalf of the transport sector, which relates to my Select Committee, willing to support these measures as proportionate measures in circumstances where we do not know whether the new variant will have an impact on transmissibility and on our vaccine effectiveness. On regulations 1340, on face coverings, I can get there in that regard because they expire on 20 December and they are well set out. I have concerns about the way the transport sector is somewhat singled out, albeit with retail, as perhaps being an unsafe setting, whereas hospitality is marked differently. If we put £10 billion into the rail network alone just to keep it going, sending out a message that it is a less safe setting than a pub or restaurant will not be the way to give people confidence to get back on to that network which we need to survive.

I also have concerns about what happens on the buses, given what I witnessed today. That may well have been because people had not tuned into this debate and did not realise that these regulations had already come into force. People are still getting on board without a face covering. Despite the powers given to drivers to ensure that they do not do so, there is no questioning and on they go. Not only does that wind people up, but it leaves others thinking, “What’s the point in bothering? If not everyone is wearing a mask, what’s the purpose of anyone wearing one?” However, I can get there on those regulations because of the unknowns that we need to deal with.

One of the wonderful things about coming into this Chamber is to be educated. I might make the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) has made: perhaps more of us can come here and be educated. I have grave concerns about the issues around regulation 1338, on self-isolation. If the aim is for us to be covered for no longer than is necessary, why do they have no end date and default to 24 March? The impact of these regulations is even greater than our having to wear a face covering for longer periods because, as has been mentioned, we could well be back to “pingdemic” territory.

I emphasise that the regulations mean that, regardless of a vaccination having been given, one has to self-isolate for a period of time if there is a suspicion that one has been in contact with someone who has the omicron variant. Right now, and perhaps for the period up to 20 December, I can understand that the suspicion would perhaps be linked, as the transmission rates are slower to build—one would hope that would be so for the next few weeks—to whether one had been in contact with someone who had been in South Africa, or something on those lines. If, however, we move to 24 March and the variant has spread fast but, as we hope, it has not had a negative impact on the vaccine, we could see the default option being, “I have come into contact with somebody who has covid. I did not know whether they had omicron or not, because that does not tell me that. Therefore, I must be cautious, as we are always told to be. Therefore, I must self-isolate.” Then we could see the whole country being pinged again, as it has been before.

The situation could even be worse than that. If it turns out, as is currently being discussed in South Africa, that although the strain may transmit quickly it may not have the same impact as even the delta variant, stopping people being out and about may make things worse, because they will not get the antibodies that we want them to get. Surely those on our Front Bench are aware of that. The beta variant was a variant of concern, and the amber-plus regulations were brought in, as there was a concern that beta would have been worse against the vaccine than delta. It turned out that one dose of AstraZeneca was more effective against the beta strain than two doses of it were against delta. So variants of concern can quickly turn out not to be a concern at all.

That is why we must make sure that our legislation stops and is flexible and nimble, yet these regulations will roll on until 24 March. That is what our job in this place is about; I can agree in principle that there is a need to take measures, but I cannot vote for legislation that does not actually do what I believe the Government intended it to do. There are options, and they can be used right now. The Minister could stand at the Dispatch Box and find a way to reassure those of us who have the same concern. Alternatively, the default option for me is to vote against this legislation, not because I disagree with the principle, but because I disagree with voting for legislation that I know to be poor, badly drafted and not to meet the intention. Surely we should not be stubborn and pig-headed when legislation does not work; we should fix it or we should vote against it.

I have one last point to make in relation to a motion that I thought would be before us but is not—one that deals with the restrictions on travel and the introduction of PCR testing. Yesterday, the Secretary of State also reassured me that PCR testing would not be expensive and that we would not be at the mercy of unscrupulous providers, as we saw happen during the summer. A wise person just told me about an incidence of a three-hour PCR test, which many will need to take in order not to have to self-isolate—that is good for the economy—costing more than £200. Why are these regulations being laid under the negative procedure? We need to be discussing that legislation and finding the pitfalls, as we have with the regulations before us—I applaud my colleagues for doing so this afternoon—yet they are not even being brought forward.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I wish to return to the point I made earlier, and I wonder whether my hon. Friend shares my genuine concern. As he said, we are here today because of a variant that has been discovered. More variants are going to be discovered and the cost of the PCR test will make people think carefully about going abroad, and that is going to have a devastating impact on the high street, travel agents and holidays. Does he agree that this issue has to be taken as a whole, and that it cannot be separated out so that every time there is a variant we say that we have to shut everything down?

[Huw Merriman]

I do agree with that, and it is a good point for me to end on. Let us look at not just the consumer, but those who work in aviation. Some 5,000 jobs have been lost on a monthly basis since February 2020 in that area; this has been an absolute disaster for the aviation and international travel sector, and for those who want to trade around the world. We had just started to see the easing of restrictions, with no damage to public health at all. My right hon. Friend is right to say that we need to learn lessons. It is okay for us to take tentative steps perhaps this once, on a limited basis, but we cannot keep shutting down parts of the economy every time there may be a variant of concern. Otherwise, to quote the Prime Minister, we will never “live with” this virus.