Covid-19: Contracts and Public Inquiry
Andrew Bowie Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Ian Blackford
If the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine would like to stand up and defend what his Government have been doing, and Tory cronyism, he can be my guest.
Andrew Bowie
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. I respectfully suggest that before he starts throwing stones at the UK Government, he looks at his own Government’s record in Edinburgh. Over 160 contracts awarded by the Scottish Government, worth £539 million from NHS Scotland, the Scottish Government and Scottish local authorities, were awarded during the pandemic to suppliers with no competitive process. It is quite clear that every Government on these islands and around the world were dealing with an unprecedented situation and rushing to save lives. Exactly the same was going on in Edinburgh as was happening in London, and for him to stand up and claim it is “Tory cronyism” does not dignify him or this place.
Ian Blackford
I am afraid to say that the lack of dignity in the Conservative Government is what is at stake here. The Scottish Government’s processes on procurement were open and transparent—that is the difference with what has taken place in this place.
Let me give a couple of other examples. A company run by a former business associate of the Tory peer Baroness Mone was awarded a £122 million contract seven weeks after the company was formed—my goodness, who has ever heard of such a thing? Another company, owned by a Tory donor, that supplied beauty products to high street stores was awarded a £65 million contract to produce face masks. Public First, which was awarded a £560,000 contract by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to conduct polling on the Union, was run by a former employee of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Colleagues, right hon. and hon. Members, there is a thread that runs right through this. Incidentally, we have yet to see any of the research into support for Scottish independence: perhaps the Government did not like what they found.
Ian Blackford
If the right hon. Gentleman tries, he might catch your eye later on in the debate, Mr Speaker. I think we have heard enough of him from a sedentary position. [Interruption.] Government Members can carry on—there might not be that many of them, but my goodness they make a hullabaloo as they try to shut down and shout down the representatives of Scotland who are here to stand up for our constituents. [Interruption.] Yeah, carry on, carry on.
Ian Blackford
Well, well, well. We are not the representatives of the people of Scotland? Let me remind the hon. Gentleman that we have just won an election to the Scottish Parliament. Thank goodness that we have a Parliament that has a majority that can take Scotland out of this Union, into the future of an independent Scotland back in the European Union and away from the Tory sleaze and corruption that I am outlining this afternoon.
It was just last week that I asked my urgent question from this spot on the misuse of public funds in covid contracts, but since then the revelations of cronyism have continued. As revealed by The Sunday Times, Lord Bethell has something in common with his close friend the former Health Secretary: he failed to declare meetings—27 meetings that we know of, with companies that went on to receive £1 billion-worth of covid contracts. Puzzlingly, despite having had—wait for it—no relevant experience, Lord Bethell took ministerial responsibility for Test and Trace. His only qualification seemed to be that he was a long-time close friend of the then Health Secretary who happened to chair and donate thousands of pounds to his failed Tory leadership campaign. Lord Bethell also provided Ms Coladangelo with a parliamentary pass to the Houses of Parliament despite her not undertaking any work for the peer. This has rightly been referred to the House of Lords Commissioners for Standards. It prompts the question: why is Lord Bethell still in post?
Such examples of Tory cronyism and multimillion-pound deals in the pockets of Tory friends are difficult to digest. It is hard, looking at this covid contracts scandal, to conclude anything other than that Westminster is rotten to the core. As well as unlawful covid contracts, we have seen dodgy donations to refurbish the Downing Street flat, peerages handed to billionaire Tory donors, and offers of tax breaks by text. The Scottish Government have committed to a public inquiry on the covid pandemic to start this year. The UK Government must do the same.
Those of us on these Benches know Scotland can do better. We are doing better and we could go further still with the powers of independence. While NHS heroes received a measly and insulting 1% pay rise from the UK Government, the Scottish Government pledged 4% with a £500 one-off thank you. While 3 million people are excluded from UK Government support, the SNP will continue to argue for them and stand up for them. While Tory aid cuts mean that the global fight against the virus is hindered, we will continue to make the case that none of us will be free from the threat of covid-19 until it is eradicated from all around the world.
Support in Scotland for the First Minister remains steadfast, while the Prime Minister continues to be incredibly unpopular. A recent Ashcroft poll of Scottish voters found support for Nicola Sturgeon to be the highest of all party leaders, and common descriptions used for the First Minister were “determined” and “competent”. By comparison, the Prime Minister was commonly referred to as being dishonest, arrogant, out of touch and out of his depth. When it comes to our recovery from the pandemic, the question for Scots will be: who do you trust to lead us? For many Scots, the answer is becoming clearer and clearer with every passing day.
Gavin Newlands
With apologies, I will not, just because of time.
Some £108 million was given to a company with net assets of £18,000, another £108 million was given to a company small enough to be exempt from publishing full accounts, and £252 million was given to a company advised by an individual who was also an adviser to the UK Board of Trade. There is no allegation that those companies have done anything wrong themselves. Many would say that their job is to make money—and that they certainly did. But the Government’s job was not to enrich obscure micro-companies with nine-figure sums, but to equip our public services with the equipment to do their job safely and to ensure value for money in the process.
In each of the cases, the Government have fought tooth and nail to hide behind secrecy and use the pandemic as an excuse for ignoring the norms of transparency and accountability that are there for a very good reason. That abandonment of transparency was then used by the Minister for the Cabinet Office to commission polling into attitudes to the UK Union at a cost of more than half a million pounds.
Like most people dealing with the effects of the pandemic, I struggle to see why polling aimed entirely at promoting the Government’s political agenda can in any way be classed as emergency procurement. It is shabby, disreputable and a complete misuse of what should be a carefully used and monitored short-circuiting of normal procurement rules.
It is also just a little ironic that the Conservative party, which almost hourly accuses the SNP and others of being obsessed with the constitution, demonstrates its own myopic obsession with the Union by using the cover of a national and international health emergency to do so.
No one is suggesting that routes should not be available for the Government in times of real crisis to act swiftly and decisively outside what the norms are during relative periods of calm. Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures, and we were and are still living in extraordinary times. But the evidence that has emerged—forced, bit by bit, out of the Government, against their will at every step of the way—shows how the measures have been abused by a cabal who appear no longer to care about probity and transparency, but instead to have been caught in the act of shifting millions out of the back door when no one was looking.
The Prime Minister has promised a “full, proper public inquiry” into the covid pandemic, which of course I welcome. But as others have said, there is no need to wait. That inquiry must also include a full and open examination of the Government’s procurement policies, with every one of these deals open to public scrutiny. Those who have attempted throughout the past 16 months to hide their dealings from Parliament and from the public must be called to account for their actions and asked to explain why.
There is a way for Scots to be rid of these spivs, speculators—
Gavin Newlands
If the hon. Gentleman wants to intervene, he is more than welcome—if he is very brief.
Andrew Bowie
I might finish the hon. Gentleman’s speech for him because I am quite sure that I know what his next line will be. I will let him continue to finish his speech.
Gavin Newlands
I am very grateful for that intervention; that was very useful. But the hon. Gentleman’s groans were indeed correct: I am going to talk about our way out of this, which is through independence. No number of attempts from the hon. Gentleman or the Front Benchers in front of him to muddy the waters by briefing on changing the voting franchise will stop it from coming. At the end of the day, the UK Government’s actions such as those we are debating today, when combined with Brexit, make Scottish independence absolutely inevitable. In their dying days, and as we witness what counts as a Government in this place, the time cannot come quickly enough.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
It is a pleasure to rise to speak in the debate this afternoon. I shall start by wishing all my English constituents, my English staff and even my English colleagues the best of luck in this evening’s semi-final. I do hope that England are successful in bringing football home to the island on which the modern game of football was created. Of course, like all the best things in the modern world, the modern game of football was invented in Scotland. Maybe next time, in Qatar in 2022, we will see the World cup going home to its real home at Hampden Park in Glasgow.
Since my election in 2017, I have become well used to the SNP’s tactic in Opposition day debates of mixing rank opportunism with righteous indignation and manufactured grievance. But today, we have seen the gall and the sheer brass neck of the Scottish National party. It takes some beating for the party in government in Scotland, the party responsible for public health north of the border, to come here to this place and put forward a motion on, of all things, covid-19 in the week when Scotland was declared by the World Health Organisation to have six of the top 10 covid hotspots in Europe.
I was now going to launch into a few well-constructed jokes about the Cabinet Secretary for Health disapparating, grabbing his invisibility cloak and using the Floo Network to get to the Harry Potter Studios in Watford. However—I mean this sincerely—everybody at all levels of all the Governments in the United Kingdom has been under immense pressure over the past year and a half, and who can begrudge any Minister in any position of responsibility taking some time to spend with their family, who have borne the brunt of the pressure they have been under? So I will refrain from attacking the Cabinet Secretary for Health, and I hope he enjoys the precious time he gets to spend with his children over the next few days.
This is not a laughing matter. Scotland is already leading the continent in terms of drugs deaths, but we are now leading it in terms of covid cases contracted, and this is putting at real risk Scotland’s own freedom day on 9 August. This is under a party whose leader claimed that the strategy north of the border was to eradicate covid. That would be incredible; we would be the first country in the world to do it. The SNP seems to be having about as much success in achieving that aim as it does in improving educational standards in schools, meeting the R100 broadband roll-out deadline, establishing Welfare Scotland or developing a new farm payments system. No wonder it scrapped the Scottish Qualifications Authority, for if there was an examination in good government, the Scottish National party would get a “must try harder” and a big F.
The reverse Midas touch of the SNP is quite incredible to behold, but this is incredibly serious. We have heard Scottish National party Members talking this afternoon about test and trace. They call it the failing test and trace, but I think it is a world-leading test and trace system. Let us compare it to how test and protect is operating north of the border. Test and protect is operating at its slowest-ever rate, and in the week ending 27 June, only 29% of positive individuals were interviewed within 24 hours of appearing on the case management system. If we are to escape from these awful restrictions that everybody on these islands is living under, we must have a functioning test and trace system. Again, the SNP must try harder.
It is true that vaccination in Scotland for covid-19 continues apace, even if the roll-out has slowed in recent weeks, and we are of course forever grateful to our amazing NHS workers—in my case, in NHS Grampian—and to the volunteers and the armed forces for their tireless efforts and the speed at which they are building the wall of protection that will get us back to normal. But there is a certain irony that the one part of the covid response that is working well in Scotland at the minute is the part that is solely as a result of Scotland being part of our United Kingdom. It is because this UK Government took the decisions they did, moved at the pace they did and invested what and when they did that we are leading the world in terms of vaccination, allowing us to dream of a day when masks are something we save for guising at Halloween and when we need never again use that awful term “social distancing”. Not that we would know any of that from a party that is reluctant even to use the full name of our world-leading Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, should it in some way indicate that the people of Scotland are benefiting from our working together as one United Kingdom.
I could accept all that. After more than 10 years of being in Scottish politics at some level or another, I would expect all of that from a party for whom taking responsibility is anathema—indeed, I have concluded that the Scottish National party wants to take Scotland back into the EU only because, without Westminster, it needs somebody else to point the finger of blame at for its mistakes—but this motion really takes the biscuit. It takes the hypocrisy that we are so used to from the Government in Edinburgh to whole new levels—and, for me, whole new levels of incredulity.
For a party that refuses to deliver on a manifesto commitment to hold a public inquiry into covid in Scotland to come down here and call for a covid inquiry in this place, and for a party that wants to see an end to the UK, and that uses every single opportunity afforded to it to emphasise the differences between our two nations to seek to break up this country, suddenly to suggest that it would be untoward or improper for the Scottish Government to hold their own inquiry before the UK Government did the same, is quite a change of tack, particularly when that party usually grabs any chance to show that it is leading the United Kingdom or moving faster in some way.
That party has also come here today to complain about the process for issuing emergency covid-19 contracts. As has been said, this country, along with every country and every Government in the world, was dealing with an unprecedented situation a year and a half ago. We were moving heaven and earth to protect the British people the length and breadth of our country. We know that Governments moved faster to try to protect people, because the Scottish Government did exactly the same thing. They awarded over a billion pounds in covid contracts without tender and with no competitive process, including, but not exclusively, for call centres, PPE, housing and care contracts, IT support, hand sanitiser and consultancy work.
It is astounding to hear SNP Members complain that MPs came to this place and represented to the Government companies, organisations and individuals in their constituencies who had ideas, mechanisms or inventions that could ease the pressure on the NHS and save lives. Surely Members of Parliament are supposed to represent businesses and individuals in our constituencies who could help in a crisis. That is certainly what I did when an individual caught me at a rather inopportune moment. I happened to be giving blood at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary in Foresterhill when a constituent recognised me from across the room and started telling me all about his great idea for a new ventilation system. He had me tied to the spot, I am afraid, and I was all ears. I went on to represent his company and his ideas to Ministers. I have no idea whether his idea or invention was successful, but I know that I did what I should have done and took that idea to the people who could make a difference, so that it could save lives in this United Kingdom.
Goodness me, was I quite amazed to hear SNP Members raising the use of private emails to conduct Government business? That from the Scottish National party, whose leader’s office last year advised people that the First Minister would use only her party email address and that urgent matters should be sent only to her private SNP account, not her Government account. That from the Scottish National party, whose Ministers now seem to communicate exclusively by Signal and whose use of public money to further their own political ends is blatant and routine.
The time for inquiries will come. There will undoubtedly be questions for senior members of both Governments, who were thrust into an impossible and unprecedented situation and urged to act quickly and urgently for the public good. However, this House, and indeed this country, should have no truck with, and should take no lectures in good government from, a party that is failing Scotland and failing the Scottish people and whose arrogance in power grows by the day. There is less than five years until the next Scottish election. For the sake of my country, it cannot come a day too soon.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
There is less than 10 minutes left and there are three people to contribute, so—
Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon), but it is distasteful to listen to the braggadocious glee from the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) when he celebrates the increased rate of covid cases in Scotland—
Andrew Bowie
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Could you advise me on how we can correct the record, because the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Neale Hanvey) has distorted what I said only a few minutes ago? Never once did I express any glee at the record number of cases on the SNP’s hands in Scotland. I expressed my concern at what was happening in Scotland. He should withdraw that comment.
Covid-Secure Borders
Andrew Bowie Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Nick Thomas-Symonds
Because nobody can provide 100% protection against anything—[Hon. Members: “Oh!”] Conservative Members jeer, but it is about time they took a bit of responsibility for the failure of their Government. They argue with me about comprehensive hotel quarantine, but not one of them had the courage to vote against it in the Lobby in February. They have completely failed to put in place every possible measure that they should have implemented. That is a comprehensive failure.
Between 6 January, when the third national lockdown in England began, and the end of April, 1.59 million people flew into the UK. Only a tiny percentage underwent hotel quarantine. Most damaging of all was the abject failure to add India to the red list in time. Even if the Government had refused to introduce hotel quarantine, which they should have done, it was clear that more countries needed to be added to the red list. Pakistan and Bangladesh were added on 9 April, yet the Prime Minister waited 14 more days before adding India. Civil Aviation Authority figures suggest that at least 20,000 passengers who might have been infected with the delta variant arrived from India between 2 and 23 April—a staggering number. It is unbelievably reckless that on his list of priorities, the Prime Minister put having his photograph taken with Prime Minister Modi ahead of protecting jobs and the safety of this country. Nobody is blaming people who travelled when they were permitted to do so. The blame lies with the UK Government for their unjustifiable delay.
Last night at the Dispatch Box, the Health Secretary claimed that he took a decision based on the evidence available to him at the time. On 1 April—the day before he says he took the decision—India recorded the highest one-day spike in 2021. It was hardly a secret; it was on newspaper front pages. Cases were surging, and there it was—publicly available—but it seems it did not prompt him to act. It has also been reported that on the same day, Ministers knew about the delta variant being discovered in the UK, but that did not prompt him to act either. The Government must now publish the risk assessments that were done on India by the Joint Biosecurity Centre, so that we may have maximum transparency on exactly how that disastrous decision to delay was made.
Last night, I heard the Health Secretary claim that we on the Labour Benches called for India to be added to the red list with the benefit of hindsight. What nonsense! If the Conservatives had listened to us on the Labour Benches and voted with us, protections would have been in place from February. I have the Hansard, and the Health Secretary can check the facts in Hansard, if he wants to. Let us hear no more about hindsight. We want Ministers to show some judgment and foresight.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman talks about the Government listening to the Labour party and taking your advice, but had we done that, last year we would have listened to the shadow Transport Secretary, the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), when the Labour party was calling for the Government’s quarantine measures to be lessened. Had we listened to you, we would have had fewer restrictions at the border than we have at the minute.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. The hon. Gentleman must not use the word “you”.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
I must start by thanking the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) for his contribution. We almost got through an entire debate without mentioning the constitution and I was quite worried as to what I might say, but, thankfully, the hon. Member stood up and talked about Scottish independence—and suggested, if I am not wrong, that if Scotland had gotten independence from the United Kingdom, Scotland could be a covid-free country by now. That is incredible; it could be the only country in the world, it would seem, that has no covid. He may wish to correct me by intervening, but that is what I got from his contribution.
The hon. Gentleman suggested, too, that had Scotland been independent it might have taken different decisions from those of the UK Government, and I dare say that that might have been the case, but given the huge swathes of powers the Scottish Government already have over public health, transport, education, tourism and culture, it is incredible that just about every single decision has, with some exceptions, mirrored the decisions made by the UK Government, with some changes in terms of the timeline. I dare say we will find out when the promised public inquiry into covid in Scotland ever happens exactly what those decisions may have been that would have been so different from those taken by the UK Government.
I would also like to thank the Opposition for securing this debate today, because while I do not agree with their motion for reasons I shall expand on shortly, this is an incredibly serious issue that deserves to be debated in the House.
Before I go on, I should express or declare somewhat of an interest: my wife, being a Swedish national, has now not been able to see her family for a year and a half, so the restrictions on international travel are being felt very keenly indeed. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon) just mentioned, when we debate this topic we should remember that in talking about travel abroad we are not talking about people going off on holiday to lie in the sun; we are talking about families and friends being separated now for an incredibly long period of time. When the Government announced that loved ones were able to hug once again in their homes in the United Kingdom, for those people with family overseas those hugs felt a very long way off indeed.
Before I go on, I would also like to echo the passionate words of my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman)—who, sadly, is no longer in his place—in support of the aviation sector. Thousands and thousands of jobs across the country depend directly on or in support of a thriving aviation sector; those people do not want to be on furlough, and their employers—the airlines, the airport operators, the support services—do not want to be bailed out. They want to get on and do their job; to borrow from British Airways, they want to fly and to serve.
Before coming to the Chamber today, I looked up the passenger numbers for my local airport, Aberdeen International Airport, and as a regular user I would like to put on record my thanks to all the staff there from the very top to the very bottom, who have worked tirelessly over the last year and a half to keep the airport open, operating and indeed safe—and I can say with certainty that that would be the case in every airport across the United Kingdom over the past while. But it has been a torrid year. In the first three months of this year, 62,000 passengers passed through Aberdeen airport, but in the first three months of 2020 that figure was 398,000, so that is a decline of 84.5%. This is completely unsustainable. We need to get people flying again, but we need to do it safely, and that is why protecting public health is and will remain this Government’s No. 1 priority.
I was almost struck dumb with incredulity at Labour Members talking about a clear strategy. When Labour Members come to this place and talk about a clear strategy, we know that they are on manoeuvres. They have never been able to come up with a coherent policy for international travel. Having called for a quarantine, they then criticised the Government for introducing one. Then they changed their line again to making hotel quarantines mandatory for all of those arriving in the United Kingdom. They have called for it to be less and they have called for it to be increased. They have called for it to be expanded and they have called for the amber list to go. It is incredibly hard to keep up.
The motion today would fail to simplify the current arrangements, and instead would create further problems and cause much greater confusion. In removing any middle ground by removing the amber list, which is what they propose today—for which, may I add, there still exists a strictly overseen, mandatory 10-day quarantine period—how do we decide where the cut-off point is between the green and the red, and what about those countries that are placed on the red list yet have far fewer cases than any other countries on that same list? It makes no sense. Such a two-tier system would no doubt cause further disruption to the aviation sector—an aviation sector the Labour party claims enthusiastically to support. The current traffic light system strikes the right balance, I believe, between caution and pragmatism, mitigating the risks of new variants while also allowing travel for essential reasons, and that is why I oppose the Opposition’s motion.
Oral Answers to Questions
Andrew Bowie Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Matt Hancock)
The UK Government work closely with the Scottish Government to provide a co-ordinated approach to the response to covid-19 for the benefit of people across Scotland and across the United Kingdom. For instance, the UK Government have provided the Scottish Government with £1.2 billion in Barnett funding in the 2021 Budget, procured more than 500 million vaccines for the whole of the UK and made sure that our testing programme reaches all parts of the UK. This is a partnership in which the people of Scotland benefit hugely from the reach and strength of the UK Government.
Andrew Bowie
It is becoming clear across the entire United Kingdom that our NHS is facing a huge challenge as we reopen society to deal with the thousands of procedures, treatments and operations that have been delayed due to lockdown. What steps is my right hon. Friend taking to ensure that the national health service in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland can work together as easily as possible, sharing resources and services to ensure that this truly national health service for our whole country will support delivery to support our constituents wherever in the United Kingdom they might live?
Matt Hancock
My hon. Friend is quite right. The NHS is one of Britain’s proudest achievements. It operates across the whole of Great Britain and co-operation is ingrained in the DNA of the NHS. I am absolutely determined, as the UK Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, to ensure that, wherever people live in this United Kingdom, they can access the very best of care. If a constituent of my hon. Friend’s in Aberdeenshire needs a treatment that is only available in England because it is so specialised, they should have absolutely every right to that treatment, in the same way that a constituent of mine in Suffolk or a constituent in north Wales should. We have one NHS across these islands, and it is one of the things of which this country is most proud.
Dementia Action Week
Andrew Bowie Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in this incredibly important debate. This year has been a year of great loss. We have witnessed the loss of loved ones, the loss of livelihoods and the loss of our usual freedoms and day-to-day routines. However, we have also seen an immense effort, on the part of our scientists and researchers, to produce a vaccine that is now allowing us to think about returning to life that resembles normality. I think there is a great lesson to be learnt and it is one that, for the most part, we all know to be true: when we focus our attention and come together with a common purpose, we can achieve great things. So as we continue along the road to reopening, we can begin to look at tackling other illnesses, including dementia, which is rapidly becoming one of the most heartrendingly cruel diseases of our times.
Dementia is now not only the leading cause of death in this country, but the only disease in the top 10 leading causes of death for which there is currently no treatment for either prevention or cure. Like many of my colleagues speaking this afternoon, I, too, have experienced this disease at first hand. Both of my grandmothers suffered from dementia and, as time went on, both went from being animated, proud, fun women who were very active in the lives of their families and wider communities to shadows of their former selves; dementia affects not only people’s memory—as people here will know—but their ability to do even the most basic things. Eventually, both were left unable to speak. I vividly remember, as a little boy, lying in my bed praying that God would return my gran to the gran I knew when I was much younger and that she would, once again, be able to recognise me. Of course, it is not like that. Dementia affects not only those who are suffering, but the entire family. For example, for my maternal grandfather, his entire life became about caring for her.
My family’s experience is not unusual. Rather, it is a story replicated hundreds of thousands of times across this country and others. While great progress has been made over the last 10 years in terms of improved diagnosis rates and increased public awareness, it is estimated that over one third of people affected by the condition still do not receive a formal diagnosis. In the case of my health board, NHS Grampian, 4,292 people were diagnosed with dementia in 2019. However, according to Alzheimer’s Research UK, that figure is likely to be only the tip of the iceberg.
I support the Government’s dementia strategy wholeheartedly and I welcome the steps being taken by the Scottish Government north of border. I want to see the UK as a whole become a world leader in treatment, care and research. But we must keep such intentions in sight and deliver on the commitments we have made. We must take advantage of the improvements in imaging, artificial intelligence and genetics and look to transform early detection so that treatment has at least a chance of being effective.
For all its sadness and turmoil, this year has proved that it is within our power, with the help of research and science, to deliver life-changing results. Let us therefore take heart from the vaccine success and seek to replicate that in meeting the challenge posed by the devastating and ever more prevalent disease that is dementia, so that little boys around the country will not be in the position that I was in, and that so many others are, of praying that their grandmother will be able to return to the person they once were.
Oral Answers to Questions
Andrew Bowie Excerpts(3 years ago)
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Jo Churchill
We are already taking strong action in this area; we have already worked hard and are taking long covid seriously. We are listening to patients, taking a patient-first approach, working with the NHS and the wider scientific community, and engaging with the Royal College of General Practitioners to better understand the disease, which is physiological and neurological. It is different for different people, and therefore treatments need to be different for different people. We are working on ensuring that we have the best post-covid assessment care and the best pathways.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Matt Hancock)
The covid-19 vaccination programme has been the biggest in the history of the United Kingdom. The UK Government have ensured that the excellent work done by the vaccines taskforce to procure vaccines for the whole country has been rolled out to protect people across the UK. To support the roll-out in Scotland, I recently announced an additional £660 million of UK Government funding for Scotland. That is of course on top of the £3.6 billion that Scotland is already receiving over the next financial year through the Barnett formula.
Andrew Bowie
I thank my right hon. Friend for his answer. Does he agree that this is proof of the irrefutable truth that we achieve much more together than we ever could apart and that we should be focusing on the vaccination roll-out and recovery—not a damaging and divisive second referendum on Scottish independence, which would be the case if the Scottish National party won the Scottish election on 6 May?
Matt Hancock
I entirely agree that the vaccination programme has clearly been a huge UK success story and that is because of the UK working together: the NHS across the whole UK; the military working in support across the UK; and, of course, the UK Government working with the devolved authorities and local councils. It is a big team effort. To split and separate out this team effort for no good reason would, in my view, be counterproductive to improving the lives of people across the whole country. We should be working together, not pursuing separation.
Covid-19 Update
Andrew Bowie Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Matt Hancock
I am afraid the answer to that question is a matter for the House rather than me as Health Secretary.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
May I take this opportunity to wish my right hon. Friend and the entire ministerial team at the Department of Health and Social Care a very happy Christmas? I hope that they are able to have some respite over the festive period. They deserve it more than anyone in this place.
Obviously, it is brilliant to see the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine being rolled out, but people are waiting to see the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, not least because it is cheaper, quicker and easier to distribute. Does the Secretary of State have any indication of when it might get approval and come on stream?
Matt Hancock
I am tempted to try to give an answer to that question, but it is very much a matter for the MHRA. I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for the good wishes that he sends. In the Department these days, we no longer say at the end of a week, “I hope you have a good weekend.” We say, “I hope you have a weekend.” Likewise, I share his hope that we have a happy Christmas, but frankly I hope I get a Christmas.
National Security and Investment Bill (Twelfth sitting)
Andrew Bowie ExcerptsThursday 10th December 2020
(3 years, 4 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate National Security and Investment Bill 2019-21 View all National Security and Investment Bill 2019-21 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 10 December 2020 - (10 Dec 2020)
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
The hon. Lady mentions Sir Richard Dearlove’s evidence to the Committee a couple of weeks ago. He made very clear that his opinion, as a former head of MI6, was that having a statutory definition of national security would be very prohibitive and do damage to what we are trying to achieve by getting this Bill on the statute book.
Chi Onwurah
Absolutely. That is why we are not seeking a statutory definition of national security. That is why we are seeking to include and to set out points that the Secretary of State may take into account. The hon. Member should recognise that the Government’s statement of intent is designed to give guidance as to how the Bill will work and be used in practice, and what might be taken into account. The guidance is there. It is just that it is very limited.
We are deliberately not seeking a prescriptive definition of national security. We recognise, as Sir Richard Dearlove did, that it can and must evolve over time. We are seeking to give greater guidance and to promote a better understanding of the remit of the Bill, so that it can be better interpreted and better implemented and so that all those who come under its remit can share that understanding. That is what other nations do. The new clause takes our security context seriously, and signals to hostile actors that we will act with seriousness, not superficiality.
Paragraph (f) bridges the gap between the Government’s defined sectors and focus and the critical national infrastructure that we already define and focus on in our wider intelligence and security work. It brings us in line with allies. Canadian guidelines list the security of Canada’s national infrastructure as an explicit factor in national security assessments. In Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States cases, Congress lists critical infrastructure among the six factors that the President and CFIUS may access.
The provision also acts on the agreement of the ex MI6 chief. In relation to having a critical national infrastructure definition in the Bill, he said:
“I would certainly see that as advantageous, because it defines a clear area where you start and from which you can make judgments”.––[Official Report, National Security and Investment Public Bill Committee, Tuesday 24 November 2020; c. 24, Q31.]
Some of the interventions have been about whether the new clause hits the right spot between prescribing and defining what national security is and giving greater clarity and focus. We would argue that the evidence that I have just set out shows that it does.
Paragraphs (g), (h) and (i) recognise that national security is about more than a narrow view of military security; it is about human security, clamping down on persistent abuses of law—as other countries do—and recognising that a party that consistently abuses human rights abroad cannot be trusted to do otherwise at home. It is about knowing that the single greatest collective threat we face, at home and across the world, lies in climate risk. It is about acting on illicit activities and money-laundering threats that underpin direct threats to national security in the form of global terror.
I recognise that many Government Members have recently raised the importance of human rights, illicit activities, money laundering and climate change in our security. In the statement on Hong Kong this week, the Minister for Asia acknowledged that human rights should be part of our considerations when it comes to trade and security but said that he did not feel that the Trade Bill was the right place for such provisions. I argue that today’s Bill is the right place for them because it deals with our national security.
The new clause would show the world that the UK is serious about national security. We must protect our national security against threats at home and abroad, and build our sovereign capability in industries that are the most strategically significant for security. We must view security in the light of modern technologies, climate and geopolitical threats. None of those constrain the Government’s ability to act; they simply sharpen the clarity of that action, and its signal to the world.
When we began line-by-line scrutiny, I spoke of my astonishment that the Government’s impact assessment referred to national security as an area of market failure that therefore required Government action. I hope that the Minister can confirm that he does not believe that national security is an area of market failure, but that it is the first responsibility of Government. The new clause sets out to give bones to that assertion and to demonstrate to the world that we understand our national security and the interests at play in promoting and securing it, and that we will act decisively in the interest of national security, taking into account this range of factors to protect our citizens, our national interest and our economic sovereignty, now and in the future.
National Security and Investment Bill (Fifth sitting)
Andrew Bowie ExcerptsTuesday 1st December 2020
(3 years, 4 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate National Security and Investment Bill 2019-21 View all National Security and Investment Bill 2019-21 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 1 December 2020 - (1 Dec 2020)
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
Is not the entire purpose of calling in a decision to then instigate an investigation into whether that investment would be contrary to national security? It is after the Secretary of State has called it in that the agencies and Departments can look into the investment or takeover to see whether it is contrary to national security. That investigation does not take place before the call-in notice has been issued.
Chi Onwurah
The hon. Member makes an interesting point. We will examine the skills of those involved in the examination once a transaction has been called in. There was a clear contradiction in what he said, because if it is not called in those skills and expertise will not be brought to the table. There is obviously a need for the expertise before the call-in, or there would not be a call-in.
Andrew Bowie
If it is not the calling in by a Minister, what would trigger the multi-agency investigation into the investment or takeover that has caused the problem in the first place?
Chi Onwurah
The hon. Member makes an important point that goes to the heart of our concerns. I do not wish to detain the Committee for too long on this, but it is important to discuss the way in which the skills and resources of our national security services, who do so much to keep us safe and secure, will be used to work with the Department to identify potential triggers for a call-in. Some guidance will be given in the statement issued by the Secretary of State, and we will debate that shortly, but what was mentioned many times yesterday during the debate on the Telecommunications (Security) Bill was the capacity and the need for institutions such as our Intelligence and Security Committee to have a more concrete role. Not all of their expertise and knowledge can be in the public domain. As we heard yesterday, the Committee first issued concerns about Huawei back in 2013. If, back in 2013, the business Department had been able to benefit from that expertise, knowledge and insight the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport would be in a different position today.
Andrew Bowie
I am listening intently to what the hon. Lady is saying and I understand the point she is trying to make, but surely it is already within the power of the ISC to call in anything that it thinks is a threat to national security. Therefore, it can investigate anything that it thinks it will be detrimental to the national interest. If we read further down, clause 4(2) states:
“Either House of Parliament may at any time before the expiry of the 40-day period resolve not to approve the statement.”
There is already capacity in the Bill as it stands, and the procedures that we already have in Parliament, to ensure scrutiny of any procedures that the Secretary of State might decide to take forward.
Chi Onwurah
I recognise that at the point that the hon. Gentleman is trying to make, and I agreed with him until he said that there are already powers to “ensure scrutiny”. The powers that he describes might enable scrutiny, but I do not think they would ensure scrutiny. We are trying to ensure the scrutiny of the Intelligence and Security Committee by writing it into the Bill. I see him nodding, and I appreciate that we understand each other here.
Chi Onwurah
I thank my hon. Friend for his eloquence. I reiterate that we are looking to make the Secretary of State’s life easier. We hope that, in the not-too-distant future, a Labour Member will be in that position. Our guiding principle is that we want every clause to be as effective as possible and our amendments are designed to make the Bill work as effectively as possible.
Andrew Bowie
I suggest that, in seeking to make the Secretary of State’s life easier, the Opposition are making the life of the Intelligence and Security Committee much more difficult. On current projections, there could be more than 1,000 call-in notices a year. That would make the ISC’s job almost impossible to do alongside all its other important work throughout the rest of the year.
Chi Onwurah
I think the hon. Member and I have the same aims, and we are looking to make the process work as effectively as possible. The Intelligence and Security Committee has clearly said that this is an area in which it can make an important contribution. Further, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon so eloquently said, this is about putting in additional security upstream. I do not envisage—I think I am right in saying this—that these measures would result in the Intelligence and Security Committee reviewing 1,800 call-in notifications; this is about putting in place the ISC’s expertise and scrutiny upstream.
Covid-19
Andrew Bowie Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
It is an absolute pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Sara Britcliffe), who made an excellent speech. I have risen before to express my support for the Government and the incredibly difficult decisions they are taking to protect the NHS and save lives. They do so balancing all the risks and effects on our country, the economy and people’s livelihoods, but with the best of intentions—that we will bounce back quicker if we take steps now to ensure that the NHS is able to function.
I will focus mainly on the economic support that the Government have been providing to businesses. Nobody could scoff at the economic support that the UK Government have provided to support businesses in Scotland—well, perhaps the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) could, but nobody in their right mind. The Conservative Government are spending an estimated £16 billion to support Scotland through this epidemic, including £7 billion extra directly for the Scottish Government to spend on top of the usual Barnett funding. Some 779,500 jobs were protected by the job retention scheme and 79,000 businesses benefited from UK Government loans worth up to £2.9 billion. The VAT cut is supporting 150,000 businesses and 2.4 million jobs in Scotland, and benefiting consumers everywhere. Eat Out to Help Out discounted more than 6 million meals in Scotland, which supported restaurateurs and other hospitality businesses.
That is all good stuff, but I want to make a special plea to the Governments here and in Edinburgh for part of the hospitality sector that feels that it has been left behind. My constituency, as hon. Members can imagine, is the most beautiful constituency in the country. It is home to the castle trail, Royal Deeside, Strathdon, the Cairngorm mountains and the Howe of the Mearns. Of course, it is also home to the global subsea industry on the edge of the energy capital of Europe in Aberdeen.
Weddings, events and conferences are big business. The wedding industry alone in my constituency makes about £15 million a year. Venues have to be maintained whether anyone is there or not. Many started with a full year this year, but all events have been written off. The companies that organise such events are really suffering. When we speak of an events company suffering or a wedding being postponed, it is not just the wedding organiser or the conference organiser—the headline company—that suffers, but a long list of suppliers and contractors who work for and with them, such as lighting specialists, sound engineers, musicians, caterers, photographers, flower arrangers and private vehicle hire to mention but a few.
I met representatives of the wedding and events industry in my constituency last week, and apparently it takes up to about 15 to 20 contractors to pull the average wedding together, which is 15 to 20 cottage industries affected when we go into lockdown. They are viable businesses. Although I appreciate the Government’s help so far, and indeed, on behalf of all my constituents and businesses that have received it, thank them for it, I ask the Governments here and in Edinburgh to remember the forgotten people of the hospitality sector as we move through winter. For them, it will be the third winter this year.
The Government are taking the correct steps to protect the NHS and save lives. As I said, it is a difficult situation, but as we sit here in November, there is no certainty for the wedding and events sector about when it will be able to return to work and when people will be able to gather in numbers for events and conferences again. I ask the Government and the Treasury, when they are designing packages of support for the hospitality and events sector, as they did so well for those involved in frontline hospitality and catering, such as restaurateurs, hoteliers and publicans, to remember this sector, which is vital for parts of the country, as we move forward. I ask them to remember and provide for it.
Botulinum Toxin and Cosmetic Fillers (Children) Bill
Andrew Bowie ExcerptsFriday 16th October 2020
(3 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Botulinum Toxin and Cosmetic Fillers (Children) Act 2021 View all Botulinum Toxin and Cosmetic Fillers (Children) Act 2021 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Laura Farris
I will proceed for a moment and give way in due course.
Two points about the personal injury element are particularly pertinent. The first is that the very act of injecting filler or botox into a young and developing face has potentially serious medical consequences in and of itself. The second is that if it does go wrong, the impact, not just physically but psychologically, could be so much more serious than for an adult. My hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks gave the example of a young 15-year-old girl who nearly lost her lips; imagine the trauma that surrounds that.
The force of the Bill is not just in its creation of an offence of injecting a filler or botox into an under-18-year-old, but in the scope of the defence set out in clause 2(4)—the reasonably onerous requirement for a practitioner to show that they took “all reasonable precautions” and conducted “due diligence” in establishing the age of their patient before they administered the treatment. The Bill does not just have the effect of creating an offence if the practitioner fails to do that; as my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho) said, by introducing such a regulation, it brings insurance into the frame and creates a right to make a claim for personal injury against a practitioner—a claim for damages should personal injury arise—in a case of this nature.
The second reason why I support the Bill is that it implicitly recognises the undesirable psychological impact of children embarking on invasive cosmetic procedures. This goes so much further than a manicure or a haircut; it is the beginning of a teenager, basically, changing their face. They do it because of a three-pronged assault that they face: from celebrities, from people who participate in reality TV shows, and from social media. I have to say that I think Instagram is particularly pernicious in this regard.
That is why the Bill dovetails so neatly with the ten-minute rule Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Dr Evans). When they are taken together, they are more than the sum of their parts, because they recognise that young people face a barrage of photographs of women with an unattainable standard of beauty, where the woman herself has probably been doctored and the image certainly has, too. These young people, at a stage in their lives when they are impressionable, vulnerable and at their least assured of their own identities, are fed a tacit message that it is not just desirable but necessary to adhere to that standard of beauty.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a fantastic speech. She is raising issues around social media. Does she not agree that there are also concerns over broadcasters and that they, too, have a responsibility? Does she share my concerns over the so-called “Love Island” effect? Young children and teenagers watching such programmes are looking at body images that are so far removed from reality that they do great damage not only physically but mentally.
Laura Farris
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend and I thank him for that point. I was talking about celebrities, reality TV shows and social media sites, but the fact is that they are completely blended as mediums. Someone who appears in one will also be present on the other.
Suzanne Webb (Stourbridge) (Con)
I rise to support the Bill, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott) for bringing this important issue to our attention. There have been so many fantastic and important contributions so far.
My support for the Bill is principally due to my concern that young adults perceive these treatments as beauty treatments as opposed to medical procedures that carry risks and side effects, and the fact that damage to their self-esteem has probably brought them to that point. The issue behind this is mental health. What brings someone to the point where they feel that they need an injection in their face to paralyse what is beautiful about them, which is their natural appearance?
I am a huge advocate of body positivity, and my hon. Friend’s Bill contributes to that. My hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Dr Evans) probably does not know that if I had a private Member’s Bill that I wanted to introduce, it would be his. I have spoken about it on other occasions. All of this is so important to me, and it goes back to what I was saying: where does the situation start that a young adult feels the need to change their appearance?
Many young adults have body image problems and aspire to a face or a body that they cannot hope to live up to because it was faked on a computer or at the mercy of a needle. They see images of a role model whose face has been frozen in time by paralysing the muscles in their brow or around their eyes to make them look good—less tired, less old and less real. I would love to see a shift in society where there is not the same pressure on us all to be picture perfect.
Listening to hon. Members, I am truly grateful for the time and era in which I grew up. There was no social media or internet. At times there was not even any electricity, because it was the winter of discontent, but we will not go down that route. We did not have reality TV shows. We did not have “Love Island”. We in fact had black-and-white televisions—there are some in this room who will remember that time well.
Andrew Bowie
I think my hon. Friend might be misleading the House, albeit inadvertently. I simply cannot believe that she grew up in a time with only black-and-white television.
Suzanne Webb
I thank my hon. Friend for that. I wish it were not true, but sadly it is.
All we aspired to was standing in front of a mirror mimicking ABBA—I do not know whether my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Jane Stevenson) did that. We did not have pressure on us to be anything but ourselves; it is as simple as that. We had Jackie magazine. The images were not doctored in those days. If they were, I would be saddened, but they were not Photoshopped. There was no botox; they were natural images. I hope that I come from a generation that reflects that. We do not feel so much pressure to be something that we are not.