Covid-19

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Thursday 3rd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend is entirely right that confidence in attending NHS venues is hard hit by Covid. One of the inspiring and interesting things that has happened has been the switch to using telemedicine—video and telephone calls—for referrals. This has been particularly and interestingly used in mental health, where attendance at clinics is something that many patients would wisely seek to avoid, but in fact the delivery of mental health therapy through telemedicine and calls has proved to be incredibly effective and has worked very well. We are working hard, through the NHS, to try to de-weight attendance at venues, particularly big central hospitals, and move much more towards attendance in the community, or through technology, in order to give patients a choice and to increase our engagement at a time when people are fearful of going back to their GP surgeries.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, one of the reasons for the Statement is to look at lessons learned. As the Minister and others have already discussed, the trust of the British people in what they are being told and advised is important. Therefore, what was said yesterday about Bolton and Trafford and their local spikes was not very helpful. Because transparency is really important in building trust, can the Minister tell us what happened between 9 am and the Statement from the Minister after noon to change his mind? He tells us that it was data. What was the data?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

The noble Baroness is entirely right that trust is critical, and we have to forge a system where local authorities, local MPs and central government work together on these local restrictions. The only thing that changed was that that group of people sat down at 9 am yesterday and looked at the data, and the data was deeply uncomfortable—it did not tell the story that everyone wanted it to tell. No one wanted to lock down those areas, but the data pointed in only one direction. That is the story that is playing out in communities around the country and it is a story that we will all have to get used to. One of the frustrating aspects of this epidemic is that the disease moves incredibly quickly and does not always go the way one would like it to go. That creates turbulence, as discussed earlier, but that turbulence is something that we have to get used to. Politicians, local officials and central government mandarins are all learning to work together in order to interpret that data and apply its implications in a thoughtful and trusted way.