Covid-19 Inquiry

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

Clearly, we want to keep the best researchers in the country here. With the best will in the world, and with the great forbearance of the team that has been preparing my brief, I have gone back on an almost minute-by-minute basis over the last two days to get points added to it. I committed to my noble friend that I would write to him about the specific points he raised in his question. I will be honest: I do not have the answer to that specific question here today.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I return to the issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, about the situation today of clinically vulnerable and otherwise vulnerable groups of people. I note that the Statement says that

“the inquiry found that the pandemic had a disproportionate impact on vulnerable groups and continues to affect many people in those communities”.

Given that, as the WHO says, the Covid pandemic is continuing and we have the threat of multiple other respiratory viruses—I note that H5N1 is an area of great concern—how would the Minister assess the Government’s current approach to clinically vulnerable and more broadly vulnerable groups? I am thinking particularly of their access to commercial and community spaces, and to schools that have clean air through either ventilation or filtration. Dame Kate Bingham from the Vaccine Taskforce told the inquiry this week that there is concern about the availability of prophylactic antibodies for people who cannot benefit in the same way as others from vaccines. Where are we now in making sure that treatment is available for those people?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

One of the things that the pandemic threw up as an issue that all responders had to deal with was the redefinition of who was vulnerable. It is something that LRF responders were very aware of at the time. The Government are committed to engaging widely with vulnerable communities and civil society to ensure that the factors that affect vulnerability, including health inequalities and socioeconomic inequalities, are much better understood as we review our approach to resilience. We are going to come back on the response that was in the review later in the spring. We recognise that vulnerability should be a key focus, and it is a key focus of the Cabinet Office-led review of our approach to resilience. In order to get the response on this right, we are engaging with charitable, faith and other representative organisations to understand how the reduction and prevention of disproportionate impact on at-risk groups and persons can be better considered in our planning and policy.