Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Greencore) Regulations 2020

Baroness Penn Excerpts

Friday 25th September 2020 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Penn]

That the Regulations laid before the House on 1 September be approved.

Relevant document: 26th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, the regulations we are discussing today came into force on 29 August. On 21 August, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care announced that, due to a significant Covid-19 outbreak at Greencore Food to Go Ltd, regulations would be laid requiring the workforce and their households to self-isolate for 14 days to contain the outbreak and avoid the need to impose restrictions on the wider community.

The concern about the risk of transmission across the workforce at Greencore and out into the wider community of Northampton was significant, and engagement with local leaders and company directors was extensive, repeated and productive. I thank Greencore, Public Health England, the joint biosecurity centre, Defra, DHSC, Northampton Borough Council, Northamptonshire County Council and Lucy Wightman, the council’s director of public health, for their constructive engagement with each other.

The decision to act was not driven by numbers only. It was a judgment about the overall situation. It was necessary to make this change as quickly as practicable, in recognition of the immediate risk of a continued increase in the incidence of Covid-19 among the workforce at Greencore as the main cause of wider community transmission. Action had already been taken to protect Greencore employees. The whole workforce was tested, the factory layout was amended to make it more Covid-secure and deep cleaning was carried out. We hoped that these interventions and the work of the local public health teams would get the infection rate down without us having to take more drastic action.

However, a large percentage of the workforce continued to test positive for the virus. It was likely that this was due to their socialising together outside work; for example, sharing accommodation and car sharing to get to and from work.

At the local action committee meeting on 20 August a decision was taken to require Greencore to close its food manufacturing site in Northampton and to require the workforce and their direct household contacts to self-isolate for 14 days. Those actions were supported by Greencore’s leaders, who told their workforce. As many of the workers do not speak English as a first language, they provided guidance on what was required in the relevant languages.

Current government guidance advises that anyone who tests positive for the virus should self-isolate for 10 days from the date of the test. Anyone who has been in close contact with them is advised to self-isolate for 14 days. Requiring household members of Greencore workers to self-isolate went further than current government guidance. However, this measure was necessary due to the scale of the outbreak and the risk it posed to the wider community if further transmission was not contained and stopped.

I recognise and commend the local authority’s response to this outbreak. It worked closely with Greencore throughout and engaged in following up with workers and their households to ensure compliance.

NHS Test and Trace organised additional test sites which were set up at local centres, and mobile testing units, and the military provided a team of four people to support the incident management team.

I turn now to the data provided that informed those decisions. Mass testing at Greencore started on 10 August 2020. Following that first round of testing, nearly 300 members of staff tested positive for coronavirus. Greencore commenced retesting all staff who previously tested negative on 19 August, detecting further positive cases. In total, 317 staff who worked in different units tested positive. The final positivity rate was over 20%. The weekly incidence rate for Northampton peaked at 125 per 100,000 people and positivity rose to 9.2%. The background incidence rate for Northampton, by comparison, excluding positive tests in the Greencore workforce, was 38 per 100,000 for the same period.

These regulations required Greencore staff who had worked at the company’s designated production sites since 7 August, and members of their households, to self-isolate for 14 days from 21 August or for a shorter period in certain specified circumstances. Those dates were calculated to reflect the incubation period of Covid-19. Given that this was the first time we had imposed a legal requirement to self-isolate, it took time to develop the regulations. Although they came into force only on 29 August, the workforce and their households were able to start self-isolating from 21 August, when the site temporarily closed.

The regulations specified exactly who was required to self-isolate and for how long, recognising that some workers had already started to self-isolate following earlier positive test results. They also made provision to exclude members of households if the Greencore worker chose to isolate separately. Provisions were included to enable those self-isolating to access or provide emergency care and support or obtain basic necessities such as food or medical supplies.

Given the urgency of the situation at Greencore, we used the emergency procedure provided for by the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 to make the present set of regulations as soon as we could. The regulations will expire 28 days after they came into force, on 25 September—today.

Regulations 7 to 11 set out how the provisions will be enforced. It is a criminal offence to breach the requirement to self-isolate. As with the national regulations, there is the possibility of fixed penalty notices or a fine following conviction. We also published guidance on GOV.UK for Greencore workers and their households to help them understand what they could and could not do under the regulations.

We always knew that the path out of the lockdown would not be smooth. It was always likely that infections would rise in particular areas or workplaces and that we would need to be able to respond quickly and flexibly to those outbreaks. Greencore should be commended for acting so promptly, closing voluntarily and going above and beyond its role as an employer, to support the wider community. Rates in Northampton have reduced to a weekly incidence rate of 38 per 100,000 of the population during the period of 7-13 September. We will, of course, use the experience of the Greencore restrictions to inform and help us develop our responses to any future local outbreaks.

I am grateful to noble Lords for their continued engagement in this challenging process, and in the scrutiny of the regulations. We will, of course, reflect on this debate as we consider the response to any future local outbreaks. Lastly, I thank those employees and members of their households who completed the required periods of self-isolation and who have responded well to the measures put in place. It is thanks to their continued efforts that we were able to contain the outbreak and avoid the need to impose restrictions on the wider community. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for this important debate. The restrictions we have debated today are necessary and important for three reasons, which I hope I set out in my opening speech.

First, and most importantly, they protect the Greencore workforce and people of Northampton and the surrounding area from this terrible virus. The restrictions we had to impose were difficult for those affected, but I think Greencore employees and their households recognise that letting the virus spread unchecked would have been worse.

Secondly, the restrictions are important because they protect those of us who do not live in Northampton. As a result of the restrictions, the risk of transmission beyond Northampton was reduced and the high infection rates in the city did not spread elsewhere. We should recognise that the restrictions and difficulties faced by the Greencore employees and their households will have benefited the whole country.

Thirdly, these restrictions show our absolute determination to respond to outbreaks of the virus in a focused and effective way. We are learning from what has happened in Greencore as we work with local authorities and other businesses to respond to localised outbreaks. I am pleased that Greencore was able to restart food production on 25 August and that those affected were able to return to work once they completed their period of self-isolation.

I am grateful to noble Lords for their contributions today; I will address some of the specific points raised. Several noble Baronesses, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Donaghy and Lady Thornton, raised the question of fines and enforcement. I do not have the breakdown of fines for the local area, but that work is ongoing so that we can learn about how measures are enforced. Between 27 March and 17 August, 16,000 fixed penalty notices relating to enforcement of Covid-19 public health regulations were issued by police forces in England, but there is more work to do to get local breakdowns of some of that information and learn about how enforcement is working.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Donaghy, Lady Ritchie, Lady Barker and Lady Thornton, and the noble Lord, Lord Bhatia, all raised the question of vulnerable workplaces. As I said, our understanding is that in this instance it was not the workplace specifically that led to the spread of the virus but workers there socialising outside work and sharing accommodation. But noble Lords are right to raise this matter; that is why we have issued Covid-secure guidance to workplaces in all sorts of different sectors. Several noble Lords asked about enforcement of that. If workers have concerns that their workplace is not Covid-secure, they should discuss those with their employer and perhaps a trade union; the role of trade unions has been highlighted in this debate.

If concerns remain, they can contact the Health and Safety Executive. We have put more resources into the Health and Safety Executive to help it with that role. Using the additional funding provided by government, the Health and Safety Executive has created a spot-check team to call businesses to check that they are Covid-secure. It now contacts up to 5,000 businesses each week. Thousands of businesses have also been visited face to face by Health and Safety Executive inspectors.

Noble Baronesses also raised the specific threat that might be in place in food-processing plants and associated with this type of workplace. The guidance I have is that it remains unlikely that you can catch coronavirus from food. Covid-19 is not known to be transmitted by exposure to food or food packaging. The chief operating officer of the Food Standards Agency has said:

“Whilst the picture keeps evolving, the level of Covid-19 outbreaks in food processing plants that have been reported in this country remains very low and we continue to work with colleagues leading on these public health and health and safety issues.”


To give some context to that, across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, there are more than 20,000 food processing plants, and as of 25 August, less than 45 processing plants in England have been impacted. Some have been, but it does not seem disproportionate to the activity in that sector of the economy.

Several noble Lords raised the question of support to workers. I am not aware of the issue that the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, raised, concerning managers getting sick pay and other workers getting furloughed. As I said in my opening speech, workers who were not eligible had their statutory sick pay rates topped up to furlough rates by Greencore. The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, is right that we are introducing a new payment for low-income households on 28 September. It will not be retrospectively applied to these workers, who were furloughed or had their payments topped up by the company. However, local authorities will be putting in place the systems for making these payments, and anyone who qualifies but does not get a payment on 28 September will have those payments backdated if they are delayed.

Noble Lords asked about NHS Test and Trace. The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, cited a figure of only 62% of people contacted by NHS Test and Trace acknowledging the need to self-isolate. Alongside the new payment to incentivise people to comply with the requirement to self-isolate should they be contacted by NHS Test and Trace, the move on 28 September is making isolation a requirement, not guidance. We have learned from these guidelines. This statutory instrument is the first time that we have put in place the legal requirement to self-isolate if you are asked to by NHS Test and Trace. This is being implemented nationally from 28 September, not only with fixed penalty notices and fines, but also with the incentive put in place to help those on low incomes.

Noble Lords also raised other outbreaks that may have happened in similar settings. Another example was Banham Poultry Limited. The local authorities in Norfolk were able to learn the lessons from how that outbreak was managed in terms of their approach. They did not need to put in place regulations that enforced the isolation; they were able to work with the employer to get the job done.

The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, asked me about lessons learned from the devolved Administrations. I do not have specific examples of outbreaks in the devolved Administrations, but she is right that they will be managed by those Administrations. However, there is ongoing communication between the NHS in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland in order to continue to share, and take forward, lessons learned from all outbreaks in different settings and circumstances.

The noble Baroness also asked why these regulations were necessary. As I explained, we did not previously have the ability in law to require self-isolation. As the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, pointed out, these regulations go further than the existing guidance in one specific respect—the requirement on family members of workers at the plants who had not tested positive also to self-isolate.

I hope that I have addressed most of the points raised by noble Lords. I conclude by recording, on behalf of the Government, my thanks to the people of Greencore and Northampton, and particularly the NHS and care workers there—indeed, all key workers in the city—for their ongoing hard work to keep our vital services running and save lives throughout this crisis.

Motion agreed.