Covid-19

Baroness Smith of Basildon Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, this pandemic has taken a huge toll on the physical and mental health of the nation, on businesses, on leisure and on our economy. Across the UK, people have made heroic efforts to care for, serve and protect others, from the staff and volunteers who have delivered an amazing vaccination programme to the NHS and to those who have kept schools, shops, hospitality and public services running, as well as all those who have stayed at home—and have not had parties—in order to protect others, and have missed out on special times with friends and family.

So we are all keen to get back to living and working as normal as quickly as possible. We welcome the overall fall in cases, hospitalisations and the death rate. This follows the success of the vaccine and the care that so many have taken in testing and in following the rules.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister announced that plan B measures will lapse throughout the UK. We do not want to see restrictions in place any longer than necessary. In response to a question yesterday from Keir Starmer, Mr Johnson agreed that he would publish the scientific evidence behind the decision. Can the noble Baroness today confirm that this has now been published and is publicly available and will she commit to ensuring that it is available in the Library of the House of Lords as soon as possible? I think she will understand, given the recent scandalous events in Downing Street with varying accounts from the Prime Minister, that public confidence can now be assured only when back-up evidence is available.

Although there are fewer cases and deaths across the country than there were last week and scientists are optimistic that omicron has peaked, does the noble Baroness accept that we still need to be cautious? In some parts of the country, cases are still rising though we hope they will start to fall. The health service, underresourced even before the pandemic, is facing enormous pressures with huge delays. Many appointments for surgery and treatment have been cancelled. The WHO and many scientists predict that there may be further variants into the summer and daily deaths are still over 350. The British Medical Association, representing those in the NHS front line, is concerned that given these factors the Prime Minister

“risks creating a false sense of security”.

I would be grateful if the noble Baroness could respond to this: what advice is now available for those shielding or people who are clinically more vulnerable regarding the move from plan B back to plan A, including on working from home and using public transport?

What is clear with all these factors is that we need a credible plan on how we can live with Covid, including any new variants that may emerge. The Government have to look past the current maelstrom they are experiencing and the focus must be on resilience to any future pandemics or future variants.

I do not know what the Government’s plan is—I hope the noble Baroness does—but we can offer some advice on the way forward that I hope she can respond to. The vaccination programme has proved its worth. We would retain an army of trained volunteers to always be available to support the National Health Service. We also have to work with other countries and international organisations to provide vaccines across the world, if we are to end the cycle of another new variant emerging just as we think we have dealt with the last one.

We know testing works. There has to be a national supply of test kits to avoid shortages so tests can be available when and where they are needed. Ideally, it would be good if the Government could look at the UK manufacturers, which are so keen to provide these.

I do not know how many times we have to say this, but the Government really must increase sick pay and extend it to all workers. It should never be a choice between keeping others safe by staying home or being able to pay the rent and the energy bills.

We cannot just keep talking about ventilation in classrooms, or indeed workplaces. I know the schools’ ventilation programme has eventually started—and that is welcome—but the Government have to move more quickly to ensure that all children can stay in school. Can the noble Baroness say when this programme will be completed and what percentage of classrooms or schools have now been included and seen their ventilation improved?

There are also a number of common-sense measures that, while not ideal or enjoyable, do not impinge too much on our daily lives—such as mask wearing in busy crowded spaces and basic hygiene measures to protect from infection transmission—that we should not be too quick to discard. Will the Government continue with public health messaging to enable this?

Finally, the death toll in the UK from this virus is devastating. It is over 150,000, which is one of the worst rates in the world. Despite the shocking errors in test and trace, the lack of NHS readiness at the start of the pandemic, and the problems that we saw with PPE supplies and contracts—which may be subject to ongoing legal proceedings—the vaccination programme and the adherence of the public, though not Downing Street, to public safety measures have been real game changers. Those two things—the public’s response and having a vaccine—have really made a difference.

At this point all our decisions must be based on moving forward with care, using sensible proportionate measures to learn to live with Covid. We need to do all we can to ensure that we do not again end up playing Covid hokey-cokey in lifting and then reimposing restrictions that none of us wants to see. I would be grateful if the noble Baroness can address some of these points. The key thing is that we welcome this but urge caution as well.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, we obviously share the relief being felt across the whole country that the peak of the omicron wave seems now to have passed. However, Covid is not over. Yesterday, the ONS reported that one in 20 people in England caught Covid last week and government-reported cases still number over 100,000. The NHS remains pressured, with around 2,000 admissions per day, and last week there were 1,900 deaths.

We clearly need to learn to live with Covid, but that is not necessarily the same as going back to life exactly as it was before Covid. We need to remember that continuing levels of Covid, even at reduced numbers, will continue to fill some hospital beds. This delays treatment of everybody else, which is particularly significant given the 6 million people on the NHS waiting list.

This is the backdrop against which we have to judge yesterday’s announcement. The exact timing clearly has more to do with Conservative Party management and saving the Prime Minister’s premiership than concerns about public health or boosting the economy. While ending some of the restrictions, such as Covid passports, is to be welcomed, we have some reservations elsewhere, particularly on masks.

As everybody knows, masks are a cost-effective precaution that help reduce transmission of the virus and consequently reduce the pressure on the NHS and its staff. People have been asked to make tough sacrifices throughout the pandemic but, in our view, requiring people to wear a mask on public transport and in the shops a little longer to protect others is a small price worth paying. There are many, especially the clinically extremely vulnerable, who are concerned about travelling on crowded public transport or using the shops. Keeping masks in those crowded places will allow them to get on with their day-to-day lives with confidence in a way that they have not been able to do for virtually two years.

The Prime Minister said that

“we will trust the judgment of the British people”

on whether to wear masks. Given his own complete lack of judgment and moral authority, I suspect the consequence will be that mask wearing on the Tube and on trains will collapse. Before the latest restrictions, mask wearing on the Tube was under 50%. Today it is about 90%. Next week, I bet it will be back to 50% or less. In our view, to have permitted this at this point is a mistake.

As for masks in schools, we all want to keep schools open but with huge numbers of pupils still out of school, it remains hard to do so in some cases. As long as the evidence shows that masks are helping reduce these absences, we support heads who want to retain masks in their schools. If individual heads decide to do this beyond the end of this week, will the Government support them?

The real issue in schools is, of course, the Government’s failure to provide air purifiers in classrooms. I echo the noble Baroness’s question: how far have the Government got in their admittedly inadequate plans to improve the number of classrooms that have such air purifiers?

On ending the requirement to work from home, while going back to the office will be good and right for many, we would encourage employers to consider the wishes of their employees—as many of them are already doing. Can the noble Baroness say what policy the Government are adopting towards their own employees? Will they require all civil servants to return to their former work patterns or will they, like many private sector employers, show more flexibility?

More generally, this Statement—which unfortunately we did not have the benefit of hearing—is suffused with the kind of hyperbole and exceptionalism that we have come to expect from this Prime Minister. Given his abject failure to stick to the rules himself or to ensure that his own staff behave responsibly, to many ears this tone sounds more than usually ill-judged. It is too much to expect sincere humility from this Prime Minister. He should go.