Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Self-Isolation and Linked Households) (England) Regulations 2020

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Thursday 7th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

So, here we are. If the country is weary, I suspect parliamentarians are too. I am trying to work out how many regulations we have done in the last 10 months; perhaps somebody somewhere might be able to tell us. We have four regulations of increasing relevance before us today; all are post implementation. I declare my interest as the non-executive director of a foundation hospital in London.

We on these Benches will support the regulations. We do so while recognising the devastating impact that restrictions will have on our economy, our way of life, our mental health and the well-being of everybody. If we are to restore freedoms for the future and save lives, we all have to behave as if we are infected. I had some sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, when he talked about that because this virus is out of control.

As before, the Government are reacting later than we would have liked. However, unlike before, we now have the vaccines. The Prime Minister did not mention test and trace in his Statement. I would like to know whether this, which was a game-changer for us in the summer, features in the plans for the next six or seven weeks and thereafter. My noble friends Lord Winston and Lord Reid asked this question, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, and the noble Lord, Lord Mann.

We can only be devastated by the prospect of weeks and weeks—perhaps longer—of people in isolation feeling anxious and lonely. I think that it will be worse this time. I note that the flow of food and gifts to the front line in our hospitals seems slower in appearing this time than in the spring, when the need is actually greater. Our front-line staff are more exhausted and overwhelmed than they were in the spring, as my noble friend Lord Hunt and the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said.

We can and must rejoice at every care home staff member and resident vaccinated and every older person made safe. We need to focus on getting our unpaid carers vaccinated. I very much welcome the fact that they are now included as priority 6, but there needs to be some discussion about the implementation of that particular priority. We should rejoice when our paid social carers are vaccinated. We have to get clinical NHS workers, auxiliary staff and teaching staff vaccinated as soon as possible. Only when we know they are safe can we breathe more easily.

In the months following the long lockdown last year, 19.6 million prescriptions for antidepressants were issued—a 4% increase on the same period the year before—to more than 6 million people in England, which is the highest number on record. If we are to support lockdown, we need assurances that mental health services will be fully resourced, will stay open and respond to peoples’ needs throughout the lockdown. Can the Minister clarify the conclusion about the amount of funding for mental health created by his right honourable friend the Prime Minister?

The lockdown will have a huge impact on the well-being of our children. The plan to get children safely back to school is a priority, which is why I believe that it is a priority to vaccinate teachers and school staff as soon as we are able. There are thousands of children out of school in overcrowded, cramped accommodation who are unable to access learning properly from home. There are thousands who still do not have access to technology, as my noble friend Lady Massey said. We need to recognise that Covid has exaggerated the inequalities in our society and that we do not want to return to business as usual as this year moves on. We know that there are children at risk of abuse and violence. Many children face the prospect of being locked in their homes with parents who abuse drink and drugs.

Over 62,000 cases were reported in England yesterday —one in 50 have the virus. We know that it is one in 30 of us here in London. There were 3,300 hospitalisations yesterday and it is going up in every region. There were 2,645 people on ventilators and, tragically, over 1,000 died. According to an official briefing given to the capital’s most senior doctors this afternoon, London’s hospitals are less than two weeks from being overwhelmed by Covid in the best-case scenario.

This is a national emergency. The national lockdown is necessary. As my noble friend Lord Foulkes put it —possibly more robustly than I am doing—we should have locked down sooner. The Commons voted this lockdown through on Twelfth Night, yet in the run-up to Christmas, the alarm bells should have been ringing. The Secretary of State reported on the new strain on 14 December. The Prime Minister learned of the rapid spread of the new variant on 18 December. On 21 December, the Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, said that the new strain was everywhere and would rise after the inevitable mixing at Christmas. SAGE met on 22 December and concluded:

“It is highly unlikely that measures with stringency and adherence in line with the measures in England in November … would be sufficient to maintain R below 1 in the presence of the new variant.”


Here we are, two weeks later, with 500,000 infections and 33,000 hospitalisations since 22 December. Why does the Prime Minister, with all the scientific expertise at his disposal and all the power to make a difference, always seem to be the last to grasp what needs to happen? He has not been short of data. He has been short of judgment and, yet again, we are all paying the price.

We will ultimately be released from these restrictions through vaccination. I pay tribute to everyone involved in helping to distribute and administer the 1.3 million vaccine doses so far. It is a great achievement but, as many noble Lords have said, we need to go further and faster if the Prime Minister’s promise that almost 14 million people will be offered the vaccine by mid-February—that is 2 million doses a week—is to be reached. The many solutions offered by noble Lords today need to be taken on board and considered. I did not know that there was the idea that vaccines would not be delivered on a Sunday. How ridiculous is that? I hope the noble Lord will clarify that that is not the case.

Logistics are key to this. From the front line, a doctor’s surgery in the south of England says:

“My group of practices was initially told we would get our first delivery on 28th December. Then 4th Jan. Then 11th Jan. Now we are ‘6th wave’ and it will be 13th, 14th or 15th Jan. We are raring to go, but have no vaccines. WHY?”


In Waverley—in Jeremy Hunt’s constituency—a massive mess-up with the vaccine, which had been outsourced to a company called Procare, meant that 1,100 vaccine appointments were cancelled because there was a manufacturing error and they did not have the vaccine to administer. Of course there will be teething problems, but anecdotal evidence from the debate today suggests that those teething problems are actually quite significant.

How many of the ordered doses have been manufactured? How many have been delivered to the NHS? How many batches are awaiting clearance from the MHRA regulatory clearing process? It would be fantastic to vaccinate 2 million people a week, but we should not limit our ambitions. As other noble Lords have said, we need to scale up to three, five, six million jabs over the next weeks and months.

As my honourable friend Jonathan Ashworth said yesterday, the rule in politics is that it is always better to underpromise and overdeliver, which is certainly a lesson that the Prime Minister needs to learn. Let us hope that 2 million doses is an underpromise and that the Government aim to overdeliver, because would that not be great? Our big target must be to vaccinate more, particularly among NHS staff. Do we have a clear date by which NHS on the front line will receive the vaccine? They need to know. Not only are they exhausted, but it is a matter of morale. They deserve to know when they will be vaccinated.

We support this lockdown today because we know that we have to reduce transmission. That is why we are asking people to stay at home. Not everybody can work from home: there are 10 million key workers in the United Kingdom, of whom only 14% can work from home. Many are low paid and often have to use public transport to get to work in jobs that, by necessity, involve greater social mixing, and they are exposed to risk. Their workplaces need to remain Covid-secure and they need income support if they have to stay at home.

The British public have done so much over the last year and have made great sacrifices. We are a great country, and our people can and will rise to this occasion. All anyone asks is that the Government do the right thing at the right time: make workplaces Covid-secure; vaccinate health workers as soon as possible; introduce decent sick pay and support to isolate; and roll out a mass vaccination programme like we have never seen before. This is a race against time. We will support this lockdown today.