COVID-19 Variant: Travel Guidance for Local Authorities

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Wednesday 26th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

No, the noble Baroness will be relieved to know that we are not relying on telepathy. Instead we have regional partnership teams, which include Public Health England regional directors, and Contain and JBC colleagues, working together with local authorities, and these meet on a three-times-a-week basis at the regional team updates. Attendees can include government departments, including the MHCLG, the DfE, particularly REACT, and the No. 10 Cabinet Office task force. It is through this kind of extremely regular and intense collaboration between all the different parties working on this extremely complex pandemic response that we share data, provide guidance and ensure that the communications are done to the best of our ability.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab) [V]]

I declare an interest as a resident of Bedford borough. Bedford has repeatedly been let down by the failure of government to share information. It did not get information on test results on cases that tested positive with the Indian variant returning through airports, and now there is this communication failure, which it found out about only when the Manchester press phoned it up to tell it that it was on the website. It has been starved of the Pfizer vaccine and now denied the additional boots on the ground that it needs to deal with the crisis, which apparently have all been sent to the red-wall authorities. What ill will do the Government have for Bedford and what is the Minister doing to sort out the important relationship with key local authorities without imposing top-down lockdowns, either clandestinely or publicly?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I am conscious of having been asked questions about the vaccine, testing and lockdowns in Bedford before. However, I absolutely reassure the noble Baroness that we approach all areas on an absolutely equitable basis, and in fact I pay tribute to the people of Bedford and the local authorities there for their energetic response to this pandemic. We are working extremely hard with all local authorities to give them the effective powers and resources to deal with the pandemic on a local basis. That means that national co-ordination comes second to local implementation and that these communications are sometimes extremely complex. We should not be surprised if sometimes there are differences between how different areas implement those communications.