Covid-19
Chris Bryant Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Matt Hancock)
I beg to move,
That this house has considered covid-19.
The House meets today to debate the coronavirus pandemic once more. The peril of the pandemic has no short-term quick fix, but calls for ingenuity, commitment and resolve from us all. We have responded with one of the greatest collective efforts that this nation has seen in peacetime, but the fight is not over: the virus continues to spread, and cases, hospitalisations and, tragically, deaths are all rising. Yesterday we learned that Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is now treating more patients than it was at the peak in April, and across the UK the number of deaths has doubled in under a fortnight. And yet, just as the situation we face is grave, so the hope of a solution is growing. With every day, my confidence in the ingenuity of science to bring resolution grows. But until that moment, we must have resolve. We are focused on finding a long-term solution, and we reject political point scoring. I call on the House to work together in the interests of our whole nation—and, indeed, the whole world.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I just wonder whether one problem we have at the moment is that we do not have enough capacity in the whole of the NHS to take on covid in a long-term way, as the Secretary of State suggests, and still be able to do all the things that we really need to do. How can we ramp up that capacity so that we are still treating people for cancer, for brain injury and for all the other things that we all care about?
Matt Hancock
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. He represents a seat in Wales, and this is a challenge for the NHS in all four nations of the United Kingdom. I was going to come on to this, but one thing that we have learned in the first phase is how we can do better in keeping the other services running that the NHS must and should provide, for instance for brain injuries, for cancer treatment and for heart patients. There are also those things that are not life-threatening, but that harm people’s lives—a painful hip or a cataract that needs treatment. In the first wave, as we knew so much less about this virus, many of those treatments were stopped altogether.
In the second wave, we have two things at our advantage. The first is that this is a much more regional second wave, which puts more pressure on areas such as Liverpool and Lancashire than elsewhere in the country, but that does mean that elsewhere the elective and the urgent operations can continue. The second difference is that we know much more about the virus and how it spreads, so we have separated the NHS into green sites and blues sites. Green sites are for where we have a high degree of confidence that there is no covid, using testing and asking people to isolate before going in for an operation, so that people can have more confidence. The central message across all parts of the UK is that the NHS remains open. Finally on this point, the best way we can keep the sorts of treatments that we all want to see going is to keep the virus under control.
Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)
We face a difficult winter. Many areas of England are under heightened restrictions, including Elmbridge, part of which forms part of my constituency. We face the national challenge of a new disease, with a population that is largely unexposed to it and has built no immunity to it through either prior infection or other means, such as vaccination. It spreads easily and quickly, and can make people in high-risk groups, particularly the elderly, seriously ill. It can spiral out of control and overwhelm our health service.
I supported the first lockdown and I support the current restrictions. As an NHS doctor, I say with all my body and soul that we cannot let the NHS be overwhelmed. But lockdowns and restrictions are deeply harmful in themselves. The long-term effects will be profound—a higher burden of disease from poverty, with associated costs in lives; loss of livelihoods; misery and damage from isolation, and reduction in liberties. We need a way out.
My constituents are feeling it—especially those who are now in tier 2 restrictions in Elmbridge—and I pay tribute to them for their resolve. They rightly ask me, “What’s the way out? How does this end? How do we escape the cycle of lockdown?” The current strategy is to suppress until there is a vaccine, but what if there is never a vaccine? As people start to tire of lockdown, increasing coercion and punitive measures are being put in place. On my commute from Runnymede and Weybridge, I travel to Waterloo station, and I have seen the signs there change—from a £100 fine for not wearing a face mask, to £3,000, to £6,000—in the course of a few months. It is inevitable that greater coercion will be needed. When does that stop?
Coercion is illusory. It works briefly, but after a while it fails, unless we take people with us and they own the decision. Of course, in a public health response to an infectious disease, we cannot have a free-for-all, but at the same time, in my constituency, I see people at low risk from covid who ignore the guidance because it will not directly affect them and all they see is harm from restrictions. I see people at high risk ignoring guidance because life is short and they want to see their grandkids. I see people terrified of covid hiding away from the world. Day in, day out, people make decisions about their health risks, such as to smoke or not to smoke—indeed, given that 76,000 people die every year from smoking, probably more people have already died this year from smoking than from covid. People decide whether to put salt on their chips, or not to eat chips. We all make compromises and trade-offs, but rather than the state deciding those trade-offs, we must find a way to let people decide their own.
Chris Bryant
Is not the problem that whether I choose to have salt on my chips is a matter for my health, but when I take risks with covid, I take them not just for myself but for everybody else with whom I interact, and for the whole of society?
Dr Spencer
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and I will come to precisely that point in due course.
I supported the first lockdown, and I support the current restrictions, but we need a way out that works, irrespective of the invention of a vaccine. We need a way out that supports people to take their own decisions and respects free choice but, as the hon. Gentleman said, we must also protect society from an infectious disease. Such a system needs to be sustained for a long time, and those measures will need to be in place for a long time.
It is easy to criticise, but it is more difficult to put forward other options. We therefore need a debate about what a plan B could look like. We started with a national lockdown, but that was too blunt. We rightly moved to targeted measures, which are better, but still not great. The geographical area is too large, and people do not live their lives by local authority boundaries. The next logical step is to shrink the geography further—to the household or individual—and to have a system that allows people to make decisions for themselves regarding their own risks and the people they come across socially or at work.
We must use our testing capabilities in a targeted, risk-based manner, so that those at high risk, should they choose to, can shield and have support to do that. Those at low risk would be able to live their lives more freely, should they choose to do so. At the same time, we must ensure that things do not spiral out of control, with broader measures and restrictions available in reserve if needed. We must invest in our NHS surge capacity, and carry out research into vaccines and treatments.
The challenge, of course, is how we support those at medium risk, or those who live or work with high-risk individuals, and we need to have that debate. Lockdowns are not a cure for covid. They only regulate the pressure on the health service and, important as that is, in time they can, and will, be worse than the disease itself. We need to have that difficult debate and there is no easy solution. While I suggest that we wait for the phase 3 trials of vaccines, which come out imminently, we must start putting flesh on the bones of a plan B, based on individual choice, and consider a pilot in the UK. To get through this pandemic, whatever we do will be difficult. Difficult decisions have to be made, and more difficult decisions remain to be made.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I want to talk about a dangerous bit of fake science that is doing the rounds—the so-called Great Barrington declaration which calls for focused protection for the vulnerable and ending all lockdowns and restrictions so that everyone else should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. It sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Idyllic. Some 6,300 people have signed the declaration. That sounds impressive, but that is a tiny, tiny proportion of all the medical professionals in the world, the vast majority of whom dismiss that approach out of hand.
Many of the signatories to the declaration are not world-leading epidemiologists and virologists. Many of them are homeopaths and self-certified therapists. They include the famous Dr Johnny Bananas, the Rev. Booker Clownn, Dr Person Fakename and Mr Matt Hancock, although not the one of this parish. I remember what fake science did over the MMR vaccine when lots of journalists paid court to one man, Dr Andrew Wakefield, simply because he had the title Doctor in front of his name. That caused immeasurable harm to a very important vaccine programme.
Some of the people who signed the declaration told us earlier this year that the virus would just melt away by the summer and others guaranteed that there would not be a second wave. Yet some people still support them. None of the declaration’s assertions is supported by evidence. They do not even pretend to be. There are no references to peer-reviewed research; they are simply assertions.
It is completely wrong to call people who believe all this stuff “nutcases”. I did earlier this week and I wish that I had not used that word the other day. I have worked long enough in acquired brain injury and as a personal counsellor to others to know that that is wrong. I apologise. But this really is a fringe opinion shared by conspiracy theorists, funded by hard-right economic libertarian extremists in the United States of America and advocated entirely by fake scientists. Ignorance is one thing. Deliberate ignorance really is stupidity.
At the heart of the declaration is the belief that we need to acquire herd immunity by letting everybody get infected. The facts—and there are no alternative facts here—are that there is no evidence that contracting covid-19 grants long-term immunity to future infection. We already know that one can catch it twice and it is not yet a year old. Other coronaviruses only grant temporary immunity. Fact.
Bob Stewart
To support the hon. Gentleman’s case, may I point out that if we could achieve herd immunity, we would not contract diseases like measles? We still get them, so herd immunity is impossible to achieve.
Chris Bryant
In this case, the point is that we will not achieve herd immunity just by trying to let everyone get the disease. That is an immoral proposition. We have all heard the line that this virus is not that dangerous and is less dangerous than flu. I am sure that we have all had emails about it. The facts—and again there are no alternative facts here—are that covid is more easily transmitted than flu and has more complications for more people. Between January and August 2020, there were 48,168 deaths due to covid-19—not associated with it—compared with 13,619 deaths due to pneumonia and 394 deaths due to influenza. The number of deaths due to covid up to 31 August this year was higher than those due to influenza and pneumonia in every single year since 1959, including years when we did not have a vaccine for flu.
The other theme of the great declaration is supposed to be focused protection. Again, that sounds great—“let’s protect the most vulnerable”—but we cannot just shut the elderly and vulnerable away and throw away the key. They do not live in hermetically sealed units, funnily enough. They rely on nurses, carers, home helps and family members. All those people would presumably have to be locked away. Is somebody going to suggest that the most vulnerable communities—in fact, the BAME community—are en masse all going to be locked away, as well as the overweight, no doubt, and all the men? Of course, that is a complete and utter nonsense. By one estimate, we would be incarcerating a quarter of the whole UK population.
There is a cruelty at the heart of this proposal: it is basically survival of the fittest. Yes, it does make me angry when people propose it. It makes me angry for those who have lost loved ones this year, who seem to be ignored. It makes me angry for the NHS staff who have slogged their way through the misery on our behalf and need us all to realise that there is a much better creed than survival of the fittest, and it is that we are all in this together.
Ms Dorries
I do apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker, it is because I have not been here very often lately.
The hon. Gentleman made one of the best speeches I have heard him make in this House, probably because he agreed with every word I have been saying—indeed, I almost ripped up this speech. I applaud him for some of the comments he made.
Ms Dorries
Possibly; the hon. Gentleman is in a very difficult position now. I say well done to him for taking apart the Great Barrington declaration. I will now not go into it, as he did an excellent job.
Turning to herd immunity, without a vaccine how do we attain herd immunity? With no knowledge of immunity from coronavirus, how do we obtain herd immunity? I will share with the House that I was diagnosed with coronavirus on 7 March, I had a severe dose and my antibodies had disappeared 12 weeks later. I am no longer immune to coronavirus. That is not just my story; it is the story of many, many people. Many people who were donating their plasma post-coronavirus for convalescent therapy were told quite quickly, “We no longer need your plasma because you do not have any antibodies left.” Work is going on into immunity, and we have not reached a conclusive position yet, but I can speak from my own experience and from the experiences that we are hearing about, and if people do not have long-term antibodies and we have no vaccine, there is no such thing as herd immunity. I say that again because it is the truth.
On the comments about the measures we are putting in place, how restrictive they are and social distancing, all I can say—and this relates to the number of deaths in hospitals—is that back in March no one was wearing face coverings and no social distancing was being complied with by the public, and the rate of infection was doubling every three to four days. Now, it is doubling every seven to 14 days, because the public are wearing masks, they are hand washing and they are socially distancing, and that means that when someone contracts coronavirus, they contract a smaller viral load, which is enabling doctors to treat those patients once they reach an intensive care unit. In ICUs, people are now living, not dying, but we still need the ICUs and we still need the ICU beds in which to treat those people in order that they can live. The fundamental purpose of every measure we take is to protect the NHS and to keep those beds in ICUs, so that they are there to treat people and to keep people alive.
I described this to someone today who argued with me that face masks and coverings are unnecessary. If people are in the space of someone with no facemask—I will use a scale of one to 100—they will breathe in 100 droplets and a full viral load, but when someone has a mask on it is much less. This is not a scientific experiment; it is my own analogy, but the figure is probably 10. The hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) knows this much better than I do, and can confirm or deny it. Therefore, with a mask, people’s viral load is lower and it is far easier to treat them once they arrive in hospital at A&E and are transferred to an ICU, and there is a huge chance of success. That is what we are seeing in action now in our hospitals. If we all abandon our face coverings, stop social distancing and stop hand washing, we will be back to where we were in March, when the virus was doubling every three to four days.
My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) mentioned Sweden, but an article in The BMJ—a research study—concluded that Sweden and the US are the only two countries that are failing to reduce their numbers of deaths. In fact, it is far more accurate to compare Sweden with its Nordic neighbours. Sweden has 586 deaths per 1 million people, while its neighbour Norway has 279, so I am not quite sure why Sweden would be cited as a country of success.[Official Report, 24 November 2020, Vol. 684, c. 8MC.]
Local Contact Tracing
Chris Bryant Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)
I welcome the opportunity to take part in this important debate.
Effective contact tracing is going to help us to tackle this virus, and all of us here want the best possible version of that tool in the toolbox. The question is how best we do that. Despite what the Opposition might have people believe, there are no easy answers to this problem. It is easy to stand up in this place or go on TV and say, “Fix it”, but anyone with any real-world experience of organising any kind of project or undertaking that is even a fraction of the scale and size of this one understands the incredible challenges that are inevitably faced. Over recent months, the Government have built a huge testing regime capable of processing 340,000 tests a day that has tested over 7 million people in a matter of months. At the start of this epidemic, the yardstick for all this was Germany. Now that we are testing more people than Germany, France, Italy and Denmark, and many others, that yardstick has quietly disappeared.
Yes, there are challenges. Supply and demand are not uniform across the country and supply needs to be increased, but, whatever Labour Members think about the Government’s approach to testing and tracing, if they describe testing 69% as a complete failure, what does that say about the Welsh Labour Government’s programme? To be brutally honest, I am struggling to understand what exactly Labour Members are trying to say today, beyond of course, “We could have done it differently. It would all have been different and fantastic, and nothing would have gone wrong.” That is basically their position on everything to do with the coronavirus.
Let us talk about some of Labour Members’ common criticisms. They say we should not have the private sector involved, and that there is insufficient capacity. At the same time as criticising the Government for not having enough testing capacity, they are telling them that they should immediately and drastically cut out a chunk of that capacity because it does not suit their ideology. This is all based on their blinkered mentality that if the private sector does something it will automatically be bad and if the public sector does something it will automatically be good.
That brings me to the question of whether doing everything locally would have been the right approach at the outset of the programme. I simply do not accept that asking all 152 directors of public health to go off and set up their own approach at the outset would have been in any way feasible. Were they all supposed to come up with their own laboratories, their own contracts and their own apps? That just is not a credible solution in the short term. It was common sense to begin with a central programme, although even at the outset, when it was clear that something centrally driven was needed to kickstart the process, the Government recognised that local systems had a role to play. Many months before Labour was calling for it, £300 million was provided to help local authorities to develop their own test and trace programmes and, importantly, we have now 93 local authority test and trace regimes up and running.
So what is it that Labour Members are saying? Is it that we should immediately hand over everything that is being run nationally to local authorities?
Dr Mullan
Well, it is.
Many of us in this place who have had dealings with local authorities—as well as lots of our constituents and probably millions of people across the country—would agree that getting everything done by the local authority is by no means a guarantee of success. Just this morning, in news that I am sure was greeted with groans in the Labour Whips Office, it was revealed that Birmingham City Council’s local programme dropped off 25 used swab kits to homes in Selly Oak. Does that mean that local authorities are incapable of delivering? No, of course not. We have problems in the private sector, and that should not bar them from involvement, and we have problems in the public sector too.
Local authority solutions are not a magic bullet. The quality of leadership, management and organisation varies enormously among local authorities. We all know this, and the Opposition know it. At the election, so many bricks in their red wall fell because residents were fed up not just with Labour at national level but with inept, Labour-led local authorities. After decades in power, they were taking people for granted, with leaders and councillors who were not even up to the job of taking away the bins on time, let alone organising a test and trace programme. The national programme inevitably has challenges, but do Labour Members really think that each and every one of the local authorities will deliver on this flawlessly?
Local leaders are political. Sadly, time and again we see Members on the Opposition Benches putting politics first. In the past 24 hours alone, they have said that they support local lockdowns but then did not vote for local lockdowns; that national lockdowns were a disaster, but now they want a national lockdown—and they cannot even make up their minds whether they want a two-week or a three-week lockdown. And they want the country to believe that if they had been in charge, all this would have been going smoothly. That is not accurate. When it came to getting children back to school, the national Labour party was kowtowing to national union leaders and doing what they said, and we all know that the local Labour parties are just as likely to be influenced by the unions. I absolutely recognise that there is work that needs to be done, but I am afraid the idea that if we just flick a switch and give it all to local authorities everything will be fine is complete and utter nonsense.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
My constituents’ experience of the test, trace and isolate system run by the UK Government is that it has been a complete and utter fiasco at every single stage.
On the tests, when people go on the website, regularly there are absolutely no tests available anywhere in the whole of the United Kingdom, or if they are lucky, they will be sent from the Rhondda to Aberdeen or Aberystwyth, presumably because that is alphabetically at least close to Aberdare, even if it is not physically close to the Rhondda at all.
There are no home test kits nearly all the time. A high percentage of my constituents have no car, but they are not allowed to go on public transport, so it is pretty difficult for them to get to any of the test sites. Even today, people had booked a walk-in appointment in Treorchy—they walked 6 miles there and were going to walk 6 miles back—but when they arrived they were told that they could not have their test because they were not in a car, even though it was meant to be a walk-in site.
The results service is shockingly poor: according to the Government’s own figures, just 2% of people got their results within 24 hours last week. Just 2%—how on earth could someone intend to keep a contract with a company that was failing so badly? Why is it that this company cannot do what hundreds of other private sector companies in the country do, which is allow people to track their result? People can track their Amazon delivery—I have never had one because Amazon does not pay its taxes properly—by can logging on and finding out exactly when it is going to arrive. Why can this company not do the same? It would save hours and hours of time—not least in constituency MPs’ offices, I suspect—if there was a proper system for that.
The isolate system has also been a complete failure, because the Government do not seem to understand that for many people, including many tradeswomen and tradesmen and people who work on an hourly or daily basis, the cost of self-isolating is a complete disincentive to doing the right thing. People simply cannot afford to put food on the table for their kids and be able to self-isolate for two weeks. The system the Government are introducing is far too late. It came into place only on 12 October, and so far I am not sure whether anybody has actually managed to use it. And it is not generous enough, either.
The tracing system has been a complete disaster. The target that the Government set was 80%; they have never met it in a single week—and last week it was the worst result ever. I do not understand why Baroness Harding is still in her job. It is an absolute mystery to me. Incidentally, it is a constitutional aberration that a Member of the House of Lords who votes on party political issues is also working in effect as a civil servant.
I hate this concept of “world-beating”. Every time the Prime Minister tries to look Churchillian, he just looks like Neville Chamberlain to me. Lockdowns are a sign of the failure of this system, but I bet that is where we end up.
Julia Lopez
I am afraid that time is short, so I will continue if I may.
The network is developing all the time, and at the moment includes five major Lighthouse laboratories, 96 NHS labs across 29 pathology networks, and over 500 testing sites. This is a tremendous undertaking in such a short period, and in a period of national crisis. We are doing more testing per head than almost any other major nation. Yesterday, capacity sat at more than 344,000, and we are expanding capacity further to meet a target of half a million tests a day by the end of October. This will include our NHS labs going even further to reach 100,000 tests a day. More labs are joining the network, and we are investing in new technology to process results faster. We are also automating parts of the process, installing new machines and hiring more permanent staff.
Chris Bryant
May I make a simple suggestion? It would be really helpful to the vast majority of people who are waiting for tests if there was a simple means of them being able to track where their test had got to, just as happens with Amazon and many thousands of other companies in this country. It would also save vast amounts of time for the company.
Julia Lopez
I will take that suggestion back. We have listened to a lot of what has been said today, and there has been a lot of constructive feedback. I just want to let the hon. Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda) know that we are going to be opening a testing site on the campus in Reading next week.
As many have said, the work that we are doing on test and trace is absolutely critical. My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan), who is a doctor himself and one of the many Conservative MPs who work in the health service, made a superb contribution using his experience of the system. He rightly pointed out that the vocal comparisons made at the outset of the pandemic with other European nations have suddenly faded away now that the UK is testing more per capita than those same nations. He encouraged us to be realistic about the capacity of the public sector and talked about the challenges of making things happen in practice, rather than simply lecturing from the sidelines about theoretical magic bullets.
The hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) said that we must test, test, test, and we are. As I mentioned, we hope to be able to do 500,000 tests a day by the end of this month. On the points that he raised about the Slough testing centre, it is critical to underline that people must make sure they have booked their appointment before they arrive on foot or by car. I understand that that test centre is still accessible by both methods.
My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) talked about the huge role that his town has played in the national effort, from the initial quarantine of British citizens from Wuhan to the incredible Lighthouse project that is employing robotics to boost our testing capacity. We are grateful for that contribution at this time of crisis. As he said, from vaccines to ventilators, medication to PPE, all have been produced at scale very quickly by the private sector, and British companies have achieved tremendous things.
I welcome those Opposition Members who recognised the challenges that we face as a Government and who made constructive contributions, highlighting genuine concerns from constituents. We are working through some of those concerns. However, I share the regret of my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), who pointed out that the era of constructive opposition from Labour Front Benchers appears this week to be over. It is important in this public health crisis that we reflect on criticism and try very hard to improve. However, this afternoon, they have sought to divide local from national, public from private, UK nation from UK nation, and to undermine public confidence in the system for their own political ends. That is a matter of deep regret for us all.
We recognise that contract tracing needs to reach as many people as possible and we are working hard to make sure that that happens, but this is about partnership, with a national framework and local support. Indeed, we are rolling out that strengthened partnership to more local authorities. We also now have the covid-19 app, downloaded over 17 million times in England and Wales, identifying contacts with those who might have tested positive for the virus, including people you might not know. Work is ongoing to make the Scottish app interoperable.
It of course remains critical that everyone does their bit and follows the rules—hands, face and space, and self-isolating where necessary to prevent the spread of the virus. That is why on 28 September, we introduced financial support to help individuals to self-isolate, meaning that those on low incomes who cannot work from home but need to self-isolate do protect themselves and others. They will receive £500. This is an important step forward in helping enable people to take the action that they should to prevent the spread of disease. We have also put in place requirements for businesses not to stop employees self-isolating if they need to. NHS Test and Trace is also making follow-up phone calls to those who are self-isolating to ensure that they are aware of what local support is available to them and signposting them to local services.
Alongside that, we have set out a series of tougher enforcement measures, targeting those who repeatedly flout the rules, including fines of up to £10,000, but testing and tracing is only one of our lines of defence, so I reinforce once again: if you have symptoms, you must self-isolate in line with public guidance and get a test. Even if you are feeling well, wash your hands regularly, wear a face covering in confined spaces and follow the 2 metre rule on social distancing, because it is these little things that can make a big difference.
In conclusion, we are entering a new and crucial phase of our fight against coronavirus, where the number of cases is rising and we can see that once again, the virus is spreading among the elderly and vulnerable. But we are also in a very different position as a nation from where we were when this virus first hit our shores. We have better data, better treatments and the testing and contact tracing that will be instrumental in getting the virus under control. There is a genuine partnership approach—a national framework with tremendous local support—and I commend the amendment to the House.
Coronavirus Act 2020 (Review of Temporary Provisions)
Chris Bryant Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Matt Hancock
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
My hon. Friend’s comments are absolutely right. The need for all of us to exercise responsibility in a world where the virus can pass asymptomatically, without anybody knowing that they have it, is sadly a feature of life during the pandemic, which I hope will be over sooner rather than later.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I am very grateful for the correspondence that the Secretary of State and I have had on a specific issue relating to local restrictions in Wales, which have quite rightly been imposed by the Welsh Government, that do not allow people to travel outside their county borough area except for a reasonable excuse, which does not include going on holiday. That means that lots of people have lost every single penny on their holiday, because lots of companies have refused to pay out on insurance or change the date of their holidays. They say that Welsh Government rules are just guidance and do not have the full force of law. I hope the Secretary of State can stand at the Dispatch Box now and say very clearly to those companies that they should be reimbursing people because those restrictions have the full force of law. The Welsh Government are of course the legitimate body that makes the rules in terms of the local measures in place in Wales. That is the devolution settlement, as we have discussed many times in the last six months, and people should respect that.
Matt Hancock
Of course the companies involved should be making recompense where that is appropriate, and I hope that we can come forward with a resolution to this issue sooner rather than later.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
Yes, I have indeed installed the app. It has taken a significant time and a significant amount of wasted money to actually appear, but it has finally appeared and I would encourage all hon. and right hon. Members to download it.
Chris Bryant
I would like to point out to the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) that the app actually works better in Wales, because all the tests can be properly downloaded in Wales, unlike in England. And while my hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) is at it, can he just point out that the so-called concession that the Government have given to Members such as the hon. Member for Wycombe, with whom I agree on many of these issues today, is nothing? It is not worth the paper it is not written on. We would like to see something in writing about what the consultation with the House will really look like.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The lesson with promises from this Government is that we always need them in writing, and even then they are not necessarily delivered.
Sir Graham Brady
I absolutely agree. Those were two wonderful interventions from former Chief Whips; I wonder whether there are any more in the House. That is precisely the point: it is our belief that this House can work with the Government, and that our collective knowledge and the difficult questions we will ask will improve the quality of the Government’s actions and governance.
Sir Graham Brady
The hon. Gentleman is an expert on procedure, and he will soon get to grips with it. It is the made affirmative procedure, which entails the setting of a commencement date in the future for measures, which will allow for a debate and vote to take place in advance of commencement. The House will therefore have that crucial ability to refuse consent.
Sir Graham Brady
These things will be brought forward. We have had the assurance, and we will hold the Government to it. The hon. Gentleman will see it very soon.
I will close by thanking those Members across the House who, by supporting my amendment publicly or privately, have helped to achieve what I believe will be an important step forward for all of us.
Covid-19
Chris Bryant Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Goodness—thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. What a delight it is to be called to speak so suddenly.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. I should explain, lest there be confusion, that it is of course unusual for the Chair to call two people from the same side of the House consecutively—I hope the hon. Gentleman is getting his breath back—but the hon. Member for Derbyshire Dales (Miss Dines), who would have spoken from the Government Benches, has withdrawn from the debate, so I am obliged, under the current strange rules, to go directly to the hon. Gentleman—whether I want to or not.
Chris Bryant
Well, there was a bit of a sting in the tail there, Madam Deputy Speaker; I will take that up with you later. Incidentally, I can perfectly well disagree with the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady): even though he is theoretically on the same side of the House, he is on a different side from me in respect of many other arguments.
Government in this country can only ever be by consent, and when the Government start to lose consent in a pandemic or at a moment of national crisis, there is a real problem for the nation. As much as the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill), knows that I am I am very fond her and deeply respectful of what she brings to bear in this House, I none the less worry that the Government are presently losing the consent of the British people.
My inbox is full of people who now subscribe to all sorts of mad conspiracy theories. They elevate wild scientists they have discovered somewhere on the web to be the great international experts in the field. They point to things that the Government have done in respect of which there are anomalies; sometimes they are inevitable anomalies, but none the less they pick holes in all that. It feels to me that, slowly but surely, people are beginning to lose confidence in the Government’s handling of this situation. I want to make sure that as a nation we work together—there is no party political advantage to be gained on either side—but we need the Government to do better.
There have been too many mixed messages. It is terribly difficult for an individual member of the public, whose job is not to follow every latest announcement from government—whether it is from their local authority, the Westminster Government, or the Government in Cardiff Bay or in Edinburgh—to understand which specific rules apply to them. Every Member present will have had hundreds of emails and requests, asking “What am I meant to do in this set of circumstances?” I do not know about others, but I often scratch my head as to what the precise answer is. It is therefore difficult for ordinary members of the public. The broadcasters have often not helped: they announce things as if they are for the whole UK and they turn out actually to be for part of England. We need to do much better at this.
The Government’s exaggerated boasting has not helped. I would ban the words “world-beating”. It is not a competition with other countries; it is a competition with the virus. Honestly, I would just bin all that. This is not about trying to win some popularity contest, either; it is just about trying to do the right thing.
I know this is a painful thing to say, but the Dominic Cummings moment did immeasurable damage to the Government’s ability to deliver their own strategy. I know that most hon. Members on the Government Benches think that as well, because they say so in private, and in many cases they have had more emails about that than Opposition Members have. If it feels as if there is one rule for one set of people and another for everybody else, it undermines confidence in the Government.
The test and trace system barely works at the moment. The Government said four weeks ago that it would be sorted in two weeks but it still is not sorted, and I do not think it will be sorted until the end of October.
On the financial problems for pubs, it is not that we are killing pubs, it is just that we have kneecapped them. I can see no logical reason why we would want to chuck everybody out of a pub at 10 o’clock, at the same time, in all the pubs in the whole of the town. It is illogical. We have not done that in Wales; we have done it differently, allowing for drinking-up time and things like that, which is a perfectly sensible, long-standing tradition in Britain. That is what we should have done more widely.
There is no money for the 3 million freelancers, musicians and so many others. We have not sorted out the problem of people going on holidays who were being told by holiday companies, “No, this isn’t really the law; it’s just guidance,” so they will not offer compensation.
The Government must do far more in Parliament. As I said way back, earlier this year, legislation that sits on the statute books for two years that we have to take up and down, yes or no, with no amendment allowed, is no way to govern by consent.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
I want to immediately pick up on the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) about mothers. This is not just about mothers; it is also about fathers. I am sure that many Members were there for their child’s first scan and the birth of their child and cannot imagine what it would have been like to miss it. Indeed, my son was very ill when he was born, and the inability to hold him that early on, when it was not immediately clear what the outcome was going to be, would have been extremely painful. I echo strongly my right hon. Friend’s words: this is about families, not just women.
This is a very difficult period for everybody in this country. In fact, it is a very difficult period for everybody around the world, but some people have done well. I do not mean that they have done perfectly, but they have done well because they have sought to do their best in extremely difficult circumstances. Those people are, of course, our healthcare professionals, who time and again have pushed themselves further than they knew they would have to. They have done better than anybody imagined they could and improved circumstances and situations that many thought lost or futile. They have taken us from a situation early on where we thought coronavirus was fatal to one where, for many people, it is survivable. They have changed the nature of the treatment, innovated and transformed the life chances of those who are suffering from this disease and those who will catch it. They have done so with extraordinary good grace, courage and professionalism.
Others have also done well. I pay huge tribute to the civil servants in the Department of Health and Social Care and the Treasury, who have been innovative, thoughtful and creative, and to Ministers, who have listened, encouraged and no doubt innovated themselves. This debate is part of a process that is our responsibility—not that of the Department of Health and Social Care or the Treasury, but ours. That responsibility is to listen to the people who sent us here—the people we represent—and to enter into what is, I am afraid, a fundamentally political argument.
Chris Bryant
I would argue that one of the most dangerous innovations has been the ability of Ministers to switch on and off regulations without any say-so from Parliament. Does the hon. Member agree?
Tom Tugendhat
I do agree, and that is exactly what I am coming on to. We are sent here because the decisions we are taking are, as the hon. Member recognises, political. Those decisions are about where to allocate resources, about people’s liberties and about care and treatment. They are fundamentally not party political, but political. They depend on an understanding of what is going on in this country, what people’s priorities are, where they wish to see investment, how our country wishes to be governed and what risks we are willing to take.
Because it was an emergency, many of us gave the Government the space to take those emergency decisions under the Coronavirus Act 2020. Sadly, this is less of an emergency now and more of a chronic condition. It has lasted for the best part of nine months. Although I hope I am wrong, there is a serious possibility that the vaccines being tested may not be successful and that the supplies may not be ready as quickly as we hope.
As a country, we must have the conversations that allow us to sustain the protections that we need, because the Government are right: we must protect people. We must protect the economy and education because we must protect people not just today but tomorrow. We must deter this disease. We must find the vaccines that will fix it, that will stop it, and we must rebuild because the damage that is being done to our country is serious and severe, and the damage that is being done to our world and to our friends is equally severe. The Government are right: we must protect, we must deter and we must rebuild. I absolutely agree with that, but we must do so together. As the Minister for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), knows, democracy is not just about elections, but about how we deal with each other as citizens. It is about how we talk to each other in this country. We practise democracy every day in this place, of course, but actually we practise it every day in this country, because it is not this place that is the mother of Parliaments, it is our country that is the mother of Parliaments. It is so because we believe in the freedom to discuss, to debate and to challenge.
For six months or more, we have had emergency laws because we needed them. The time is coming, I am afraid, when we need to have debated laws, because liberty matters, too.
Coronavirus
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Matt Hancock
Yes, absolutely; of course I will do that. We have put significantly more testing into Stockport and my hon. Friend’s constituency: 720 tests just yesterday. One reason for that is the higher rate in Greater Manchester. She makes an important point about ensuring the capacity so that tests can be there when someone has the symptoms of coronavirus, but it is also incumbent on schools to send pupils for testing only when they have the symptoms of coronavirus, to make sure we can prioritise the testing for the symptomatic people who really need it.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I am enormously grateful to the Secretary of State and the Minister for the help he provided over the weekend with Vaughan Gething, trying to get the mobile testing centre in Porth, which has now moved to Clydach, fully functioning in the Rhondda, not least because we have a very high number of infections at the moment and are trying to work out what the specifics look like in terms of a potential lockdown.
Today, however, the best part of 60 people turned up for a test, having made an appointment in Abercynon, only to be told there were no test kits but that there might be some available that afternoon so to try again later that day. Still people are being told to go to Aberdeen. I do not know if it is just the alphabet—people think that Aberdeen is near Abercynon—but it is a very long way away. I also gently say to the Secretary of State: I know he knows there is a problem here, but trying to rebut every argument with, “Honestly, we’ve got more people doing more stuff and people need to get with the programme”, and all of that, just does not wash with the public. There is a danger, if he does too much of that, that people will simply say, “We can’t trust you any more”.
Matt Hancock
The hon. Gentleman is right: we spoke over the weekend and worked hard to get those mobile testing units into the Rhondda, where there is a significant outbreak. It showed the effectiveness of people working together to deliver solutions. I do absolutely acknowledge the challenge, but I also urge everybody to ensure the message gets through to people in the Rhondda and across the country that tests are available. I use these figures to demonstrate that hundreds of people in every constituency are getting tests. I want people across the country to know that we understand there are challenges and are working incredibly hard to fix them but that tests are available.
Covid-19 Update
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Matt Hancock
I am afraid to say that, although I would love my right hon. Friend to be right, I firmly believe, based not only on the clinical advice but on my own analysis and judgment of the facts and the international comparisons, that it is necessary for the public health of the nation to take actions to control the spread of the disease and to take the firm and now legislative actions that we are taking. The reason is that if the virus spreads, we know that it then spreads into the older age group, who too often die from this disease. We also know that it does not just go up in a straight line, and that if we let this disease rip, it goes up exponentially. That is why, with a heavy heart, I strongly support the extra measures that the Prime Minister outlined yesterday and the strategy of this Government and most Governments around the world to handle this pandemic.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Nobody pretends that this is easy, but there are real problems in the system. The latest figures for test and trace in England are now out, and they are the worst figures since it started. The numbers have actually gone down since last week. That is the fact, I am afraid. The Secretary of State might not have seen the latest figures. In relation to testing, my constituents have, ironically enough, been told to go to Derbyshire, Aberdeen, Weston-super-Mare and all sorts of places. Considering that we have one of the lowest car ownership rates in the whole of the UK, it is difficult for many people to go at all, if they are not allowed to use public transport and do not have much money and cannot afford a taxi to go to Aberdeen or Derbyshire. Given the number of times that my constituents have been told, including today, either when they ring or when they use the website that there are simply no tests available at all anywhere in the whole of the United Kingdom, this is a shocking problem that we all need to address. I just hope that the Secretary of State will please, please, please stop with all the huffing and puffing and simply get on with trying to solve these problems. Our constituents are really worried that they are not able to do the right thing, and if people stop doing the right thing we will lose control of this completely.
Matt Hancock
That is exactly what I am trying to do, and I appreciate the tone in which the hon. Gentleman asked the question. To be clear about the data on contact tracing that have just been released, on the number of people who have provided details of one or more close contacts, we reached 82.0% of those in the last week up to 2 September, which was up from 79.9% in the previous week.
Points of Order
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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Government announced the business for the next fortnight earlier today. As you know, the Committee on Standards, which I chair, has seven lay members and seven Members of this House sitting on it. We have been missing two members, because appointments were meant to have been made by now. I do not know why the House Commission delayed that for a considerable period of time, but they have now gone through the Commission. It would seem that we still have no sign of the motion before the House for another two weeks, which makes it really difficult for the Committee on Standards to do its job properly. We have important issues to debate and to deal with. I just wonder whether you, Madam Deputy Speaker, could kick some shins somewhere in Government to make sure we get that motion, so that these people can be appointed. They are desperate to start the work and it all seems a bit unfair on them.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. I cannot promise to kick shins; I always find that the use of the stiletto heel works better, but I do not intend to do that either. I do appreciate the point that the hon. Gentleman has made and he is right to make it in the Chamber. I will make sure that Mr Speaker is aware of his very reasonable concerns, and I am quite sure that those on the Treasury Bench will let the Leader of the House know of them. [Interruption.] I got a nod from the Whip, the hon. Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove). It is vital that a Committee such as the Standards Committee is able to carry out its work properly, and the House ought to facilitate that.
I will now suspend the House for three minutes to allow people to leave safely and carefully.
Covid-19
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Matt Hancock
I will certainly look into whether the roll-out can start in Buckinghamshire. Thankfully, it has a relatively low rate of the virus, which is good news, and we are working to ensure that the testing system there is as effective as it can be. That will include using this new generation of testing when we can begin to roll it out more broadly than the current pilots.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Cancer is rapidly becoming an even bigger catastrophe than anything else. The number of new cancer patients presenting is down by more than a quarter this year. The number of appointments for cancer specialist treatment is down by more than a quarter. The amount of money available for clinical trials has completely fallen through the floor. There is a real danger that lots and lots of people are going to die of cancer this year unnecessarily, when there is treatment that could be available, and that new treatments will not come online. Will the Secretary of State please put together a single taskforce to deal with cancer during this process, increase the amount of money for new kit, in particular in radiotherapy, make sure that we have enough pathologists, histopathologists and haematologists for the future, and make up the additional money for the clinical trials?
Matt Hancock
The hon. Gentleman’s point about research is important. In the places where research has paused because of the virus, the programme of restart is well under way. I am glad to say that although the backlog of cancer cases had increased—because it is not safe to treat cancer during a pandemic and because of some of the surgery that had to be paused—we are now halfway through recovering from that backlog on the latest figures. Obviously that recovery is incredibly important, and it is important to look at the catch-up as well as the absolute drop in overall delivery of cancer services. It is also critically important that people who fear that they may have cancer come forward to the NHS.
Covid-19 Update
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Matt Hancock
We are learning all the way through about how best to respond to this virus. In fact, changing measures, such as the changes we have made in Leicester today, is a good example of learning from the progress of the virus and learning about how best to tackle it. That is just one of myriad ways in which we are learning and improving all the time.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I want to ask the Secretary of State about the revelations that the Americans and the Canadians have come up with about Russia trying to break into the vaccine testing regimes in their countries and possibly in the UK as well. How secure are the vaccine processes in the UK from cyber-attack from elsewhere, and is there anything further we need to do to make sure that other countries are not looking on this as some kind of stupid competition? We are all in this together, are we not?
Matt Hancock
Absolutely. Our approach is that the vaccines developed in the UK—supported by UK Government and, ultimately, UK taxpayers’ money—are of course there, should they come off, to provide protection to the UK population, but so too to the population around the world. We are using our official development assistance money to help ensure that there is broad global access, should they work. On the question about cyber-security and potential hacking, the hon. Member will understand why I cannot go into the full details, but I can reassure him that the National Cyber Security Centre is taking this very seriously.
Points of Order
Chris Bryant Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker
I thank the hon. Member for his point of order. Clearly, that will be a matter for the Secretary of State. We still have a few days before we go into the recess. However, I re-emphasise the response I gave on behalf of the Speaker and the other occupants of this Chair to the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) at the beginning.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Now that you are being so effective, I raised with you last week the issue of how important it would be for many of us to be able to raise constituency issues in Westminster Hall, and I just wondered whether you have got anywhere yet.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Not at this moment in time. However, I am really hopeful that, as we go into September, after the recess, sufficient progress will have been made that we can then start to normalise the proceedings in this Chamber. I fully appreciate that the way that we are currently operating is not how we would all like it to be, but we have to do this at a rate of progress that is safe for all Members and staff here. I do hope that we will make sufficient progress.