Public Health

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Wednesday 30th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

I hear my hon. Friend’s point, and I share his view that throughout this pandemic the vast majority of people have behaved with great responsibility. I know that people in tiers other than tier 4 thought very hard about whether they should gather with relatives, even within the easing that was allowed during the Christmas period, and rightly so. We must all play our part in controlling the virus and stopping its spread.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Helen Whately]

I will make some progress.

At the time of these provisions we were seeing an exponential rise in cases in London, Kent, and some other parts of the south-east, and it was clear that the tier 3 restrictions were not sufficient. We identified the existence of a new variant in those areas, and further analysis showed us that the new variant was driving the steep trajectory of infections. The new and emerging respiratory virus threats advisory group—NERVTAG—tells us that the new variant demonstrates a substantial increase in transmissibility, compared with other variants, and that the R value appears to be significantly higher, with initial estimates suggesting an increase of between 0.4 and 0.9.

There is no evidence to suggest that the new variant of the virus is more likely to cause more serious disease, but increased infections lead to increased hospital admissions and, sadly, increased loss of life. These winter months already pose great challenges for our NHS. That is why we had to take the action that we took before Christmas, and the further steps announced today to control the relentless spread of the virus. However, it is not all bad news.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Will my hon. Friend give way on that point?

[Helen Whately]

I am making some progress and I am mindful that many Members want to speak this evening.

The roll-out of the Pfizer vaccine is happening at pace, with more than 600,000 people receiving it between 8 and 20 December. Vaccinations in care homes started on 16 December, and the NHS has already been getting the vaccine to those who are most vulnerable, and the care workers who look after them. Now, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine has been approved, and it is much easier to get out to people and into arms. There is every reason for optimism, but we are not there yet. We must suppress the virus now and in the weeks ahead.

On the specific measures in these regulations, in response to the greatly increased risk, the addition of tier 4 stay-at-home measures will be familiar to people from the November national restrictions. Tier 4 involves minor changes to those national restrictions. As of November, people in tier 4 areas must stay at home and not travel out of tier 4. They may only leave for a limited number of reasons such as work, education, or caring purposes. We are advising that clinically extremely vulnerable people in tier 4 areas should do as they did in November and stay at home as much as possible, except to go outdoors for exercise or to attend health appointments. The regulations contain the same exemptions as other tiers for childcare and support bubbles. We advise that people elsewhere avoid travelling into a tier 4 area, unless they need to do so for work, education or health purposes.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Can my hon. Friend help me? Statutory instrument 1572 required the people of Christchurch to move from tier 1 to tier 2, and it came into effect on 19 December. Today, the Secretary of State has announced that the people of Christchurch should be moving into tier 4, with effect from midnight tonight. What has happened between 19 December and today to force the people of Christchurch to lose all that liberty?

[Helen Whately]

One thing that I will do when I have finished speaking is see whether I can look up the specific data for the hon. Member’s constituency. In general, however, the announcements made today, just as with previous announcements, are based on the data that we are seeing, which includes rapidly rising rates of infection in certain areas, the level of new infections, the trajectory and hospital pressures.

The tier 4 regulations require all non-essential retail, indoor entertainment, hairdressers and other personal care services to close. International travel is also restricted to business trips only. However, we have listened to hon. Members and the public about what is most important to people in their daily lives so, unlike in the November restrictions, communal worship and a wider range of outdoor recreation are still permitted. We also recognise the restrictions’ impact on businesses and continue to provide them with ongoing support to help get through the crisis.

We know that these measures are hard. We know that they keep families and friends apart, yet we also know that they are necessary for us to get through this situation and to prevent the loss of lives as we do so. This virus thrives on the things that make life worth living, such as social contact, but that means we can all play our part in stopping the spread—as I said, if not for ourselves, then for others. The end is in sight, but for now it is our duty here in Parliament to put in place these restrictions—onerous though they are—to control this virus. I commend the regulations to the House.

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[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

This House legislated explicitly for specific arrangements to govern the celebration of Christmas, and no sooner than the House had risen itself for Christmas, the Government, by ministerial fiat, changed those arrangements. We are asked this evening to give retrospective legislative approval to the changes that they made. We are in the absurd position of being asked to vote for the ghost of Christmas past.

Sometimes in a democracy, process has an importance. I am constantly—daily—confronted by individuals and businesses facing ruin, notwithstanding the huge investment that they made in covid-secure premises and procedures. What we have never had, and what we have always been asking for, is the cost-benefit analysis that the Government made on each of the restrictive measures that make up the menu of their tier system. I do not for one moment question the motives of Ministers. I do, however, question their ability, in exactly the way that I question my own ability.

When the House rose, the lobby of Government scientific advisers—a lobby, we should remember, that had already publicly expressed their frustration that their earlier strictures on how Christmas should be celebrated had not been fully taken on board by the Government—announced that they had discovered a new strain of the disease so much more transmissible than the earlier one. They bounced the Government. I have to accept, of course, the possibility that they may be absolutely right, but I know this: were I presented by such a lobby of eminent scientists—eminent people leading in their field—and told that they had discovered this new emergency, and that so many more people were going to die, and unless I did what they said, I would be responsible for their deaths, I would find great difficulty in having the wherewithal to identify and ask the right questions to be sure that they were on the money, or 100 miles from it.

What I would certainly want, and what I believe the Government need, is an alternative source of expertise—a competitive source of expertise—particularly statisticians leading in their fields, who would be able to furnish me, to arm me, to arm Ministers, with the right questions to ask about the validity of the modelling and the data. It can only improve the decision-making process. But what is really galling in all this is then to hear on the airwaves Professor Ferguson being interviewed, giving his wisdom to the nation once again, to all intents and purposes as if he were still a key Government adviser. I do hope that the Minister winding up the debate will be able to assure us that that is most certainly not the case. I was always rather jealous of Poole, Christchurch and Bournemouth, because our infection rate in the New Forest was substantially lower than theirs, but they turned out to be in tier 2 and we were in tier 3. Now we are all together in tier 4.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that we are now in tier 4, but in statutory instrument No. 1646, which was laid before this House on 29 December, we were in tier 2. Today—one day later—we are in tier 4. Is that not a mockery?

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

The reality is this. These are the questions that my constituents put to me, and I am reduced to saying, “It’s one of life’s great mysteries.” The decision-making process is entirely opaque. That is why I voted against it when I had the chance.

Healthcare Support Services: Conception to Age Two

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher, and a great pleasure to be speaking in a debate secured by my very old, wise and aged colleague, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom)—the high priestess of early years. As she said, I speak as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the first 1,001 days. I also recently stood down as chair of the Parent-Infant Foundation, the charity that she founded and that is having such an important effect on the whole movement for 1,001 days. I have been very proud to chair that charity for the past six years.

It is great to see this subject coming into the mainstream. We have had a number of Westminster Hall debates, including on the impact of covid on maternity, families and children in lockdown. Before the general election, I held a debate on health visitors. Since “The 1001 Critical Days” manifesto, the important document produced about eight years ago by my right hon. Friend, we have had various reports, including “Babies in Lockdown”, “Rare Jewels” by the Parent-Infant Foundation, “Building Great Britons”, and several Select Committee reports, including by the Health and Social Care Committee and the Science and Technology Committee, all of which were serious, heavyweight studies of the first 1,001 days.

This is, at last, not a new subject. I come to this debate much in the mode of Elizabeth Taylor’s sixth husband: knowing what was expected of him, but struggling to make it new and fresh. But we will give it a go.

Children, particularly very young children, have been the forgotten element in the whole pandemic lockdown; so too have parents of very young children. The lockdown, the regulations, and the alienation from or unavailability of family member support networks—which many of us, as early parents, took for granted—have had mental health impacts on new parents and single parents in particular. We should not underestimate that. It will be a long time before we can get back to a degree of normality and start to see the impact that missing out on those important contacts and support mechanisms in those crucial early months has had and will have for many years to come.

Early years has for too long been forgotten when it comes to Government spending. Many of us have been going on about that for a long time, and it is worth repeating. Work done a few years ago estimated that the cost of perinatal mental illness is £8.1 billion each and every year. The cost of child neglect in this country is £15 billion each and every year. That means that we are spending more than £23 billion on getting it wrong for parents and very young children in those crucial early years. If we were to spend a fraction of that amount on greater preventative intervention measures for those who most need it in those crucial early years from conception to age two, that bill would be reduced significantly and it is a false economy not to be doing that.

It was disappointing to see just £300 million in additional funds being given to the social care sector—that is, the adult and children’s social care sector—in the spending review, even though there is a shortfall of some £3 billion in local authority children’s social care alone, not to mention all the problems with public health and the shrinking numbers of health visitors, which I will come back to in a moment.

Why is that important? My right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire has given us some of the figures. Up to 20% of women experience mental health problems in pregnancy or the first 12 months after birth, and 50% of all maltreatment is related to children under the age of one. It has been estimated that 122,000 babies under the age of one live with a parent who has a mental health problem. One third of domestic violence begins during pregnancy—a figure I could not believe when I first came across it. The Government are doing good work with domestic abuse legislation, but we need to be addressing the problem at source. If domestic violence is happening in a household, what sort of physical and psychological message is that sending to the newborn child? The same applies to even before it is born as well: there are signs that communication within the womb itself is a factor. Suicide is one of the leading causes of death during the period of pregnancy to one year after the birth of a child. That is a deeply tragic figure, but it preventable if proper systems and checks are in in place.

About 40% of children in the UK have an insecure attachment to a parent or carer by the age of 12 months. The figure that I have always used—this is, I think, the killer point—is that for a child at the age of 15 or 16 who is suffering from some form of depression or low-level mental illness while at school, there is a 99% likelihood that his or her mother suffered from some form of depression or mental illness during or after pregnancy. It is as direct a correlation as that. If we do not do something within those first 1,001 days, we will reap the consequences, as will children, not just during childhood but into adulthood as well.

Child obesity rates are all connected to what happens in the first 1,001 days. Last year we also had worrying figures—this is particularly topical now—about the dwindling vaccination rates in England. In particular, only 86.5% of children had received the full dose of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. We have effectively lost our immunity status, because the World Health Organisation target to protect a population from a disease is 95%. One hopes that parents in particular will take up the covid vaccination as it is rolled out, because we have seen the effects on the children’s population of not having vaccinations in recent years.

The Children’s Commissioner estimates that 2.3 million children are living with risk because of a vulnerable family background and that more than one third within that group are invisible—they are not known to services and are therefore not getting any support. That is why it is crucial, particularly before those children present at school and come on the radar, that health professionals at various levels are having contact with those children and families to ensure that everything is all right. They can give that help and support and that tender affection and empathy, but they are also an early warning system for when things are going wrong, right up to safeguarding issues. The one thing that all those ailments have in common—there are a lot more that I have not mentioned—is that they come under the remit of the health visitor to a varying extent. I will come back to the importance of health visitors.

The impact of covid is great, as I have said, and I will not go over that again, but more families with babies and young children under five have been tipped into vulnerability due to the secondary impacts of the lockdown. At a time when families, and particularly families from deprived communities and single-parent families, need face-to-face contact with people like health visitors the most—I also refer to health visitors as the trusted uniform services who are usually welcomed over the threshold, whereas with social workers and others a barrier goes up instantly—more than 70% of health visitors have been repurposed to other aspects of the health service to deal with covid. That really is a false economy.

I pay tribute to Cheryll Adams, the chief executive of the Institute of Health Visiting, who is standing down from the outstanding role she has played for the cause of health visitors and their importance in the first 1,001 days. She will be greatly missed, but I am sure she will not quit the scene altogether, because of her dedication to the cause. Her report showed that 82% of health visitors reported an increase in domestic violence and abuse; 81% an increase in perinatal mental illness and poverty; 76% an increase in the use of food banks and speech and communication delay among children; 61% an increase in neglect; and 45% an increase in substance abuse. Finally, 65% of health visitors have a case load of more than 300 children under the age of five.

Is that sustainable? My worry is that even in the good times without a pandemic, health visiting was greatly stretched. One of the great achievements of the coalition Government was the delivery of a promise to institute 4,200 additional health visitors, based on the Kraamzorg system in Holland, which we visited and saw. It was a huge achievement—I think we were just a few dozen short of 4,200 by the time we got to 2015—and yet I fear that those numbers have dwindled back almost to the level that was inherited. That is such a false economy. Health visitors are a critical part of a universal offer to all families in the first 1,001 days. The report by the First 1001 Days Movement says:

“It is essential that governments invest in the delivery of the Healthy Child Programme and that this programme supports babies’ emotional wellbeing and development. We believe that all families should be able to access care from a named health visitor who offers them a high-quality service that is proportionate to their needs.”

I wholeheartedly concur.

What should be done? Many suggestions have been made. The LGA recently brought out a report saying that the Government should

“properly resource councils to enable investment in preventative universal and early help services to ensure that children, young people and their families receive the practical, emotional, education and mental health support they need”.

That is absolutely right. The Parent-Infant Foundation, in its “Babies in Lockdown” report, recommended funding for a

“Baby Boost to enable local services to support families who have had a baby during or close to lockdown.”

As my right hon. Friend said, more than half a million babies were born in that period. The report also said we should have a

“new Parent-Infant Premium providing new funding for local commissioners, targeted at improving outcomes for the most vulnerable children.”

I obviously agree with that.

Finally, I will go back to the “Building Great Britons” report, which was produced back in 2015 and made nine main recommendations: that a 1,001 critical days policy should be a mainstream undertaking by central Government; that all local authorities should be required to produce and implement a 1,001 days strategy within the next five years; that national Government must establish a 1,001 days strategy blueprint; that local health and wellbeing boards should demonstrate delivery of a sound primary prevention approach; that the early help recommendations from the Munro review, which I commissioned back in 2010, should be picked up and carried; that we should have a Minister for families, either close to or at Cabinet level, to carry the banner for the importance of the early years and family contexts, which are so important to the social policy of any Government; that we should have more inter-agency training on the importance of the early years; that children’s centres should be repurposed to be these family hubs, which this Government have committed to and which should be a Piccadilly Circus of these services available to all families; and that we should have the research evidence to go with all of that.

In short, we need a full “team around the family” approach; we need to invest in health visitors and other health professionals, including GPs and mental health specialists, particularly around attachment issues. We need them to work with all of those in the early years setting, alongside social workers and others with safeguarding responsibilities—supporting, not supplanting parents, but signposting them to the most appropriate services and ensuring that they are accessible when needed. We need a national roll-out, national guidance and national scrutiny to ensure that it is being delivered, but it should be implemented locally and governed by local circumstances. To not do that is a false economy, and children in future generations will pay the price.

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Before calling the next speaker, I will just say that the wind-ups will start at half past 10. There are four more speakers, so if each of them speaks for a maximum of five minutes, we should cover everybody.

Cancer in Teenagers and Young Adults

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Wendy Chamberlain]

I agree that is arguably one of the opportunities of a more cashless society. If people are making a payment, the gift aid opportunities are potentially easier to access than with putting money in a box.

I appreciate that healthcare is a devolved matter, but I am still looking forward to hearing the Minister’s response because I am sure these challenges exist throughout the UK. Indeed, that is why the hon. Member for Strangford is the person who has secured this debate. We can also achieve much by pooling our healthcare expertise across the four nations. We should be making sure that in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England that we are following the best possible practice, which means raising awareness of symptoms, enabling swift diagnosis and ensuring that children, young people and their families are properly supported.

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

As the next person on the call list has withdrawn, I call David Linden.

DHSC Answers to Written Questions

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care if he will make a statement on his Department’s performance in answering written questions from right hon. and hon. Members.

[The Minister for Health (Edward Argar)]

Parliamentary questions are a key element of Parliament’s ability to scrutinise Government on behalf of the people of the United Kingdom. As the House would expect, we take them very seriously, and as you, Mr Speaker, and hon. Members will know, I take seriously all aspects of my and the Government’s accountability to this House. Prior to the pandemic, my Department had an exemplary record of providing accurate and timely answers. In the last full parliamentary Session, despite receiving more PQs than any other Department, we had the highest response rate in Whitehall. However, as hon. Members will be aware, DHSC, its Ministers and officials have been at the forefront of responding to this pandemic, with the attendant additional workload that has brought.

As such, it is a matter of regret that we have been unable to sustain previous PQ performance, for which I rightly apologise to you and the House. However, it is explicable in the face of a trio of concurrent challenges. The first is volume: between March and October this year, we received over 8,000 written parliamentary questions across both Houses. This compares with 4,000 for the equivalent period last year. The second challenge is timeliness: we have met a rapidly, almost daily, changing situation, and answers drafted by officials are sometimes out of date shortly after they are drafted. We have been prioritising accuracy of response to Members over speed, but this can mean that responses have to be redrafted, with attendant delays.

The third challenge is policy input: despite increasing the administrative resources to respond to parliamentary questions, it remains the same policy officials who are responding to the pandemic operationally and drafting regulations and are the only people with the requisite policy expertise to input into parliamentary questions and responses.

That said, Mr Speaker, although we continue to field exceptional volumes of parliamentary questions, I want to reassure you and the House that we are not making excuses in providing these explanations, and are taking every possible step to recover our performance. We have instituted a parliamentary questions performance recovery plan and are delivering against it by increasing resource where we can and clearing the backlog, focusing on the oldest parliamentary questions first.

More broadly, throughout this challenging time the Secretary of State and Ministers have sought to make themselves regularly available in the House to be questioned and held to account. Between March and October, the Secretary of State made 18 statements and answered seven urgent questions. We have also seen seven general debates on covid since March, and that is not including junior Ministers’ appearances in the Chamber. This is not an alternative to written parliamentary questions, but it is an important reflection of our accountability to this House.

To conclude, written parliamentary questions will continue to be a top priority on which I am briefed weekly. I thank you, Mr Speaker, and hon. Members for your and their patience and recognition of the exceptional circumstances of recent months. In the weeks and months ahead, we will work hard to restore our leading performance, which hon. Members have a right to expect.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question, which was born of extreme exasperation. I thank my hon. Friend for his response, his contrition and his apology, and for his offer to do better in the future.

If other Departments can answer 90% of named day questions on time, why cannot the Minister’s? Will he set a date for the clearance of the backlog to which he referred and guarantee future compliance with the rules and the spirit of the rules? This is not just about timeliness; it is about the quality of the answers. Since this is the week of resets, will the Minister now tell his ministerial colleagues and officials to abandon their tactic of, basically, dumb insolence towards those of us who ask challenging questions?

Does my hon. Friend accept that these questions and answers increase public trust in our democracy, and should be a catalyst for improving public policy? If his Department is in the lead in suppressing liberty in this country, is it surprising that there are more questions to his Department than to others? Because issues of liberty are at stake, surely it is all the more important that these questions are answered quickly.

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. As he will be aware, other Departments, while they have heavy workloads, are not leading the response to the pandemic. In response to his final point, he will not be surprised that I do not characterise it in that way. Instead, I would characterise it as the Department of Health being in the lead in saving lives and protecting the NHS in this country.

My hon. Friend asked two other substantive questions. I think his language was a little intemperate in respect of the serious efforts that officials undertake every day to try to provide accurate and timely answers. There is no suggestion that they seek to stonewall or to avoid responding. They do their best, but it is difficult and the situation changes day by day. Where answers are deemed to be inadequate, hon. Members often revert to me directly or table their questions again, and we endeavour to fulfil our obligation to provide accurate answers.

On my hon. Friend’s question about recovery, we have set a trajectory for each month in order to recover performance over the coming months. Of course, that depends to a degree on the workload of officials in responding to the pandemic, as well as in providing answers, but I do not see it as an either/or; we intend to recover performance in parallel with tackling the pandemic.

Covid-19

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker), although I do not agree with her obsession with trying to restrict free speech and information for the general public. Surely it should be for the general public to discuss and determine these things themselves.

The Minister referred to evidence, data and scientific advice as being the watchwords of the Government. Those words ring rather hollow with my constituents, because they regard that as spin rather than substance. Earlier today, I suggested to the Prime Minister at Prime Minister’s questions that the million-plus people who had tested positive for covid-19 and had recovered should be exempt from the regulations because their T cells would give them immunity for at least six months. That is the evidence provided by and published in The BMJ, and yet the Prime Minister seemed to cast doubt on it, despite the fact that that evidence was produced in collaboration with Public Health England and has won plaudits from the Medical Research Council.

One of the advantages of providing such an exemption is that it would deal with the people who are suffering from long covid, to whom the Minister also referred. In Sweden, they apply such an exemption. I know that any references to Sweden are anathema to the Government. Last time I mentioned Sweden, the Minister tried to pour cold water on my statistics. She was wrong, and I questioned her and have not had an answer. Again, I make no apology for referring to the comparable statistics.

In the past week, ending 17 November, there have been 85 deaths from covid-19 in Sweden. In the similar period in the United Kingdom, there have been 2,975 deaths. Taking into account the population difference, there are six times as many deaths per capita in this country as in Sweden, and that takes no account of all the collateral damage that we are causing to our people who cannot get access to healthcare, including 5,000 excess deaths from heart disease alone.

The Minister was saying that we talk about evidence. In answer to parliamentary question 111413, asking about the public health justification for refusing to allow the giving and receiving of the sacrament in places of worship, this is the answer I received:

“Public Health England had not been requested to research and publish detailed specific data on the numbers of COVID-19 cases related to place of worship and allied settings on outbreak investigation. This is now being performed.”

That answer came in 10 days after it should have done, but why was that work not done before? Why are we refusing to allow people to receive the sacrament in places of worship without any evidence in justification? Similarly, I asked about the difference between two people playing golf on a public golf course and two people walking a dog on a public footpath. There was no satisfactory response from the Government.

On another issue, while the Government say that people are at great risk if they go to play golf together, the greatest risk, it seems, is to have the misfortune to go to hospital and then contract covid-19. In answer to a question yesterday, I have been told by the Minister that in October alone there were 3,934 cases of people who went to hospital without covid but got covid while they were there, as a result of hospital transmission of infection. In October, in Poole hospital, which serves many of my constituents, 120 people were in hospital, and some 73 of them contracted covid as a result of infection within the hospital.

The question I ask of the Minister, therefore, is: when we get the vaccination, will someone getting a vaccination automatically be exempt from the lockdown rules? If not, why not? Also, when we get into discussing criteria for moving out of the lockdown, what will we do about false positive tests? If there are 500,000 tests a day and 5% are false positives, we will have 25,000 false positives. That is number enough to justify a continuation of lockdown—based on false tests. Surely that cannot be sensible policy for the Government.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. It will be obvious from the Order Paper that I have to reduce the time limit. I will do so to four minutes, but after the next speaker.

Covid-19

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I have said it before and I say it again: lockdowns, whether they are partial or total, are the wrong strategy. They are oppressive and profoundly unconservative. As a Conservative, I have always believed that the role of the state is to provide a safety net for those who cannot help themselves. Now we have a Conservative Government who are preventing people from helping themselves by engaging in economic activity, and, having prevented those people from engaging in economic activity, the Government are not providing a safety net to all of them. As the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) has just said, people are missing out because they are not allowed to engage in economic activity. In my constituency, people who work on cruise ships, people who work in the events industry and people who run luxury coaches are but three examples of the terrible cases that have come to my notice in recent days.

In their actions, the Government are treating citizens not as individuals but as part of a collective, and that is depersonalising. It is most obvious in the Government’s refusal to differentiate between those who have had covid-19 and are therefore immune, whether in the short or long term, and those who have not. If the state wanted to maximise liberty, it would remove the restrictions on freedom wherever it was possible so to do. What threat is there to public health from allowing those who are immune to covid-19 to go about their normal business? That is what happens in Sweden.

I asked the Secretary of State about that in a written question, but I have not had a reply, even though I referred in the debate on 13 October to that failure to respond. I am afraid that that is indicative of the Government’s arrogance in this respect. In that debate, I also mentioned the number of deaths in Sweden. I have looked up the latest figures, and there have been two deaths in Sweden from covid-19 in the last five days. Sweden allows much more social activity than we in this country have done, and its Government rely on individual citizens to trust each other. Sweden’s citizens trust the Government, because the Government trust them. Why can we not do something similar?

We have heard the scaremongering, and the Department refuses to justify some of its most alarmist rhetoric. The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care said on 1 October that

“hundreds of thousands of deaths…would follow”

if the Government

“just let the virus rip”.—[Official Report, 1 October 2020; Vol. 681, c. 503.]

I asked if he would publish the evidence in support of that statement. He has failed to do that—because, I suspect, there is no evidence in support of that statement. That was gross scaremongering. Instead of trying to build people’s confidence to engage in economic and social activity, the Government are actively frightening them. All this talk about long covid is also designed to try to frighten people, rather than addressing the collateral damage that the Government’s oppressive measures are causing.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.]

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Will the Minister give way?

[Ms Dorries]

No, there is no time—I am sorry—because I want to go on to what other Members have said.

I want to talk about mental health and just correct a few points, particularly on frontline workers. On the evidence we have at the moment, the two groups of people who are suffering with their mental health as a result of this pandemic are those people who had pre-existing mental health conditions and frontline workers who are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. For those frontline workers, a package was put in place straightaway by the NHS, which provided each frontline worker with three counselling sessions, numerous apps and the ability to have a contact and to receive immediate counselling, as well as a website where they could go through the tools used to work through their feelings. Almost every trust manager put in place a support package for frontline workers in their hospitals, and yesterday the NHS announced a further £15 million to support the mental health of frontline workers.

For those with pre-existing mental health conditions—and I would like to pay tribute to Claire Murdoch, who is responsible for mental health delivery in the NHS—trusts across the UK put in place 24-hour mental health crisis helplines in a matter of weeks, and they have had a huge impact. The Government have committed the £2.4 billion; we have accelerated the long-term plan; we have accelerated the trailblazer schemes in schools; we have introduced the wellbeing package in schools for children returning to school, and we have supported the third sector financially to deliver additional mental healthcare to almost every sector of society, including on eating disorders. I always say that is one of the worst mental health conditions because it has a high rate of morbidity, and it too has received additional funding. We have put a huge amount of work into mental health, and I know that Claire Murdoch and others are proud of what the NHS has done in terms of the mental health services that it has delivered.

I cannot answer anybody else, but I will write to people. This has been an important debate in the middle of one the greatest public health emergencies that this country has faced, and I would like to end by again thanking everyone across the country for playing their part to reduce the rate of transmission and to protect their loved ones and our local communities.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered covid-19.

Public Health: Coronavirus Regulations

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi), and I share very much her frustration at the impossibility of getting clear answers from the Government on so many of these important questions.

“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves”—

those words from William Pitt were included in an email from one of my constituents complaining about the way in which this Government are treating the constituents in Christchurch and so many other people in this country. What is the necessity for what the Government are bringing forward today? I asked on 8 October whether the Government would publish the evidence in support of the Secretary of State’s statement on 1 October that

“hundreds of thousands of deaths…would follow”—[Official Report, 1 October 2020; Vol. 681, c. 503.]—

if the Government just let the virus rip. There has been no answer to that question—no attempt to answer it—nor has there been any justification for the arbitrary introduction of a 10 o’clock curfew.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend trust the prognosis of Professor Ferguson, whose estimates have been proved wrong again and again and are wildly exaggerated?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I do not trust them at all. I shall refer to the evidence from Sweden, because the Prime Minister’s challenge to his critics was to put forward an alternative. The Swedish approach is clear and simple—it is to trust the people and make them responsible for their own health and welfare. I looked at the figures for Sweden for the first week of October. Only seven deaths were recorded in Sweden in the whole of that period and today, not a single death was recorded in Sweden. The Swedish Public Health Agency recommends that household isolation and quarantine should exclude those who have provisionally tested positive for covid-19 or have been confirmed to have antibodies in the last six months. I tabled a question asking why that category of people cannot be exempt from these regulations. Again, I have not had an answer, although the time when it should have been answered has long passed. This is intolerable—the arrogance with which the Government are treating us as elected Members of this place.

Swedish common sense is to the fore. They have restricted gatherings not to six, but to 50. They allow nursing homes to decide their own visiting policies. They regard the rules about face coverings as simplistic and irrelevant. Again, on face coverings, I tabled a parliamentary question on 25 September asking the Secretary of State

“whether the introduction of regulations requiring the use of face coverings was linked to an increase in infection rates of covid-19”.

It will not have escaped your notice, Mr Deputy Speaker, that since those regulations were brought in, there has been an exponential increase in the infection rate in this country. Have I had an answer to that question? Of course not, which suggests that the Government do not even want to face up to the evidence that face coverings are counterproductive and are leading to a false sense of security.

In Sweden, two thirds of all deaths from covid-19 have been in the over-80 age group. That is similar to the situation here, and all the United Kingdom restrictions have so far given the average member of this country—the UK citizen—an extra half-day of life. These new restrictions that are coming in will not even give that, because the collateral damage that is being caused will actually reduce life expectancy further.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Mr Deputy Speaker, you may well think that over 37 years, you have heard enough from me, so let me read out a letter that happened to arrive this morning from a constituent. It says:

“I am 67 years old and for the first time in a long time I am scared. Not of the virus, which, let’s be honest, is proving to be no more deadly than the flu”—

that is his opinion; I do not necessarily share it.

“I am scared of the damage being deliberately caused to the economy and our freedoms by this Government in the name of covid-19. It isn’t the virus closing businesses and causing job losses, it’s the actions of the Government. It isn’t the virus stopping people getting treatment and operations, it’s the actions of the Government. It isn’t the virus preventing pupils and students getting the education they are entitled to, it’s the actions of the Government.”

So speaks my constituent in a letter that arrived this morning.

Another letter arrived this morning from a constituent telling me that they were having doorstep services very successfully over recent months attended by six to 16 people in place of going to church if that was not possible. That, of course, now breaks the rule of six, so they have had to stop.

I follow my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) in posing some serious questions to Government that have to be answered. On positive test results—I ask the Government to write back to me if they cannot answer in the winding-up speech—what percentage do they estimate are false positives? Of covid hospitalisations, what is the breakdown between those in hospital who happen to have tested positive and those who are in hospital because of their covid symptoms? Given the disparity between the number of cases and the number of deaths, are we not wrong to react to the rate of infection, rather than hospitalisations and deaths? There are many, many other questions that need answering.

Following my hon. Friend, what is the evidence that we are saving lives by throwing people out of pubs at 10 o’clock into the street? They can go and buy lager in the shops. They can go back to their student digs.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that one way of bringing the Government to account would be to withhold our support until these important questions are answered?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

My hon. Friend makes his point. We are a Parliament and we are entitled to express our opinion and hold the Government to account, and that is what we are trying to do this afternoon.

The trouble with the Health Secretary’s arguments is that he is always raising up Aunt Sallies and pretending that some of us want to let this thing rip. We are simply trying to ask questions of the Government and hold them to account. No Member of Parliament wants to let this thing rip, but what we do say is that the real danger of the disease is to people over 80. The average age of death is 82, and the vast number of them are over 80. It is up to the older population and those who care for them to take self-responsibility—masked by all means, taking great care and shielding even in places of multiple occupation. We have to shield elderly people—they are the people at risk—but we have to get the country back to work. We simply cannot go on bailing out businesses. We are going bankrupt, as I said to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury earlier this afternoon.

With the economy, we are hoping to pull ourselves up by the hair. We cannot do it. We have to allow people to work, and therefore the whole approach needs to change. We need to emphasise the need to shield the elderly population and those who care for them and we need people to take back control of their own lives. I repeat—I will say it again and again—that if we go on cancelling cancer operations and heart operations, if we drive people into mental health difficulties and if we close down businesses, we are paying a terrible price, and there has to be a balance.

Public Health

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Tuesday 6th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

I feel I have taken quite a number of interventions, so it is time that I moved on, if that is all right.

Let me talk through some further changes that have come into effect since the regulations were made. On 21 September, following the advice of the four chief medical officers, the UK’s covid alert level was raised from 3 to 4, which is the second most serious stage, meaning that transmission is high or rising exponentially. The Prime Minister outlined to Parliament on 22 September that we were at a “perilous turning point”, and needed to act to save lives, protect the NHS and the most vulnerable, and shelter the economy from far sterner and more costly measures that would inevitably become necessary.

As a result, further restrictions came into effect from 24 September. These included: rules on the closure of certain businesses selling food or drink between 10 pm and 5 am; measures to require hospitality venues to provide food and drink for consumption on the premises by table service only; the doubling of initial fines for individual breaches of the above measures; and new fines for businesses that do not adhere to the new requirements, starting at £1,000, up to a maximum of £10,000 for repeated breaches. The rules also change the exemptions to the six-person gathering limit to restrict attendance at wedding ceremonies, receptions and support groups to 15, and remove the exemption for stand-alone religious or belief-based lifecycle ceremonies and adult indoor sports apart from indoor disabled sports. We are working through the normal channels to schedule debates for these regulations as soon as possible.

I recognise that people have had to make significant sacrifices to suppress the first wave, and these restrictions are not measures that any Government would want to introduce, but the threat of the virus very much remains. With winter approaching, we must do whatever it takes to keep it under control and protect the NHS so that it can, in turn, look after us.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

rose—

[Helen Whately]

I am sorry but I was closing my speech, not taking an intervention. That was the end of my speech. [Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Madders]

I certainly do not think my constituents are stupid, and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman does not either. A very important point has already been made about children, and I will return to that later. We have not yet had a convincing explanation why they are included in the six.

Even with the best of intentions, concerns and questions remain, not least about the way in which these regulations were introduced, how effective they are, how the Government communicated them and how they will be enforced. The timeline of these regulations is the perfect demonstration of the lack of transparency, strategy and accountably, which has been the hallmark of this Government. Following media briefings the night before, the Prime Minister made an announcement about the rule of six on 9 September, not to this place, as it should have been, even though he was in the House that day to answer Prime Minister’s questions. I call that a discourtesy to this place, and I hope we see and end of that. It shows not only a lack of respect to all Members and our constituents but a lack of confidence in what is being proposed and a lack of commitment to scrutiny. Most of all, the way that these regulations were introduced shows a lack of thought about the practicalities of enforcing them.

How can we expect anyone to adhere to the minutiae of these regulations if they appear for the first time only a quarter of an hour before they become law—at quarter to midnight on a Sunday evening? How were the police meant to enforce that? Are they supposed to google the regulations as they walk around on their beat? Brian Booth, the chair of the West Yorkshire Police Federation, said:

“Everybody is in the dark, it shouldn’t be like that…If the government says they’re going to infringe on people’s lives, they have to tell them how.”

Once again, there is no impact assessment for these regulations. Surely some thought was given to the practicalities, so what discussions did the Minister have with her counterparts in the Home Office and with police forces around the country prior to the introduction of these regulations?

The way that regulations are introduced matters. They are too important not to be debated and given full and timely parliamentary scrutiny before they become law. Since March, more than 70 health protection statutory instruments have been introduced in this way, with no debate and no vote before they come into force. We recognise that, in the early stages, there was a need to act quickly under the emergency procedures, and we acknowledge that that may still be the case at times, but more and more of the regulations that are being introduced do not meet the test of urgency. The Government have slipped into bad habits. They treat this place as an afterthought—an inconvenience, an optional extra—and not as the cornerstone of the democratic process that it should be. Surely they can do better than that. Do they not realise that scrutiny, debate and challenge in the making of our laws means that, in the long run, laws are more robust, more effective and have greater public acceptance?

I repeat once again and for the record our offer to meet at short notice to debate and vote on regulations before they become law. I appreciate that that might be inconvenient for some, but, to be frank, we are in a pandemic so a bit of inconvenience should be the least that we have to put up with to ensure that democracy still functions.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

On that point, can the hon. Gentleman tell the House of the present state of negotiations with the official Opposition about a debate on the 10 o’clock curfew? The suggestion was that there would be a debate tomorrow on the 10 o’clock curfew, but it is not going to be about that—it is going to be about what is happening in the north. Can the hon. Gentleman tell the House what progress there has been?

[Justin Madders]

Regrettably, I am not one of the business managers of the House, so I cannot advise on that, although I expect that we will have an answer during the business statement on Thursday. I note what Members have said about national regulations being debated on the Floor of the House before they become law, if possible—obviously, that will still be after the event, but we really need to start doing a lot better in that area.

There is rightly a concern across the House and among the population that we do not have control of the virus. A central part of regaining control is ensuring that there is robust scrutiny of the regulations and their effectiveness. The Government need to stop reacting to situations too late—that is how the virus has run out of control. They need to look ahead, plan, prepare and act now to get a grip on test and trace, to have a clear and consistent message on what the public need to do and to ensure that there is widespread compliance with the rules. The latter two go hand in hand and are very much connected to the regulations that we are debating today.

As we heard from the Minister, the regulations amend the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 2) (England) Regulations for the fourth time. The regulations restrict social gatherings to six people, unless an exemption applies. We have heard a little about some of those exemptions, so I will not list them all, but they are where the good intentions behind the regulations depart from the clear and consistent messaging that we need. For example, there is an exemption in the regulations for gatherings of up to 30 persons for a marriage or civil partnership; as Members will already be aware, that has been reduced to 15. Yet again, as with a whole host of other restrictions, we are debating regulations that are, in part at least, out of date.

The wedding industry has been decimated this year; I do not know what repeatedly inviting and uninviting people to a wedding does for family relations—maybe people could ask everyone to wear tweed to the wedding and combine it with a grouse shoot so that they could keep numbers at 30. However, this is a health debate, so I will focus on the health aspects. To that end, I would like the Minister to spell out very clearly the rationale for this decision. The limit of 30 at a wedding lasted for just two weeks before it was reduced to 15. Either a specific piece of evidence emerged during that fortnight that required the limit to be reduced for weddings but not for funerals, or the limit should never have been 30 in the first place. Which one is it?

The regulations also provide that the restrictions in private dwellings in the regional lockdown regulations remain in place; it is notable that the rules for the rule of six vary across the devolved nations, as we have already heard. Far from us having an easy-to-remember set of rules that apply to everyone, it seems that the rule of six is the baseline for around only half the UK.

In Wales, as we have heard, primary-age children are not counted in the six. The Welsh Assembly took that decision based on the evidence that it has, which shows that children are far less likely to have the most serious symptoms and are less likely to pass on the virus. The question, which has already been put today, is about how the Government have come to a different conclusion on that point. Why are younger children included in the rule of six in England, but not in Wales—or in Scotland, for that matter?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

The logic of what the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) has just been saying is that the Opposition should be opposing the regulations and calling upon the Government to come back with a fresh set of regulations that overcome the shortcomings he has so articulately identified. I, for my part, certainly hope we will have an opportunity to test the will of the House on the regulations, because this is the first freedom we have been given on such regulations for months. I hope we can then get the Government to go back to the drawing board and come forward with regulations that are consistent with their other policies elsewhere in the country.

These are complex regulations. Big Brother Watch has quoted human rights barrister Adam Wagner, who said that these are

“the most complex and convoluted set of lockdown regulations on England yet.”

That is hardly simple regulation, is it? We know that the Home Secretary herself was caught out and unable to give a convincing answer to the question of what was defined as mingling.

In the time available, I am going to say that I agree absolutely with the criticisms that have been made about the definition of families and young people, but I want to concentrate on another big anomaly in these regulations, which is that they apply equally to gatherings inside and outside. Why do they do that, because that is completely inconsistent with the Government’s own advice to themselves? It is also inconsistent with the advice even coming from Professor Lockdown, who on the radio this morning was absolutely clear that the risks from the virus were much greater in an indoor setting than in an outdoor setting. So these regulations are arbitrary, unfair, unjustified by the evidence, unenforceable and counterproductive in undermining public confidence in Government and in the rule of law.

In the interview on the “Today” programme this morning with Professor Lockdown, he was asked about the contrast between what we are doing and what people are doing in Sweden. He said that, of course, there was not much difference in the issues about social distancing and compliance, but what was important was that in Sweden the people trusted the Government, and that is why they have been able to manage with far less in terms of regulation. If I had the chance to speak to Professor Lockdown, I would have said that actually what he should have been saying was that our Government should be trusting the people. I think the Swedish Government are trusting the people and the people of Sweden are responding positively, enabling Sweden to have a much more thriving economy than ours because they have not got so many arbitrary restrictions imposed upon them. I hope the message that the Minister will take back is that we should be looking at this in terms of trusting the people and applying common sense, and a lot of these regulations manifestly do not achieve that objective.

These regulations were brought in on a whim. They must have been drafted over a period of weeks, I would suggest, but after the Prime Minister made his statement to a press conference on the Wednesday and the Secretary of State made a statement on the Thursday, I raised a point of order on the Friday to ask, “Where are these regulations because they are coming into effect on Sunday evening?” In the end, they were not laid in this House until 10.30 am on the Monday morning. That is absolutely intolerable. The justification given in the letter that was sent, as all letters have to be sent by the Secretary of State if the Government are ignoring the rules of this House, by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care was that these amendments were so urgent that he had not got time to bring them in earlier, but he said in the last paragraph, “I hope you understand why we proceeded in this way, and I look forward to working with you to strengthen parliamentary scrutiny of these measures in future.”

The Minister who has been charged with dealing with this debate, despite the fact that these regulations were brought in by the Home Office actually—the Home Secretary introduced these regulations—could not answer my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) as to whether there were going to be powers of entry, arrest and so on. I am sure a Home Office Minister would have been able to do that, but what that underlines is that we are talking about draconian powers that are restricting the liberty of the British citizen. We should not be introducing draconian powers without the strongest possible justification, and I do not think the Minister has set out any justification in her remarks.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

rose—

[Sir Christopher Chope]

rose—

[Helen Whately]

I have only three minutes left, so I am keen to cover a few more points that have been made in the debate.

Colleagues have spoken about children and the rule of six. As I have said, I am acutely mindful of this point as I have a family of five. I am well aware that Wales and Scotland, where health is devolved, have made their own decisions, including a slightly different decision on this issue. Of course, we will learn from the other parts of the United Kingdom. There are regular conversations between the devolved authorities and the UK Government.

On the matter of extended families and larger households, there is an exemption for larger households—clearly, they can gather—but in some areas there has been a particularly rapid spread when larger households of extended families come together. That can be a particular source of the spread, so it is much harder for larger households wanting to socialise. This is a difficult balance to strike, but we want to ensure that we are suppressing the virus because it is such a cruel thing.

Let me turn to policing. The police approach is one of engage, explain, encourage and enforce. I can confirm that they do not have power of entry, but my understanding of the feedback that we have received from the police is that they feel that they do not need further powers to enforce these measures.

I would like to reiterate the Government’s commitment to working with Parliament and to debating regulations such as these and others. I should say that we absolutely recognise the impact of these restrictions on people’s lives, and that it is with great reluctance that we bring them in. None the less, as I have said, the alternative is not suppressing the rate of the virus, and, as I have mentioned, it is not always a mild illness. We are seeing cases of long covid. There is also a health impact on our hospitals: if they become too full treating people with covid, they will struggle to treat people with other illnesses. That has its own health implications, and cannot be the right strategy. The strategy has to be to control this virus and to suppress it with the rule of six and all the other things that we as individuals can do, including our own compliance with the social distancing measures. We must take this approach, and I thank everybody for all that they are doing. I know that the public face the implications of these restrictions day in, day out, as we do ourselves, but we must do it, because it is the way that we get back to normal as soon as possible.

Question put.

Covid-19

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Monday 28th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill), and I am sorry to hear about the problems afflicting so many of his constituents in Hartlepool. 

It was great to be in the Chamber when my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) addressed us earlier. I am privileged to be one of his constituents, and I can tell you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that when he speaks in this Chamber in the way that he did today, he speaks for tens of thousands of his constituents, not to mention hundreds of thousands elsewhere in the country.

I welcome this debate, but I note that it has come almost as a panic measure by the Government because they suddenly looked at the promises that were made at the time they introduced the Coronavirus Bill six months ago. In their introduction to that, they said that there would be

“safeguards to ensure proper oversight and accountability”

by Parliament. There has not been that proper oversight and accountability, and now, two days before a crucial vote on the renewal of the Coronavirus Act 2020, they come forward with this welcome debate.

I will support the amendment to the motion on Wednesday tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady) if it is selected. If it is not, I still hope that the Government will respond positively to the spirit of that amendment. However, even if the amendment is carried, I am not yet persuaded that I need to support the continuation of the Coronavirus Act. Why am I not persuaded of that? Because the Government are guilty of covert mission creep.

You will recall, Madam Deputy Speaker, that when we were told six months ago that it was necessary to rush legislation through, it was on the basis that we wanted to prevent our NHS from being overwhelmed, with people dying from covid in hospital corridors and not being able to access the care that they needed. Fortunately, as a result of the emergency measures that were taken, that scenario never arose. People were taken to hospital, and they received the very best treatment in hospital and continue so to do.

The original objective of the legislation has been achieved, but, as so often happens with regulation brought in by Governments, they want to keep it. They say, “Oh, we need to keep it just in case.” That is why, in an Adjournment debate on 2 September, I demanded that if the Government were going to keep the regulations, it should be on the basis that there were proper regulatory impact assessments for them. We do not have those regulatory impact assessments. It is all most unsatisfactory.

I quote again from the introduction to the original notes on the Coronavirus Bill, which states:

“For many of the clauses, it is difficult to predict how a power would be used in a specific context, and therefore what the monetised costs would be. Thus, discussion of impacts is largely focussed on unmonetised considerations.”

However, it says that each individual case brought forward

“would require judgement on the specific impacts at that time.”

That has not been provided, and it means that we have had a whole lot of unintended consequences.

When I was at university in Scotland, closing time was 10 o’clock. I could have told somebody that if we returned to a 10 o’clock closing time in a Scottish university city or town, it was likely to result in the consequences we have seen. Why were the rules in relation to early closing in Scotland changed? Because that restriction was leading to people coming out on to the streets having got themselves totally drunk, and to a lot of violence. By extending the opening hours well beyond 10 o’clock, that violence was mitigated. That was common sense—but we are not allowed to look at that now.

I was much taken by the article in today’s Times by Clare Foges, who talks about the approach in Sweden—not just the technical side of it. In Sweden, they think of public health not just in terms of death and awful problems in hospitals but in terms of living life to the full. That is why I believe that the Government must now make it their strategy to enable us to live with the virus and without fear.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I rise to do three things. The first is to praise the Government for everything they have achieved on PPE, on testing and on the track and trace app. In my libertarian soul, and in my instinct, my heart and my reason, I consider the Government’s track and trace app to be the very apotheosis of my worst fears. Yet over the weekend I studied what the Government have done. They have moved away from the first version, to the Apple and Google-distributed model, with all the private data remaining on the user’s phone. They have released a source code, both for the server side and for the client, which I very much welcome as a software engineer, although I doubt I shall be grinding through it. Against all my instincts—and in the knowledge that I am not the Member of Parliament for dogmatic libertarians across the country, with whom I generally agree, but in fact the MP for Wycombe—I have done the right thing: I have, against my expectations, installed the contact tracing app. I ran out of excuses, I have installed it, and I am allowing it to run even as we speak. I hope that will be of some reassurance, even to those libertarians who might condemn me for it.

Secondly, I want to say something about the science. I am not going to engage in amateur epidemiology, much as I have been enjoying picking it up, but I will praise my constituent and friend, Dr Raghib Ali, who is an epidemiologist. Unusually, he is an academic epidemiologist and also an acute medicine consultant who works in Oxford, so he is perhaps uniquely positioned to comment on the disease. He has been tweeting and writing about the disease. He is a very reasonable man. He has really helped me to keep my feet on the ground. I say to all Members who, like me, really hate and despise these restrictions on our freedom to look at what Dr Raghib Ali is writing. He has helped to keep me anchored in the truth that this is a very dangerous disease for people who are older and people who have pre-existing conditions, and we have just got to deal with it.

On the science, I wish my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State were present. As he framed the problem between either suppression or letting it rip, I thought that our friend Mr Osborne was back framing the issue in terms of what I think is a false dichotomy. I think we need to take another look at the scientific advice. There are professors out there telling us that this is an optimisation problem—we need to maximise the lives saved and minimise harm. There is, I think, going to turn out to be a third way that enables us to minimise harm. The Department’s own figures have shown, as reported in The Daily Telegraph, that the cost of lockdown in quality adjusted life years, adjusted for comorbidities, was greater than the cost of the disease thus far. So if we wish to maximise human flourishing and save lives, we have to look extremely carefully at the science.

I am working with my friend Professor Roger Koppl, from Syracuse University and author of a book titled, perhaps unfortunately, “Expert Failure”, looking at what actually happens with expertise. I wrote a brief for the Prime Minister, which I have also tweeted. My covering letter points out:

“Pandemic policy making has been asking the impossible of scientists, economists and politicians. There are solutions and they are fundamental to the success of a free society in an era of accelerating complexity and change.

There is a structural problem rooted in the division of labour which, when combined with bad incentives, causes inevitable failures of expert advice. The problems are acute, delicate, dangerous and long-standing. They do not arise from faulty expertise or bad actors.”

I am not going to call for anyone to be sacked.

So I hope people will look at the brief I have put out, which includes concrete suggestions. I will put on the record the Harold Macmillan quote with which the brief leads:

“We have not overthrown the divine right of kings to fall down for the divine right of experts”,

however brilliant they may be.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Does my hon. Friend agree that what he has just said applies particularly to the university environment, where this year more university students will probably die from meningitis than from covid-19?

Coronavirus and Care Homes

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Tuesday 19th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We now go to birthday boy Sir Christopher Chope.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con) [V]]

Will my right hon. Friend pay tribute to the owners and managers of care homes who put the safety of their residents first and refused to admit any of the 15,000 hospital patients who had been exposed to covid-19, whom the Government were forcing to be discharged from hospitals at the end of March?

[Matt Hancock]

I say happy birthday to my hon. Friend and pass on the best wishes, no doubt, of the whole House. The question he raises is a difficult one, because in many cases, the best place for somebody is not in a hospital. Indeed, people can catch diseases in hospital, so it needs to be done on a clinical basis. That is why we have put in place the testing, isolation procedures and infection control of people who are leaving hospital to go into care homes.