Additional Covid-19 Restrictions: Fair Economic Support

Clive Betts Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution. I will go a little bit further and compliment some of the Tory Members who have stood up as part of Greater Manchester, and I will be incredibly disappointed if what I have seen over the past 24 hours results in this becoming a party political fight. Because in Greater Manchester, despite what the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary were trying to suggest, we were united in trying to support our citizens across the conurbation in doing the right thing, bringing the virus rate down and supporting our economy. I hope we can continue to do that. I hope we do not get distracted by messages that are not in the motion, and I absolutely hope the Prime Minister does the right thing, because this is not just about Greater Manchester—this is coming to a town near you. In so many areas now, the R number is increasing. So many areas are in tier 2; so many areas are going to go into tier 3. This is a marker to ensure that our economy survives through those problems.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

On that point about coming to a town near you: it is indeed coming to cities and towns in the Sheffield city region, it was announced today. The package of assistance is totally inadequate. It is nothing like what the leaders and the Mayor asked for. It is exactly the same as has been offered to other areas—the standard package. It is not locally negotiated; it is the standard package. As the leader of Rotherham said, “They put lots of civil servants into a room with us to tell us what we couldn’t have.” That is actually what has been happening in the negotiations.

[Angela Rayner]

I thank my hon. Friend for his insight. Many of the local leaders I have heard from have said that it felt like they had been blackmailed and pressurised into taking a deal. Greater Manchester and the Mayor were not just trying arbitrarily to get more than somewhere else. We put a package together based on the needs of our city, our conurbation, our lowest-paid and the businesses that needed the support. It was not a bargaining chip to get this or that; it was about making sure that there was a floor that meant people were given the support that, by the way, this Government promised. They promised that support, and we are just asking them to keep to their promise.

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[Steve Barclay]

I will make a little progress and then of course I will give way.

In taking forward the targeted action plan that the Prime Minister has set out, we recognise that there will be significant local economic impacts, particularly for the areas in tier 3. That is why the Government have set out a package of support, and indeed why, as I say, the Mayors in other areas have worked constructively with it. This package has a number of parts. I heard reference in the shadow Minister’s opening remarks to £8 per head. That is just one component of a much wider package. It may therefore be helpful to take the House through the full suite of funding that is available.

First, local authorities are absolutely critical to the tier 3 restrictions. That is why, in addition to the £3.7 billion of un-ring-fenced grants that were announced earlier this year, the Prime Minister announced a further £1 billion of support, so that is agreed funding for local authorities that will be allocated to them shortly. In addition to that, local authorities in tier 3 will receive a further £8 per head in respect of public health measures specifically linked to enforcement within the outbreak management fund. That goes alongside other measures such as the availability of military support, which sits in addition to the infection control funding that local authorities also have access to—a further £300 million that will support localised test and trace services, specifically within tier 3—and the £1.1 billion to support infection control within the adult social care sector. Before we get on to the discussion around business support or the support for individuals through the job support scheme, it is important not to talk about local authority support just in terms of £8 per head, because that is one component of a much wider package of support that the Prime Minister has announced.

[Mr Betts]

I welcome the support for local testing, tracking and tracing. It should have been done months ago: that is the reality of the situation. As regards local negotiations—I put this to the Health Secretary last night and he did not deny it—there are not negotiations; there is a financial package that the Government have decided on that has been offered to all areas that have been put up to tier 3 status. It is a case of saying, “Take it or leave it: there’s no extra money going to be negotiated.” That is exactly what leaders in South Yorkshire have said it is: lots of civil servants in a room telling us what we cannot have. These have been the discussions, not negotiations, that have been happening in South Yorkshire in the past few days.

[Steve Barclay]

There has been a framework that we have used to shape our discussions. However, is this not what the Opposition motion, in essence, is calling for—a nationalised approach? In fact, we just heard an Opposition Member calling for the exact opposite in saying that the Mayor of Manchester had a case that was supposedly better than that of the Mayors in Liverpool or South Yorkshire, so the Mayor of Manchester should be treated a preferential way to constituents elsewhere in the north-west. Yet the hon. Gentleman, who I know comes at this very constructively—I recognise that that has always been his approach in the House—says something different. There seems to be confusion among Opposition Members. Do they want a national approach or do they want the Mayor of Manchester to be able to negotiate something allegedly on behalf of Great Britain? I do not think that was his electoral mandate.

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[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

As I have already said, I welcome the extra money for track and trace; that should have happened a long time ago. Directors of public health are the professionals—not Serco—and if we had given them the responsibility a long time ago, virus infection levels would not be as high as they are today.

Let us be clear: there have not been local negotiations; there have been discussions with local leaders about how much the Government are going to give them from a standard package, which is the same in every area. The Government have not denied that that is what has happened; it is the reality. If the standard package was sufficient to provide the help that businesses and local people need, I would welcome it wholeheartedly, but it is not.

Many businesses that are partly affected—such as the breweries mentioned by the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) and the coach companies mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg)—are not going to get help at all. They are going to struggle and they may have to close. If they close but are not forced to close by Government diktat, then of course help would not be forthcoming. People who are made unemployed will not get the same help that they did under the furlough scheme. How can they manage? It is a simple question, and the answer, of course, is that they cannot manage.

We know that the number of people going into isolation who should be isolating is not nearly sufficient, and the reason is that many families simply cannot afford two weeks without any income. For heaven’s sake, extend the scheme beyond the £500 for the poorest families to those who are on average or below average incomes to encourage them to isolate when necessary, knowing that they do not have to make a choice between putting food on their family’s table and paying their rent, and going into isolation. No family should have to make that choice.

Let me turn to the travel restrictions. What we have been told this morning about going into tier 3 is that my constituents cannot go on holiday in the United Kingdom. But they can go on holiday abroad to any country that will have them. What does that say about helping the UK tourism industry? It is exactly the opposite of what Government were saying to people only a few weeks ago: “Go on holiday in the UK, not abroad.” Can the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) confirm whether that is the case? The Health Minister this morning confirmed that it was.

Can the Minister also explain what will happen to a constituent of mine who emailed me? They said, “I am already on holiday in the UK. Do I have to come back, because I am not supposed to stay in another part of the United Kingdom once the tier 3 restrictions come in?” Nobody could give me any guidance this morning. This plan is half-baked and half thought-through. Other constituents of mine can walk to the pub in north-east Derbyshire, which will be in tier 2. The pubs will be open there and my constituents can go for a drink in them. They cannot go for a drink in my constituency, without a substantial meal. The Government are giving advice, but they are not actually enforcing it. What is going to happen in such cases?

The most stupid thing of all—I know that the Minister will not have an answer to this because nobody could give me an answer on the Zoom call this morning; they tried to, but it was a piece of nonsense—is that in my constituency during the last lockdown, people got great enjoyment from walking in the Moss valley, where the footpaths run between Sheffield and Derbyshire. When people walk on those footpaths, they walk between a tier 3 area and a tier 2 area, but the Government advice says that they are not supposed to leave a tier 3 area. I asked this morning whether people should stop at the boundary on those footpaths, and then turn around and come back. It is an unmarked boundary, so people would have to look at an Ordnance Survey map to find its location. I was told that that is the Government guidance now—that is, if someone is walking on a rural footpath, with no chance of giving covid to anyone, they should stop at that imaginary boundary, turn around and come back. I am sorry, but it is that sort of stupid, simplistic advice that brings the whole system into disrepute.

Finally, will the Government please tell people the measures by which tier 3 will end? No one has told us yet.

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[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Jesse Norman)]

We have had a lively, passionate and—what should I say?—vigorous debate across the House. We have heard a wide range of arguments and a considerable amount of passion. It is clear, however, that when we cut through the air being discharged on either side of the Chamber, there is a commonality of values across the House. In fact, the House is united on the most fundamental issues that we face, which are the need to combat this terrible covid-19 virus; the need to protect public health; the need to make every effort to prevent economic harm to our businesses, jobs and people; and the need to protect the fabric of our society. We all share those ambitions.

To do that, we need to do achieve a balance, as the Chancellor discussed last week. In the words of the deputy chief medical officer last night, we are trying to walk “a very fine line” between getting the virus under control in areas where it is surging and incurring minimal damage to the daily lives and livelihoods of people across the country. It was noticeable that the deputy chief medical officer also made it explicit that he did not support a national lockdown, that he backed a local approach and that it would not be appropriate to impose the strictest restrictions across the country. I thought that was an important and telling point from an independent adviser.

For the same reasons, it is clear that no Government, in any normal circumstances, would wish to impose the restrictions that we are discussing today. I can only express my thanks and recognition to the people of Liverpool, Lancashire, Greater Manchester and South Yorkshire for the fortitude that they have demonstrated, are demonstrating and will demonstrate.

The evidence shows that the most successful countries in combating covid-19 are those that have adopted localised measures to protect their populations. That is why we launched the three covid alert levels for England based on the prevalence of the virus in those areas. Although it is vital that we take decisive action to control the virus where it is surging, as we did yesterday in Manchester, we must also recognise that covid-19 is spreading in different ways and at different speeds across the country.

Covid-19 is a virus that we do not fully understand in epidemiological terms, or indeed in medical terms, but we know enough to say that the epidemiological evidence simply does not justify introducing a national circuit breaker. The costs of such an approach would be absolutely huge.

I vigorously support the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Simon Baynes), who said that there were weaknesses in the Welsh Government’s decision to impose a circuit breaker because it would put tremendous strain on areas where there had been no great upsurge in the virus. That point was also made by the former Secretary of State for Wales, my right hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns). It falls in fact into the category of being unnecessarily damaging to the economic fabric of our country.

The idea that the Welsh Government have done that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South put it, without adequate scrutiny, is a sharp contrast to here where the Opposition have been vigorous in holding the Government to account, and rightly so. Having said that, it is important to say, as my right hon. Friend the Chancellor said last week, that these are not virtual costs: every day that a national lockdown was in place would bring very real costs in jobs lost, businesses closed and children’s education harmed. The costs can be measured and weighed in permanent damage to the economy, which in turn undermines our ability to fund our public services.

Let me briefly remind the House of what we are doing to support, in a broad, deep and consistent way, areas that face higher restrictions. We are helping businesses with fixed costs such as rents and bills through a new business grant scheme. We are supporting local authorities in tier 2 or 3 with significant new funding. We have introduced a national funding formula of £1 per head in tier 1 areas with a high incidence, going up to £3 and £8. Of course, that is just a covid-outbreak-combat measure —it is dedicated to a small part of a much wider pattern of programmes of support totalling, as the House will know, more than £200 billion in total. To give the House a sense of scale, that means that areas in high or very high alert are receiving, or will receive, up to half a billion pounds just focused on public health activities to do with combating the virus, such as local enforcement and contact tracing. That comes on top of the £6 billion that we have already provided to local authorities since the start of the crisis.

The third element is extra support for local authorities in tier 3—

[Mr Betts]

Will the Minister give way?

[Jesse Norman]

I would but I have been given so little time and have so much material to get through. I hope the hon. Gentleman does not mind if I press on.

As the House will know, we have provided one-off grants to Lancashire and Liverpool and will continue to do so for other authorities. Finally, we are expanding the job support scheme: businesses that have been legally required to close, whether in tier 3 areas or elsewhere, will be able to claim a direct wage subsidy.

Let me say a couple of things on the issue more widely before I finish. The hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds) quite rightly said at the outset of this pandemic that it would be, in her words, “completely inappropriate” to engage in party politics on these desperately important issues of human life and human wellbeing. The hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) said that we should not be having “political games”. I am afraid that an awful lot of what we have seen in the past 48 hours has been political games and party politics. It is a terrible, terrible shame.

Love Manchester though I do, I am afraid there is no reason why it should be treated as a special case and any differently from any other part of the country. Every country faces the potential of being struck down by covid and every part of this country should be supported in a proper way that is consistent across the piece. When the Mayor of Birmingham says, by contrast, that he will not put lives at risk, we have to recognise the sincerity and importance of his view.

Let me pick up a couple of other points that have been made. The hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey) spoke of Abraham Lincoln; she may also remember that Lincoln said that the gentleman he spoke of compressed the smallest amount of thought into the largest number of words. I am afraid we have seen a bit of that today.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) called for rationality and a truly national strategy; that is exactly what we are offering. That is what the Government are giving to her.

My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter) was absolutely right to highlight the danger of theatrics and the importance of our not making this a north-south issue. It is absolutely not that. This is an issue in respect of which we are all desperately concerned to do the same thing: to protect people’s livelihoods, to protect their health and to protect the fabric of our economy and our society. What is the Labour alternative? A national firebreak? A circuit break? We should do everything that we possibly can to avoid that because of the unfairness of striking down areas that do not have high virus levels and suppressing their businesses. We all recognise the economic costs associated with that.

I do not think it is consistent with the Labour party’s commitment to avoid party politics to have descriptions from the Opposition Benches of, in one phrase, “screwing people over” heard in this Chamber, or, indeed, to hear references to a Member of this Chamber as scum from the Labour Front Bench.

Question put (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.