HEALTH PROTECTION (CORONAVIRUS, RESTRICTIONS) (NO. 2) (ENGLAND) (AMENDMENT) (NO. 2) REGULATIONS 2020

Helen Whately Excerpts

Monday 14th September 2020 General Committees

[The Minister for Care (Helen Whately)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 2) (England) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2020 (S.I. 2020, No.788).

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue. I will start by summarising the changes to the regulations. The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No.2) (England) Regulations 2020, which I will refer to as the national regulations, came into force on 4 July. There have been five changes to the national regulations, the first of which was debated in and approved by both Houses before recess. The focus of this debate is the second amendment to the regulations.

These amendments permitted from 25 July the reopening of the following businesses and venues: indoor swimming pools, including water parks; indoor fitness and dance studios; and indoor gyms, sports courts and facilities. Alongside those changes, the Government produced supporting guidance advising that the most high-risk activities within those businesses and venues, such as saunas and steam rooms, should not reopen. Those easings did not apply to the city of Leicester boundaries and the borough of Oadby and Wigston.

We have needed to use the emergency power to amend these regulations so that we can respond quickly to the serious and imminent threat to public health posed by coronavirus. I know that these national regulations have caused real disruption to people’s lives. They have placed restrictions on who people can see, what they can do and where they can work. Just as the Secretary of State has the legal obligation to protect public health, he is also obligated to ease restrictions as soon as it is safe to do so.

The first three changes to the regulations opened businesses and venues that had been required to close, and covid-secure guidance was developed with industry and medical advice to ensure that they opened safely. That means that now only nightclubs, dancehalls, discotheques, sexual entertainment venues and hostess bars are required to remain closed, as they are considered to pose a high risk of transmission because of the close proximity of members of staff and customers. That shows the Government’s commitment to ensuring that restrictions are in place only as long as necessary, and an evolution in our understanding and approach to tackling the virus.

Over the summer recess, we have combined the tightening of restrictions in areas where there are outbreaks with the easing of business restrictions nationally. We have given local authorities powers to act quickly in response to local outbreaks by closing specific premises, shutting public outdoor spaces and cancelling events. We asked all councils to develop dedicated local outbreak plans, and we gave them £300 million of new funding to support that. We published the contain framework, providing further guidance on managing local outbreaks.

Where regulations have been required, the Government have worked with local partners to develop tailored and proportionate restrictions based on the best scientific evidence available, in areas varying from a single factory to an entire region, such as the north of England. These interventions have been underpinned by scientific advice and local data provided by a combination of Public Heath England, the Joint Biosecurity Centre and NHS Test and Trace.

Colleagues will have seen that today the rule of six comes into effect. This change brought the gathering policy from guidance into regulation, mandating that people can only gather in groups of six, and it applies both indoors and outdoors. Single households or support bubbles of more than six are still able to gather together, and there are a small number of exemptions, such as for work, schools, weddings and organised sports activities. People should continue to follow social distancing rules with those outside their household or support bubble. As the Prime Minister announced last week, these measures are not a second national lockdown but are aimed at preventing the need for one.

It is thanks to the public and their continued effort that we have been able to slow the spread of the virus and have started cautiously to return to life as normal. Now, with winter approaching and covid rates rising again, we must keep doing whatever it takes to keep it under control, guided by our ever-increasing knowledge of how covid is spreading and what interventions are effective.

I am grateful to colleagues from across the House for their valuable contributions to these debates and for continuing to challenge us to do better in this vital area of public policy. I believe that we have met the bar set for us. These regulations are a proportionate and necessary use of the powers that Parliament has asked us to use, and I commend them to the Committee.

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[Helen Whately]

I thank the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston for his response, some of which, as he mentioned, he has said before. I will address his comments head-on.

The hon. Gentleman said that he would like us to have debated these regulations sooner, and we absolutely recognise that timely scrutiny is important. There is substantial scrutiny of the Government’s decisions. For instance, there have been multiple oral statements, and numerous urgent questions have been responded to by Government Ministers. There is a great deal of challenge to decisions that are made.

However, throughout the pandemic and up to the present, we continue to need to act rapidly. We need to take rapid decisions to make restrictions to people’s normal way of living, unfortunately, when we see growing risks of the spread of the disease. We also want to be able to take rapid decisions to reduce those restrictions, recognising the difficulties that they cause for people going about their lives, whether in their family relationships, social relationships or livelihoods.

The hon. Gentleman has said that we are now at a different time, and things are different now. Yes, we have done a huge amount to bring the virus under control since the peak in the spring, and we now have a vast quantity of testing relative to the amount we had earlier on, although I fully recognise that its capacity is challenged at the moment because of the great deal of demand for it. However, we are continuing to learn all the time from the greater data we now have about how people are catching the virus—how it is spreading, but also how it is not spreading—so it is still the case that we need to be able to move quickly.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the scientific context for this, and whether because time has moved on, these easements are still the right thing to do. The restrictions are continuously reviewed, looking at what new restrictions may be appropriate and what easements might need to be introduced. As he has acknowledged, in some areas where there have been local outbreaks, restrictions have either not been lifted or have been reintroduced. We are able to do that because, thanks to the operation of Test and Trace and the Joint Biosecurity Centre, we have much more data about how the virus is spreading. For instance, we know that the virus is largely spreading through people’s social interactions. For the most part, it is not spreading in workplaces, and the risk for children in schools is very low, but we have a particular challenge with social contact. Therefore, we are, in general, able to maintain the easements that have been brought in, but are introducing the rule of six today to limit the social contact through which covid is spreading.

In some areas of the country where there are greater rates of covid, there are greater restrictions on household gatherings and even on the rule of six, because we have evidence that in some places, it is particularly spreading through households mingling in a home setting. The whole point is that having greater data and scientific insight, and following scientific advice, means that the restrictions we now have in place can be more tightly targeted, and can avoid restricting people’s lives in ways that are not essential while targeting the ways in which we know the virus is being spread. I assure the hon. Gentleman that we will continue to review the situation, including whether we need to impose further restrictions. Clearly, that would be done with great reluctance, but we cannot get to a situation that is the same as the one we were in earlier in the year. We must continue to be vigilant.

[Justin Madders]

I am grateful to the Minister for explaining in a little more detail some of the work that is taking place to understand how the virus is spreading. Is it the case that the relaxations we have talked about today are not contributing to an increase in transmission?

[Helen Whately]

As I said, the work that is carried out by the Joint Biosecurity Centre, drawing on the information from NHS Test and Trace and other sources of data, looks at the main sources of spread. We know that the main source of spread is through social contact, rather than in more controlled settings. In business settings, we are seeing, for the most part, businesses taking great care to ensure their setting is covid secure, for which they should be commended.

I feel that this is the moment to bring the debate to a conclusion, and I commend the regulations to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.