Coronavirus Act 2020 (Review of Temporary Provisions)

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Nusrat Ghani

Wednesday 30th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con)]

I will support the Government today because, although I fully understand the concerns about parliamentary scrutiny eloquently expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady), the biggest threat that we face as a country is not the erosion of liberty but the explosion of the virus. We now know, as we go forward into a second wave, that for every death directly caused by covid there is at least one death indirectly caused by the disruption to cancer services, the interruption of emergency care and people being discharged early from hospital.

I wish to ask the Government about measures that could reduce such indirect deaths, particularly the introduction of the routine weekly testing of NHS staff, which we have discussed many times in the House—I see the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) smiling. In fairness to the Government, they have moved on this issue. In July, Chris Whitty told the Health and Social Care Committee that he supported the routine testing of asymptomatic NHS staff in hotspots. I would like there to be such testing everywhere, including in my constituency, where recently we seem to have seen live cases trebling, but even in the hotspots it is not currently happening with any consistency. That is a worry, because up to a fifth of staff in hospitals got the virus during the first wave and up to 11% of deaths of coronavirus patients were caused by patients having caught the virus in their own hospital. That is the context.

I recognise that some hospitals are trying to do routine testing, but it is very difficult for them to do it on a weekly basis when they cannot access pillar 2 testing, so will the Secretary of State ask all hospitals to make weekly testing happen, under their own steam if they can, or with the support of NHS Test and Trace supplying the reagents, or using pooled testing?

[Ms Ghani]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that when we talk about NHS staff and testing, we need to focus on the most vulnerable—those BAME NHS workers who are dying at a much faster rate? We need data and they need support.

[Jeremy Hunt]

My hon. Friend has done a lot of campaigning to highlight that issue, as have Select Committee members from all parties. The Select Committee will publish a report tomorrow that considers that very issue and will be coming back to it.

The Government’s own figures show that at least a thousand additional cancer patients died because of the interruption caused by the pandemic. As we go into a second wave, it does not have to be the same again. The Government have rightly introduced weekly testing for people in care homes; the arguments are exactly the same for our hospitals. Patients need to know that their NHS hospital is safe and NHS staff need to know that they are not infecting their own patients. As we go into this very difficult period, please, will the Government act and make this happen?