Covid-19: Winter Plan

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Before I call the Prime Minister, I point out that British Sign Language interpretation of the statement is available to watch on parliamentlive.tv.

Some of the screens in the Chamber are not working, so we will see how we go. We will take it a bit easy if need be.

[The Prime Minister (Boris Johnson)]

With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a statement on the Government’s covid winter plan.

For the first time since this wretched virus took hold, we can see a route out of the pandemic. The breakthroughs in treatment, testing and vaccines mean that the scientific cavalry is now in sight, and we know in our hearts that next year we will succeed. By the spring, these advances should reduce the need for the restrictions we have endured in 2020 and make the whole concept of a covid lockdown redundant.

When that moment comes, it will have been made possible by the sacrifices of millions across the UK. I am acutely conscious that no other peacetime Prime Minister has asked so much of the British people, and just as our country has risen to every previous trial, so it has responded this time, and I am deeply grateful.

But the hard truth is that we are not there yet. First, we must get through winter without the virus spreading out of control and squandering our hard-won gains, at exactly the time when the burden on our NHS is always greatest. Our winter plan is designed to carry us safely to spring.

In recent weeks, families and businesses in England have, once again, steadfastly observed nationwide restrictions, and they have managed to slow the growth of new cases and ease the worst pressures on our NHS. I can therefore confirm that national restrictions in England will end on 2 December, and they will not be renewed. From next Wednesday people will be able to leave their home for any purpose and meet others in outdoor public spaces, subject to the rule of six; collective worship, weddings and outdoor sports can resume; and shops, personal care, gyms and the wider leisure sector can reopen.

But without sensible precautions, we would risk the virus escalating into a winter or new year surge. The incidence of the disease is, alas, still widespread in many areas, so we will not replace national measures with a free for all, the status quo ante covid. We are going to go back instead to a regional, tiered approach, applying the toughest measures where covid is most prevalent. While the previous local tiers cut the R number, they were not quite enough to reduce it below 1, so the scientific advice, I am afraid, is that, as we come out, our tiers need to be made tougher.

In particular, in tier 1 people should work from home wherever possible. In tier 2, alcohol may only be served in hospitality settings as part of a substantial meal. In tier 3, indoor entertainment, hotels and other accommodation will have to close, along with all forms of hospitality, except for delivery and takeaways. I am very sorry, obviously, for the unavoidable hardship that this will cause for business owners who have already endured so much disruption this year.

Unlike the previous arrangements, tiers will now be a uniform set of rules—that is to say, we will not have negotiations on additional measures with each region. We have learned from experience that there are some things we can do differently. We are, therefore, going to change the 10 pm closing time for hospitality so that it is last orders at 10, with closing at 11. In tiers 1 or 2, spectator sports and business events will be free to resume inside and outside—with capacity limits and social distancing—providing more consistency with indoor performances in theatres and concert halls. We will also strengthen the enforcement ability of local authorities, including specially trained officers and new powers to close down premises that pose a risk to public health.

Later this week—on Thursday, I hope—we will announce which areas will fall into which tier, based on analysis of cases in all age groups, especially the over-60s; the rate by which cases are rising or falling; the percentage of those tested in a local population who have covid; and the current and projected pressures on the NHS. I am sorry to say that we expect that more regions will fall—at least temporarily—into higher levels than before, but by using these tougher tiers and using rapid turnaround tests on an ever greater scale to drive R below 1 and keep it there, it should be possible for areas to move down the tiering scale to lower levels of restrictions.

By maintaining the pressure on the virus, we can also enable people to see more of their family and friends over Christmas. I cannot say that Christmas will be normal this year, but in a period of adversity, time spent with loved ones is even more precious for people of all faiths and none. We all want some kind of Christmas—we need it and we certainly feel we deserve it—but what we do not want is to throw caution to the winds and allow the virus to flare up once again, forcing us all back into lockdown in January.

So, to allow families to come together, while minimising the risk, we are working with the devolved Administrations on a special, time-limited Christmas dispensation, embracing the whole of the United Kingdom and reflecting the ties of kinship across our islands. The virus will obviously not grant us a Christmas truce—it does not know that it is Christmas—and families will need to make a careful judgment about the risk of visiting elderly relatives. We will be publishing guidance for those who are clinically extremely vulnerable on how to manage the risks in each tier, as well as over Christmas. As we work to suppress the virus with these local tiers, two scientific breakthroughs will ultimately make these restrictions obsolete. As soon as a vaccine is approved, we will dispense it as quickly as possible. But given that that cannot be done immediately, we will simultaneously use rapid-turnaround testing—lateral flow testing—that gives results within 30 minutes, to identify those without symptoms so they can isolate and avoid transmission. We are beginning to deploy these tests in our NHS and in care homes in England, so people will once again be able to hug and hold hands with loved ones instead of waving at them through a window. By the end of the year, this will allow every care home resident to have two visitors, who can be tested twice a week.

Care workers looking after people in their own homes will be offered weekly tests from today. From next month, weekly tests will also be available to staff in prisons and food manufacturing, and those delivering and administering covid vaccines. We are also, as the House knows, using testing to help schools and universities to stay open. Testing will enable students to know they can go home safely for Christmas, and back from home to university.

There is another way of using these rapid tests, and that is to follow the example of Liverpool, where in the last two and a half weeks over 200,000 people have taken part in community testing, contributing to a substantial fall in infections. Together with NHS Test and Trace and our fantastic armed forces, we will now launch a major community testing programme, offering all local authorities in tier 3 areas in England a six-week surge of testing. The system is untried and there are many unknowns, but if it works, we should be able to offer those who test negative the prospect of fewer restrictions—for example, meeting up in certain places with others who have also tested negative. Those towns and regions that engage in community testing will have a much greater chance of easing the tiering rules they currently endure.

We will also use daily testing to ease another restriction that has impinged on many lives. We will seek to end automatic isolation for close contacts of those who are found positive. Beginning in Liverpool later this week, contacts who are tested every day for a week will need to isolate only if they themselves test positive. If successful, this approach will be extended across the health system next month, and to the whole of England from January. Of course, we are working with the devolved Administrations to ensure that Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland also benefit, as they should and will, from these advances in rapid testing.

Clearly, the most hopeful advance of all is how vaccines are now edging ever closer to liberating us from the virus, demonstrating emphatically that this is not a pandemic without end. We can take great heart from today’s news, which has the makings of a wonderful British scientific achievement. The vaccine developed with astonishing speed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca is now one of three capable of delivering a period of immunity. We do not yet know when any will be ready and licensed, but we have ordered 100 million doses of the Oxford vaccine and over 350 million in total—more than enough for everyone in the UK, the Crown dependencies and the overseas territories. The NHS is preparing a nationwide immunisation programme, ready next month, the like of which we have never witnessed.

Mr Speaker, 2020 has been, in many ways, a tragic year when so many have lost loved ones and faced financial ruin, and this will still be a hard winter. Christmas cannot be normal and there is a long road to spring, but we have turned a corner and the escape route is in sight. We must hold out against the virus until testing and vaccines come to our rescue and reduce the need for restrictions. Everyone can help speed up the arrival of that moment by continuing to follow the rules, getting tested and self-isolating when instructed, remembering “hands, face, space”, and pulling together for one final push to the spring, when we have every reason to hope and believe that the achievements of our scientists will finally lift the shadow of this virus.

I commend this statement to the House.

[Mr Speaker]

The Prime Minister—it was a big statement—ran three minutes over, so the Opposition will have an extra two minutes and the SNP will have an extra minute.

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[The Prime Minister]

Indeed; I would be delighted to meet my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker), who have written an excellent letter to me. I hope that he agrees that many of the points in that letter were answered in my statement: about sport, the curfew, non-essential retail, gyms, personal—[Inaudible.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Have you pressed the button, Prime Minister? I think we are going to have to stop for a moment so that we can check the sound, as we lost your answer. Have you pressed the mute button by mistake? It is not our end, Prime Minister; it could well be yours. I wonder whether Mr Hancock would like to take over with the answer. Is one of you going to do it or not? It is no use looking at each other. We are going to suspend the House for three minutes.

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On resuming—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Before we get too carried away, until we get the Prime Minister back we will continue with the questions. Is it all right with the Health Secretary to pick up the answer that we lost halfway through?

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Matt Hancock)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. In addition to what the Prime Minister said before we lost the audio, although the tier 3 restrictions that have been set out are less stringent than the national lockdown, it is necessary to get the R down under the tiered system in order to avoid a further national lockdown if the cases still go up. As we have set out, we have seen the case rates come down in some areas of the country, and now, thankfully, we are seeing the case rates come down nationally.

The final point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) was about other health and economic impacts. Of course we recognise the economic impacts. On the other health impacts, I simply reiterate what I have said many times before, which is that the health impacts of not locking down on health conditions other than coronavirus and of the spread of the coronavirus going too broad are also bad. The best way to protect the health of the nation both from coronavirus and from all other conditions is to keep the virus under control.

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[Matt Hancock]

Yes, we will publish the statistics that we look at to make the judgments that my hon. Friend refers to. It is not possible to put a specific number on it, though, because there are a number of criteria. We would not want to put an area into lockdown—a higher tier, more accurately—because it triggered numerical criteria if there was a specific reason. For instance, there has been a very significant outbreak at a barracks in the past month, which meant that it looked like that area had a huge spike, but it was entirely—literally—confined to barracks. Therefore, an element of judgment is important in making these decisions, but we will publish the data on which they are taken. My hon. Friend asked about the economic impact assessment, and I will raise that point with my right hon. Friend the Chancellor.

[Mr Speaker]

We are still hoping to reconnect with the Prime Minister at some point, but in the meantime we will continue with Jonathan Edwards.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)]

Diolch, Mr Speaker. The news of the successful development of three vaccines is to be warmly welcomed because it offers light at the end of the tunnel. However, the Secretary of State will recognise that distribution will be a huge logistical challenge. What guarantee can he give that the Welsh Government will receive any additional resources they require to meet the task at hand?

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[Matt Hancock]

I can assure my hon. Friend that London will come out at the tier that is necessary and appropriate based on the public health evidence. What matters, as my hon. Friend says, is the case rate and the case rate among the over-60s, as well as the direction of travel in both of those, and then, of course, the percentage of tests testing positive—because if we put more tests in, we do not want to punish an area for having a higher number of positives—and the impact on the NHS. Thankfully, in London, the NHS has performed remarkably in this second peak and has coped with it, despite the pressures, admirably well.

[Mr Speaker]

I am going to suspend the House. We think we are going to get the Prime Minister back, but we just need to check the new line, so I will suspend the House for five minutes while we reconnect. Thanks, everybody.