Oral Answers to Questions

Liz Kendall Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

That is right. The Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee is wise to say that this will be a marathon, not a sprint. As of the early hours of this morning, we have vaccinated 39.9% of over-80-year-olds in England. We will reach all over-80-year-olds and ensure that they have the offer a vaccine in the coming weeks, and we will reach all of the top four priority groups by 15 February. We are on track and I am confident that we will deliver that. The other message that my right hon. Friend will perhaps help all of us to pass on to all his constituents, including his mum, is that the NHS will get in contact with them and offer them an appointment. That is the best and fairest way in which we can get the roll-out happening.

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will know that we cannot protect the NHS unless we also protect social care, yet there are worrying signs that the Government risk losing control of the virus there too. Infection rates in care homes have tripled in a month; homes are reporting staff absence of up to 40%; and the latest weekly care home deaths are the highest since May. So can the Secretary of State set out what immediate extra support he can provide so that the sector can cope, and will he commit to publishing daily vaccination rates for care home residents and staff, so that we know whether the Government are on track to completing all those vaccinations in less than three weeks’ time?

[Matt Hancock]

We have made that commitment and it is incredibly important that vaccinations are offered to everybody in care homes. The NHS is working hard to deliver on that with its colleagues in social care. Across the board, colleagues are working hard to deliver this life-saving vaccine. Of course, we are always open to further support for social care and it is something that we are working on right now to ensure that we can get the right support for testing, in particular to support the workforce, who are absolutely central to making this happen.

Oral Answers to Questions

Liz Kendall Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

We have been testing and have prioritised testing in care homes going back as far as May, and we have been carrying out whole care home testing. We are now testing over 500,000 staff and residents in care homes every week. Now, as testing capacity increases, we are launching the visitor testing trial with 20 care homes across Hampshire, Devon and Cornwall. We will use the lessons from that trial to roll out testing more widely across the country as fast as we possibly can.

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

I am afraid the Government’s pilot scheme simply fails to understand the scale or urgency of the task. The average time someone spends in a care home before they pass away is two years, so after eight months of not being able to visit, families do not have a moment to lose. If the Government believe that weekly tests make it safe for care home staff to go to work, why not just do the same for families? Will the Minister now agree that a proportion of the 157,000 tests that are currently spare capacity every day will be ring-fenced for family visits so that we can safely bring all families back together in time for Christmas?

[Helen Whately]

I absolutely want to enable relatives to go and visit their loved ones in care homes, but we have to remember that we are against a backdrop where covid is incredibly cruel to those living in care homes. We have seen outbreaks that have gone from one resident across to almost all residents within a few days, with staff also affected, so we have to get the balance right. We have to make sure that we do this in a way that is safe to residents and staff. That is why we are carrying out the trial to learn the lessons, so that we do it right and so we can then safely roll out testing and more visiting across the whole country.

Dementia: Covid-19

Liz Kendall Excerpts

Thursday 12th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I am so pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) has secured this important debate. I thank all hon. Members who have spoken so powerfully on behalf of their constituents.

The pandemic has taken an unimaginable toll on people living with dementia, the staff who care for them and the families who love and do so much to support them. There have been a staggering 23,000 excess deaths in care homes in England during the pandemic so far, more than 15,000 due to covid-19. When we consider that, as others have said, 70% of all care home residents have dementia, the sheer scale of the impact of this awful virus is brutally clear.

We must remember that people with dementia do not just live in care homes and nursing homes. Some 60% are cared for in the community and their own homes, and they have too often been overlooked.

We need to learn the lessons from what has happened so far. We desperately need long-term reforms that transform all care services, whether that is care homes or care in people’s own homes, so that we have a system truly fit for the future. The virus has brutally exposed the fundamental flaws in our care system that many of us have been talking about for a long while. The most obvious is that, for too long, frontline care workers, who are so essential in caring for people with dementia, have not been properly valued or supported and they have not been properly paid.

We can see that in the way that at the start of the pandemic, many frontline care workers just did not get the personal protective equipment they needed. I heard many stories of care homes saying that their masks and other equipment had been requisitioned by the NHS. I want NHS staff to have proper PPE, but that shows that, on the ground, social care is still not seen as equally important. We also saw that in testing. It took a very long while to get the regular testing that care home workers need. Domiciliary care workers are still not getting weekly tests. That is a real issue, as we see how much this virus is spreading in the community.

The third issue is—let us be honest—around the pay, terms and conditions of frontline care staff. They do some of the most important work in this society, which is looking after the people that we love most, but many of them barely even make the minimum wage, because they are not paid for travel times. The key thing that stands out for me is that the Office for National Statistics has clearly found that care homes that pay full pay when people are off sick, that are not so reliant on agency staff and that do not have such high turnover rates because of low pay, have lower infection rates. We really need to learn the lesson from that for the future.

I hope that the Minister will set out what she plans to do about these issues. Where are we now at with tests for domiciliary care staff? We have heard that NHS and care workers will be a priority for vaccines. Can she tell us whether that will include domiciliary care workers as well?

All hon. Members have spoken about the importance of families in caring for people with dementia. We cannot deliver good quality care for people with dementia without not just the involvement of families, but their active participation and support. That is not just because we all want our families to be there for us when we get sick and frail; it is because when someone has Alzheimer’s or dementia, their family is their memory. They are the ones who really know that person—the music they like, the songs they used to sing, the books they read, the films they love. No matter how hard paid care staff work, which they do, they just cannot know the person to the same degree, but the families get precious little help and support and they are too often ignored in the debate.

We know that, even before the virus struck, there were 9 million unpaid family carers in the UK. Since the virus began, 4.5 million more people have taken on caring responsibilities, which is three times the size of the NHS workforce. Many carers were already being pushed absolutely to breaking point before covid-19. One of the worst statistics that I have ever seen from Carers UK is that about half of unpaid family carers had not had a break from caring for five years, and yet those very people are on average taking on an extra 10 hours of caring a week, which is having a really bad impact on their physical and mental health.

So, I hope the Minister will set out what action the Government will take to help family carers. Will there be more funding for them to have breaks? How can we get day-care services back? And how will we actually identify all these new unpaid family carers, because, quite frankly, most people who are carers do not think that they are carers; they are just a son, daughter, husband or wife who looks after the person they love. But they desperately need information, advice and support.

Also, as practically every single hon. Member has said, we need to do more to help families who have loved ones in care homes. We had a big debate about this in Westminster Hall yesterday. I will repeat myself a little bit, because it is such a massively important issue. Indeed, in my 10 years as an MP, I have never been contacted by people who are not in politics about any issue as much as I have been about this one. It really is so important, because for eight months people have not been able to see their mums, dads, husbands or wives. What they do know is that those loved ones are fading fast, which causes enormous anguish, because if someone feels that they are letting down their mum, dad, husband or their wife, it will scar them for life. I know that that is what I would feel if I could not see my mum or dad.

I understand why Ministers are really worried about the risk that covid-19 will come back into care homes after the catastrophic loss of life we saw during the first wave of the virus, but we need to understand the situation. The Government’s own independent scientific advisers—the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, or SAGE—said in a report published on 21 September that the risk of family members transmitting the virus in care homes is low. And 60 organisations, including the Social Care Institute for Excellence, the British Geriatrics Society, the National Care Forum, Alzheimer’s Society and Age UK, all agree, saying that there is no evidenceAll those groups support calls, as does Labour—and indeed many hon. Members who have spoken today—for at least a single family member to be designated as a key worker, so that they can get the testing they need and we can safely start visits again. We first called for this in mid-June and again in September. I hope that the Government really take action. Their latest guidelines—about floor-to-ceiling screens, or having visits outside— are not good enough. Also, they will not work; a screen does not work for someone with dementia. In case anybody had not realised, it is also now dark, cold and wet outside, so outside visits will not work.

Yesterday, the Minister for Care said that a pilot will start on Monday in four local authority areas, with 30 care homes, to test family members. I had a lot of calls about that overnight. Where are these local authority areas? How long will the pilot last? The bottom line is that I do not think a pilot is good enough. The average length of stay of someone in a care home before they die is two years. We have had eight months of lockdown. This is the last Christmas for some people. We must get everybody—all families—getting those regular tests, so that visits can start again.

In conclusion, I have argued for almost two decades now for the desperate need for long-term reforms to social care. In July 2019, in his first speech on the steps of Downing Street, the Prime Minister said:

“I am announcing now that we will fix the crisis in social care once and for all, with a clear plan we have prepared”—

I emphasise those words, “we have prepared”—

“to give every older person the dignity and security they deserve.”

Yet more than 15 months later, that “plan” is nowhere to be seen; in fact, we seem to be going backwards.

The Health Minister in the House of Lords, Lord Bethell, said on 28 October:

“I have to be realistic. We are in the midst of a Covid winter, when there are enormous challenges in keeping the show on the road…It just would not be right to launch an important and industry-changing reform process when the focus of everyone in social care is the protection of the vulnerable and our loved ones.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 28 October 2020; Vol. 807, c. 226.]

The opposite is true; this is precisely the time when we need those reforms to give people, families and care workers hope that there will be a better system, and that when we have come through this awful pandemic we will not go back to the same stretched, miserable, awful system that too many people have had to cope with. Families, care workers and the system as a whole are at breaking point. In the 21st century, in one of the richest countries in the world, that is not good enough. It is the challenge of our generation to sort this problem, and I hope that when the Minister responds, she will set out how we will do so.

Family Visits in Health and Social Care Settings: Covid-19

Liz Kendall Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) on securing this important debate and on her brilliantly powerful speech. I am particularly grateful that she focused on working-age adults with disabilities who have all too often been ignored in this debate so far.

Since mid-June, I have been calling for a way forward that will keep residents safe and get family visits going again. I will come on to that later, but I start by paying tribute to all those who have been working so hard to bring families back together: the local authorities that have championed face-to-face visits throughout lockdown, including Leeds, Sheffield and my own Leicester City Council, and the organisations that have campaigned on the issue, such as Age UK, the Alzheimer’s Society, the National Care Forum, the Care and Support Alliance and the National Care Association.

In particular, I thank and pay tribute to Jenny Morrison and Diane Mayhew from Rights for Residents. After their own terrible experiences, they started their campaign to give a voice to all the other care home residents and families who have been prevented from seeing their loved ones since the first lockdown started more than eight months ago. They have had a phenomenal reaction to their campaign, and rightly so, because the issue really matters. It matters because of the anguish it causes families to be separated from the people they love most and because of the increasing evidence that the physical and mental isolation that results from restricting family visits is causing serious harm to a large number of care home residents. In a recent survey by the Alzheimer’s Society, 80% of care home managers said that lack of social contact is causing deterioration in the physical and mental health of residents with dementia. That is unacceptable.

All hon. Members present have spoken on behalf of constituents who have contacted them about the desperate agony they are going through and their real fears for their mums, dads, husbands and wives. I have also been contacted. A woman called Trudy got in touch to say,

“Today I’ve had to try to comfort my terminally ill mum in a video call, she’s scared and she needs us. Not on a screen or behind a screen—but with us stroking her hand. It is destroying us that the end of her life is like this. It’s destroying my family. I feel I am breaking every promise we ever made on looking after her.”

My constituent John rightly asked me,

“What quality of life do residents have if they can’t go anywhere, see any of their family and friends or have meaningful relationships? My family are absolutely distraught by the fact that we are not being allowed to see our family member but are having to hear them sobbing on the telephone and being told by staff how agitated they are and how ‘lockdown’ is affecting them and causing their condition to deteriorate. We can’t get this time back with our family member and time is precious”.

That point is really important, because the average length of stay in a care home for an older person is two years. After eight months of visitor restrictions and lockdown, there is simply not enough time for many of those living in care homes to wait and watch for a pilot scheme or another set of guidelines.

We need action now, because husbands, wives, sons and daughters are not just making social calls to their loved ones in care homes; they are playing a fundamental role in the everyday care of the person they love. Residents and their loved ones have human rights, both as individuals and as a community, and a ban on visiting arguably denies them those rights, as the Minister will know.

What should the Government do? I always hope to be practical in putting forward solutions. I and the 60 organisations that recently wrote an open letter to the Minister and the Secretary of State about this issue understand why the Government are so worried about the risk of covid-19 in care homes, given the catastrophic suffering and loss of life during the first wave of the pandemic, but the Minister will know that the Government’s own independent scientific advisers, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, and its working group on social care said in evidence published on 21 September that the risk of family transmitting the virus from visitors to residents was low. Those 60 organisations, which include the Royal Society for Public Health, the British Geriatrics Society and the Social Care Institute for Excellence, which is responsible for promoting good-quality care, say that

“there is no evidence that a blanket ban on visiting, or near ban, is the right response. It is also the case that homes are much better equipped now to manage any risk. There is much greater knowledge of transmission and infection prevention and control practices than there was in March. Homes should be fully supported to enable visiting.”

Opposition Members—indeed, Members on both sides of the House—agree, which is why Labour has been calling for families to get the regular testing and PPE that they need since 17 June, when I first wrote to the Health Secretary warning about the impact of isolation on care home residents. I wrote again to the Health Secretary on 14 September, specifically calling for families to be designated as key workers, so that they can get the regular testing that they need to safely visit, alongside the regular testing of care home staff. That, as the Minister will know, is precisely the approach advocated by the 60 organisations that recently wrote the open letter.

The Government still have not really listened. Their latest guidance says that indoor care home visits will need floor-to-ceiling screens, which will keep residents and their families separated throughout. Alternatively, families can meet outside a care home window. I am afraid that that guidance fails on many levels. It fails to understand that it will not be possible for many care homes to put such screens in place. Even if they could, having a screen will not work for many residents, especially if they have Alzheimer’s or dementia. That is before making the frankly obvious point that the winter weather and dark afternoons make outdoor visits very difficult indeed.

It is little wonder that the Alzheimer’s Society says it is “devastated” by the new guidance. Its chief executive officer says that

“this attempt to protect people will kill them… The prison style screens the government proposes—with people speaking through phones—are frankly ridiculous when you consider someone with advanced dementia can often be bed-bound and struggling to speak.”

Age UK agrees, saying:

“In practice we fear it will result in many care homes halting meaningful visiting altogether, because they will be unable to comply with the requirements laid down.”

I know that the Minister will say that we are going to have a pilot to test families, but when will that pilot start and how long will it take? It has been eight months since lockdown began. Why has this not been a greater priority and why has more progress not been made? The bottom line is that a pilot is not good enough or quick enough. We need those visits now. Will the Minister finally agree to prioritise family members for testing, including with the new lateral flow tests that are being used to mass test people in Liverpool and students across the country?

I understand that those tests have low numbers of false negatives and can be turned around in 20 or 30 minutes, making them a good option for testing families with loved ones in care homes, as my director of social care in Leicester is calling for. I know that families, including my own, are desperate to get their children back from university for Christmas, but what about families who have not seen their loved ones for eight months? They want to know where they are in all the extra testing that is going on.

We all know this pandemic has had unimaginable consequences for care workers and for families and their loved ones. Care workers have made immense sacrifices to look after our loved ones, and they deserve not just our praise and admiration, but to be properly valued and paid. However, we have to understand that families are an integral part of the care system too. I believe you cannot have good-quality social care without the real involvement and active participation of families. People who have dementia lose their memory; their families are their memory, and the best possible quality help and support cannot be given without families. I hope the Minister will listen to the concerns that I and other hon. Members have raised and I look forward to her response.

Draft Reciprocal and Cross-Border Healthcare (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Liz Kendall Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2020 General Committees

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Miller. We will not vote against the regulations because they provide some certainty for some citizens in terms of cross-border healthcare arrangements after 31 December, as set out in the withdrawal agreement.

I want to put on record the concerns of Opposition Members and a range of patient groups and healthcare organisations that the regulations do not go anywhere near far enough in protecting rights to healthcare for British citizens who travel to the EU. They could leave some people with underlying health conditions not completely covered and cause real problems for the NHS, at precisely the time when it needs to be totally focused on dealing with covid-19 and the backlog of health problems that has caused. It is important that the Government secure agreement with the EU and do not end up with no deal.

As the Minister has explained, the regulations update existing regulations, so they reflect reciprocal healthcare arrangements as set out in the withdrawal agreement. United Kingdom nationals who live and work in EU and European Free Trade Association countries on or before 31 December will continue to be entitled to healthcare in that member state, under that member state’s rules, and have access to an EHIC issued by that member state. That is good.

European Union and EFTA nationals registered in the UK on or before 31 December will continue to be entitled to NHS services and a UK-issued EHIC, which is also good. S1 holders, essentially UK state pensioners who live in EU or EFTA countries on or before 31 December will continue to be entitled to UK-funded healthcare as well. That is also good.

Can the Minister confirm who and what is not covered by the regulations and therefore will not be covered if we end up in the disastrous situation of no deal? Can she confirm that after 31 December, if the UK Government fail to reach agreement with the EU, UK citizens who are normally resident in an EU member state will not be entitled to free NHS care when visiting the UK, unless and until any bilateral arrangement is reached with that individual member state?

Can the Minister confirm that UK citizens who go on holiday, or a business trip in an EU member state, will no longer be able to use their EHIC card and therefore have to buy travel insurance to make sure they are covered? Can she confirm that if someone falls sick in France or Italy, they may get immediate emergency treatment but could then be required to pay for it afterwards, as well as for any follow-up care? Will she spell out the estimated additional cost of buying this travel insurance for the 50 million people a year who go on holiday or on business trips to the EU—or at least did, before covid-19? Will she also set out the Government’s estimate of the number of people who may be unable to get insurance because of an underlying health condition?

For example, we know from Kidney Care UK that the 30,000 people on dialysis can currently travel throughout Europe and receive their dialysis free of charge because of the EHIC. Even though dialysis is a life-sustaining treatment for kidney failure, it is not covered by travel insurance, and without reciprocal healthcare arrangements, it will cost up to £1,000 per week. How many more thousands of people with pre-existing health conditions will not be able to get insurance and could be put in the same situation if the Government fail to reach a deal? Have the Minister or the Government made any estimate of how many people this could affect?

Will the Minister also spell out the cost to the NHS, in terms of time and red tape, of trying to get reimbursement for EU citizens having to use healthcare here? Each of the four nations of our great United Kingdom manage their own recovery costs, and within each nation, individual trusts or health boards are responsible for directly charging patients for the costs of their care. The Minister will know how difficult it has been for trusts to reclaim costs from patients from outside the EU. What is her estimate of the cost to the NHS, in the event of no deal, or of no individual bilateral arrangements, of hospitals in this country having to reclaim costs from every single EU person who comes here and ends up needing healthcare?

The Brexit Health Alliance—a group of organisations that want to ensure that the views of healthcare users and providers are reflected in the Brexit negotiations, including the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, NHS Providers, the Richmond Group of Charities and the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry—says:

“The current arrangements involve minimal bureaucracy for patients and healthcare providers, underpinned by well-established systems for reimbursement between member states. The NHS will face unwelcome increased resourcing burdens, if it is required to handle new, more complex administrative and funding procedures when providing care to EU citizens in future.”

I am sure that every hon. Member agrees that that is the very last thing the NHS needs when it is facing the biggest health crisis of its life, with a huge backlog of untreated conditions because of covid-19. I also ask the Minister, if there is any dispute between the UK and an EU member state about a cross-border healthcare arrangement, who would have jurisdiction? Would it be the European Court of Justice? I think people would like to know the answer.

As I said at the beginning of my comments, we will not oppose the draft regulations, because they at least provide some security and certainty for some groups of people. However, the Minister will know that there are huge gaps that must be filled. The British Medical Association says that failure to reach a deal would

“lead to significant disruption to…individuals’ healthcare arrangements, an increase in costs of insurance, and uncertainty regarding accessing healthcare abroad. Moreover, the NHS would face a drastic increase in demand for services, which could dramatically increase its costs and place greater pressure on doctors and clinical staff.”

The Government say that, if they cannot reach agreement with the EU as a whole on these issues, they will negotiate individual bilateral deals with individual EU member states, but when? How long will that take? What will happen to patients and NHS staff meanwhile?

The Prime Minister spent the last general election saying that he had an “oven-ready deal”, but on healthcare arrangements, as in so many other areas, that deal is, so far, nowhere to be seen. Holidaymakers, businesspeople, patient groups, healthcare professionals and NHS organisations urgently need clarity. The Government must deliver.

Oral Answers to Questions

Liz Kendall Excerpts

Tuesday 6th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

Families with loved ones in care homes are desperate to start visiting again, but are banned from doing so in swathes of the country with extra restrictions. The Government’s own carers advisory group says that visits are essential for residents’ health, and that, to make them safe, relatives should be treated like key workers—with regular testing. Will the Minister now please put that testing in place and lift the blanket ban on care home visits in lockdown areas, so that we can help to bring all families back together again?

[Helen Whately]

The hon. Member makes an important point, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (Miss Dines) a moment ago, about the importance of visiting for those in care homes, and for their relatives and loved ones. We are striking the difficult balance between protecting those in care homes and ensuring that they have visits wherever possible, but these visits must be done safely. I have heard from the sector about the aspiration for some family members to be treated as care workers—for instance, if they visit the care home regularly. As we expand testing, I very much intend that we should test some visitors—and am making the case for doing so—but it is all part of how we expand and use our testing resources.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Birmingham, Sandwell and Solihull) Regulations 2020

Liz Kendall Excerpts

Monday 5th October 2020 General Committees

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray.

The Labour party will not oppose the regulations, but I want to set out concerns and questions that have been raised with me by some of the local Members of Parliament and, in particular, by Birmingham City Council, about how the announcement was made and the confusion it caused; about the need for a clearer, more comprehensive plan for local testing; and about the urgent requirement for more support for local businesses and local authorities, so that we protect jobs and the economy, and help to bring the virus under control. I say all of that in a spirit of constructiveness, because we have to get this right and learn lessons from mistakes made in the past.

I will start with concerns about how the restrictions were announced. I am afraid that when I looked into that, it was almost a mirror image of the problems that we have had in Leicester, with delays and real confusion when important announcements were made, which made people very anxious. I understand that Birmingham City Council and the Government had agreed that the restrictions would ban household mixing in homes and gardens, but household mixing would still be allowed in pubs and restaurants up to the limit of six and that the announcement would be made on Friday 11 September, which is what the Minister has just been through.

I understand that Friday morning came and went and there was still no statement from the Government. At 2 o’clock, the Conservative mayor went ahead with his normal Friday press briefing and read out a statement which said the new restrictions would mean no household mixing, but he did not make the caveat that this would still be allowed in pubs and restaurants. Members can imagine the confusion that followed. It was not until 4 o’clock that the council finally received a draft press release from the Government saying the new restrictions would prevent household mixing in homes and gardens—as was agreed—but also pubs and restaurants, which was completely not what had been agreed.

I understand that the leader of Birmingham City Council, Councillor Ian Ward, then spent the next three hours talking to the Government to try to sort out the mess. Finally, at 7 o’clock the Government clarified the restrictions would not apply to pubs and restaurants. That may not sound a great deal to Members in this room, but for people who own a pub or restaurant and are desperately worried about their future, waiting hours and hours with all that confusion really is not good enough. We also need clarity for members of the public so that they stick by the rules. Keeping people waiting for hours when their lives and livelihoods are on the line is no way to treat them.

I have been through this before with the Minister’s colleagues. How will the Government handle better the announcements on local lockdowns? They will inevitably be difficult, but we need to find a better way, so that we do not make a bad situation even worse.

Alongside any new regulations, local areas need a clear plan for testing to help to bring the virus under control. I am told that there are still real problems with getting access to tests in these areas. For example, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) tells me she has been contacted by NHS workers in her constituency who have to isolate for days at a time until they can get a test. That is not just desperately worrying for them and their families, it has major impact on patients too.

I am told that Birmingham has asked for an extra testing site for key workers across the public sector, so the city can guarantee they will get the tests they need; extra walk-in sites, across the city, because so many people cannot drive and we do not want people who have symptoms using public transport or taxis; extra walk-in sites for students at university campuses; and priority testing for children in social care settings alongside adults who receive social care.

Will the Minister update me on whether she has received those requests and if and when they will be granted? Will she also look into what is an absolutely terrible case raised with me by the city council and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston into unacceptable failures by the Serco-run accommodation for asylum seekers in the city? I am told that 26 people tested positive with corona virus in the Serco-run accommodation in Stone Road. Public health officials went in and found the accommodation was way too over-crowded to be covid-secure, and the city council took enforcement action ordering everybody in the accommodation to self-isolate. Then, unbelievably, the Home Office moved dozens of people out of that accommodation, some to other parts of the city and around 40 people over 120 miles away to Hammersmith and Fulham. I am sure the Minister agrees that it is totally unacceptable for the Government to break their own rules on self-isolation. What will she do to make sure that that terrible mistake does not happen again?

[The Chair]

Order. It is right to give the hon. Lady a good degree of latitude in this matter, as she is raising important matters, but she must address herself to the instrument under consideration and not discuss matters beyond its remit. The Minister does not have personal responsibility for some of the matters and therefore will not be able to answer. I do not want to cut the hon. Lady short, but maybe she could address herself particularly to the SI.

[Liz Kendall]

Of course, I hear and understand what you say, Mr Gray, so I will now move on to a point that I believe is related to this SI: if we are putting extra restrictions on to an area, the local council will need extra help to do the testing required to bring infection rates down and local businesses will require extra support. We need a strategy. If we want to see our schools go back, our businesses open up and our universities return and to keep in control of the virus, we must ensure that people get the extra support they need, so that we have a proper system of testing, people properly self-isolate, which did not happen in the case of the accommodation of the asylum seekers, and we bring the infection rates down.

I know and understand that the Minister is not responsible for support for businesses in the area. However, I know as a local MP—and as the Minister will understand—that with the extra restrictions that are being put in place, people are very worried, especially in sectors such as the events industry. I am sure everyone in this Committee knows about, and has probably been to, Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre—I certainly have, many times in the past—and the Minister will know that the NEC Group turned the NEC in Birmingham into a Nightingale hospital. That was absolutely brilliant work, which we all needed in the city, but the NEC Group says:

“As an organisation who played such a pivotal role in the national effort to combat this virus, transforming our venue into the NHS Nightingale Birmingham, we now need UK Government to show the same commitment to our cause and offer tailored support to the UK #liveeventssector.”

I wonder whether the Minister might raise that issue with her Treasury colleagues.

I have also been asked to raise concerns from the hospitality sector, which, prior to the pandemic, supported more than 135,000 jobs in the west midlands, contributing about £12.6 billion to the regional economy. Companies in the hospitality sector are worried about the speculation that the Government may bring in the restrictions on mixing of households in the hospitality sector that have been put in place in the north-east. Concern has been raised about whether the Government have any plans to do that in Birmingham, Solihull and Sandwell, and I hope she will be able to clarify that point today.

Birmingham City Council tells me that its latest contact tracing data shows that only 2% of the positive contacts it is picking up are in the hospitality sector; 83% are still in households. The council is concerned to avoid any further restrictions, and the leaders of the city council in Birmingham and councils in Solihull, Dudley, Wolverhampton, Coventry, Sandwell and Walsall have written a joint letter to the Chancellor about support for the hospitality sector. They are really worried about it, because it is already struggling with the restrictions that have been placed on it nationally.

Finally, I turn to the issue of support for the local authorities that, because of these local restrictions, are having to do a huge amount more work. They are already stretched to the limit after 10 years of budget cuts and they really need extra support. I understand that in July the Government allocated funding of around £8.4 million to deal with coronavirus, but the city council is not clear whether that funding is supposed to cover the financial year or the year to July 2021. I hope the Minister will be able to clarify that for me.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

Perhaps my hon. Friend can explain, or the Minister can when she comes to sum up, but I am not clear about what role Mayors play in this particular situation. Perhaps that is something we could elicit in the response from the Minister.

[The Chair]

I think I would rather the hon. Lady did not do so.

[Liz Kendall]

It is difficult; when we are trying to put forward practical solutions for how additional extra local lockdowns work, it needs to be a package including the local extra testing capacity that the city council, hospitals and local universities provide. However, if there are going to be extra restrictions through local lockdowns, support for local businesses and public services also has to be considered. That is the way that we do our business, but it is not how people live their lives. The economy and getting on top of the virus go hand in hand, because if we do not have the support to get on top of the virus, we cannot get the economy open, which we all want.

[The Chair]

Order. The hon. Lady is making an extremely good point, which she should perhaps make on Second Reading in the main Chamber; in Committee, our job is to consider the details of the statutory instrument in front of us, not the wider implications. I have given a fair degree of latitude, but we should now return to the SI.

[Liz Kendall]

Message received and understood, Mr Gray. I hope the Minister will respond to the point about support for the city council in doing extra testing. The council tells me that it initially expected to get around 20 to 30 contact cases to follow up per day, but it is now getting 300, 400 or 500 a day, so there is a significant gap that needs to be addressed.

People in Birmingham, Sandwell, Solihull, and the people of Leicester, who now cannot see their families in their homes or gardens, want to hear from the Minister how restrictions will be lifted, even if she cannot say when. People doing the right thing and not meeting up with family or the people they love most in their houses and gardens, as these restrictions say, need some light at the end of the tunnel. What are the criteria by which the Government will consider releasing these restrictions, and how will that be fair across the country? We need clarity on those points.

In conclusion, we all want our children back at school, students back at university and businesses back and opening their doors. In order to do that without losing control of the virus, we need three things: an effectively functioning test and trace system, support so that people can properly isolate, and simple, clear messages that everyone knows and can follow. The Government have major problems in all three areas, as the latest loss of 16,000 coronavirus tests, revealed today, clearly shows. The Government must get to grips with these problems, and fast.

[Jo Churchill]

I thank hon. Members for contributing to this important debate. The restrictions that we have debated in part today are necessary and important for three reasons.

First, it is important to protect the people of Birmingham, Sandwell, Solihull and the surrounding area from this terrible virus. The restrictions we have had to impose have been difficult, but I think that people in protected areas across the country recognise that these measures have been vital to stopping the spread of the virus, and those in Birmingham, Sandwell and Solihull are no different.

Secondly, the restrictions in those places protect those of us who do not live in that area, and as a result of the ongoing restrictions, there is less risk of the high infection rates in the city and surrounding areas spreading elsewhere. We should appreciate that the restrictions and difficulties faced by those in Birmingham, Sandwell and Solihull will benefit the country as a whole, and I offer everyone who is under these restrictions my thanks.

Thirdly, the restrictions show our absolute determination to respond to outbreaks of the virus in a focused and effective way. We are learning from what has happened in Birmingham, Sandwell and Solihull as we work with local authorities and others, including local Mayors, to respond to future localised outbreaks. We have seen that recently in parts of the north-west and north-east, as well as the west midlands. While the impact of the regulations has not been as significant as we would have hoped, together with the national measures now in force, infection rates in areas of Birmingham, Sandwell and Solihull have not risen, as I said, as fast as in other countries. We hope to be able to ease the measures as soon as we are assured that the high transmission rates have been suppressed, to realign Birmingham, Sandwell and Solihull with the rest of England’s measures. The next review will take place on 9 October.

I gently say to the hon. Member for Leicester West that it would be wonderful to have a crystal ball, but we do not, so we have to take a measured approach. We know that as the cases rise, the next 10 days are important in understanding how those rises transmute through to people getting infected. Then it will be a further 10 days before we look at hospitalisation. The overarching aim is still to protect the NHS, and that must be our aim. As the hon. Lady said, so much hard work went into the first phase, and so many people helped to set up Nightingale hospitals and so on. That is the same aim that we are carrying on with. After the review on 9 October, when the figures will be understood, more information will come forward.

The hon. Lady mentioned a few things. As the Chair said, some were out of scope, but I will cover one or two of the areas. We consult local authorities, mayors and local directors of public health, and we will continue to do so. It is not purely about the rates: it is about the overall picture in the area, as the hon. Lady understands from her experience. As she said, there is not a constituency MP in this place who does not feel for business owners and constituents who might be subject to these events. We want our schools and businesses open, which is why we have made sure that we have ramped up testing.

The hon. Lady mentioned the pleas from the conference and hospitality sector. I understand that representatives have written to the Chancellor, who I am sure will respond. She would not expect me to comment on many of the specifics, but I would like to pick her up on the fact that the numbers of people who are being contact-traced are exponential by comparison with what was expected. That obviously means that contact tracing—test and trace is up and active—is working. As of 4 October, testing capacity was at 310,288 per day, whereas it was 2,000 in March. On that day, 264,979 tests were processed. If there are specific challenges with testing in specific areas, I would be happy to take those up.

[Liz Kendall]

The point was more that the local authority was getting a lot more contacts that it had to follow up. It is asking whether it will get the financial support to do that properly. That was my question to the Minister.

[Jo Churchill]

To move on to the finances, all councils, in producing their local outbreak plans, are being supported by £300 million of funding from the national Government. In particular, we have provided £84,278,494 to Birmingham City Council, over £25 million to Sandwell and over £13 million to Solihull. In addition, each council has received additional funding to provide small business grant funds and retail, hospitality and leisure funds. In Birmingham, that has equated to over £214 million, in Sandwell, it is over £56 million, and in Solihull, it is over £26 million.

The Government are supporting businesses and the population. The hon. Lady mentioned that people perhaps feel compelled to go out to work. The Government have provided further support in recent weeks, ensuring that people on low or restricted incomes can access funds to enable them to self-isolate as they are being asked to do.

I conclude by recording on behalf of the Government our thanks to the people of Birmingham, Sandwell and Solihull, particularly NHS and care workers—indeed, all key workers in the city—for their ongoing hard work to keep our vital services running and save lives. I commend the regulations to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Leicester) (No. 2) Regulations 2020 Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Leicester) (No. 2) (Amendment) Regulations 2020

Liz Kendall Excerpts

Monday 21st September 2020 General Committees

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Murray. The Labour party will not oppose the regulations, which lift many, although not all, of the additional restrictions Leicester was put under as the first area to go into local lockdown.

I hope that the Committee will forgive me, however, for raising questions on behalf of my constituents and of people across the city about why some restrictions remain in place, and for raising a number of serious concerns about how this whole process has been handled and the lessons that we might learn for local lockdowns in the rest of the country; about the impact Leicester’s extended lockdown has had on the lives of people in our city; and about the support that we need to minimise that impact, ensuring the best possible recovery. That is something that now applies to other areas in local lockdown. Finally, I will touch on the very real problems that we in Leicester are experiencing with test and trace—problems that are mirrored across the country—and the lessons that we can learn to put that right. Sorting out test and trace is essential to getting on top of the virus and avoiding even worse harm to our economy. Those issues are incredibly pertinent to announcements made today.

I will start by asking why some restrictions are still in place. One of the most important questions, and one that my constituents ask repeatedly, is why they are still not allowed to meet their families in their gardens. I cannot stress how horrible it has been for people to be separated from their families for months on end. They understand why being indoors causes difficulties, but why can they not be outdoors in their gardens? The Minister for Care told me in person that the reason is that reaching the garden would involve going through the house, and there are concerns that the infection might spread indoors; people might be less careful in the private atmosphere of a house than in the garden. In response, I asked, “Can you publish that? Can you put that description of why you are doing it with the evidence that underpins it online?” I have had many emails from constituents about it, but I am not a scientist; I cannot speak for the science, but I do want my constituents to know. Ivan Browne, Leicester’s brilliant director of public health, has also asked for that evidence, but it still has not appeared.

Why there would be a problem with outlining that reasoning online for my constituents? As the Minister will know, if we want people to comply with rules, there has to be trust, and for there to be trust, we have to be open with people about those reasons. I believe that the vast majority of people are completely reasonable and will listen to the reasons and follow the rules.

Will the Minister publish evidence or an explanation of why the Government are lifting the requirement for people in Leicester to shield from October 5th? Lots of people who are shielding are really pleased about that, but others are really concerned about why we are doing it, particularly in the context of the news that we have heard today about infections rising exponentially. Will the Government stick to that policy or change, it and can we have some information, because it is really important for people who have been shielding to know why?

I will turn now to the handling—or, rather, mishandling—of the additional Leicester lockdown and subsequent reviews. I will not go over what happened when the lockdown was first announced—as the Minister knows, I went through that last time we debated similar regulations—but I have never seen anything like the mishandling of that lockdown and the subsequent reviews, and I have worked, for my sins, in and around Parliament and Government for 23 years, including in the Department of Health. I understand that these are unprecedented times, but that could have been handled better.

Let me tell the Committee what happened when the results of the second review of the restrictions came out on 30 July. People were desperate; they were absolutely clinging on to the news for answers. “Am I going to be able to see my mum and dad and my brother and sister?”, “Am I going to be able to go back to work?”, or, “Is my business going to be able to open?” We were told by the city council that we would get the results of this review by mid-day; then just after lunch; and then by 5 pm. We waited and we waited, but by 8 pm there was still nothing. Finally, at 8.30 pm, I received a message from my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth), the shadow Health Secretary, asking, “Are you on this call?” It turned out that an email had been sent after 8 pm, not by this Minister’s Parliamentary Private Secretary but by the social care Minister’s Parliamentary Private Secretary. I got on the call and I discovered that it was not about an announcement regarding Leicester; it was a call that included all the other MPs in the midlands and the north whose areas were going into an extra lockdown. People can imagine just how agitated many of them were. And even after that call, nothing was properly communicated to the public, so it was left to me and the other Leicester MPs to tweet what we had very briefly been told in that call, because our constituents were desperate to know what was happening.

I say all that not because I give a monkey’s about how I am told, but because I care about how my constituents are told and how they are treated, and because if we want people to abide by the rules, they have to know what the rules are, rather than being left to scrabble around to try and make sense of a tweet by the Health Secretary at 9.15 pm. And just for the record, I do not think that it is ever good to tweet at that time of night; that is true in general, but particularly on an issue such as this. I think the vast majority of people are prepared to do the right thing and make sacrifices, but they expect fairness from the Government and at the bare minimum to be treated with respect, and as if their lives and livelihoods matter. That is what my constituents told me; they said they felt that they did not matter and had just been left hanging on for news that completely affects their lives.

That is not good enough. The Government need to change how future local lockdowns are announced. They need to set clear dates and times for announcements, and say how they will be made. My constituents think that the Government have to provide concise and readily available information to the public. The Government must not ever send a tweet to make this kind of announcement.

I turn now to the impact that the extra lockdown has had on our city and the need for more support. I should say in advance that I know these issues are way beyond the Minister’s direct remit, but she will understand why I want to put this on the record.

All of us in this room know the terrible toll that the virus has taken on people’s lives and livelihoods, and the situation has been even worse in areas with local lockdowns. Leicester, which was the first place to go into local lockdown, has suffered the longest. People are still not able to meet up with the people they love the most—their mums, dads, brothers, sisters, aunties, uncles, nephews and nieces. As I have already said, it is vital that the Government explain why such meetings are not allowed, even in people’s gardens.

The pressures on unpaid family carers are perhaps even more severe. Many tell me that they have been pushed to absolute breaking point, providing many more hours of care a week or being forced to shield with the people they care for, so as not to risk infecting their loved ones. They have received no extra help or support, let alone any desperately needed breaks. As one woman told me in a recent surgery: “I have nothing left. You can’t pour from an empty cup.” Will the Minister explain why the Government’s winter plan for social care contains nothing on improving support for family carers, beyond saying that they will get guidance, a phoneline and a free flu vaccine? How will that help the people upon whom the whole health and care system relies?

People with relatives in care homes also feel pushed to the limit, as they have been unable to see their relatives for nearly six months. My hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe) told me about a constituent who had contacted her about this issue, describing the anguish that her family was experiencing. Her constituent said:

“As someone who has a family member in a care home”—

that is, in a care home in a ward that was particularly affected—

“I’m seeing and hearing (via Skype) my family member becoming very distressed, withdrawn and their condition deteriorating due to the lack of physical and visual contact with their family members...My family are absolutely distraught by the fact that we are not being allowed to see our family member but are having to hear them sobbing on the telephone and being told by staff how agitated they are and how lockdown is affecting them and causing their condition to deteriorate. We can’t get this time back with our family member and time is precious.”

None of us wants to risk bringing the virus back into care homes, but instead of banning family visits in high-risk local lockdown areas, why do the Minister and the Government not make it their top priority to get visits happening again by guaranteeing at least one family member a weekly covid test, so that they can see the person they love and, crucially, that person’s health does not get even worse?

As I said in our last discussion on the regulations, families are under massive financial pressure, too. Since the start of the pandemic, the number of people on universal credit in Leicester has doubled and unemployment is rising month on month. More and more people are struggling to make ends meet, pay their mortgage or rent, keep the gas and electricity on, and even put food on the table. As chair of the “Feeding Leicester” programme to tackle food poverty in the city, I see the brutal impact of the virus on a city where 40% of children were already living in poverty even before it struck. Our emergency food partnership of 16 local food banks has seen a 300% increase in demand since the pandemic began. Christ the King food bank in Beaumont Leys, which I visited the other week, went from supporting about 80 families a week to 400, through the unbelievable, amazing efforts of its volunteers. The volunteers told me that, whereas at the start of the lockdown they were helping many people who were shielding, they now see more and more people who have been made redundant. With one in three employees furloughed in Leicester, they are worried about what will happen when the furlough and self-employed schemes finish next month. As winter is fast approaching, many people face the awful choice of heating or eating.

I know that those issues are beyond the Minister’s direct responsibility, but why will her Government not consider the approach taken in countries such as Germany and France? Those countries have extended their employment schemes until 2021 and made them much more flexible, so that people can work part time, or a few hours, to keep contact with the world of work and keep their business going, but still get enough support to pay the bills, or people can have support tied to training to develop new skills in areas of the economy that are likely to grow in future. Ministers must end their one-size-fits-all approach and continue to support the hardest hit sectors of our economy, where people still cannot go back to business as usual, as well as parts of the country such as Leicester that are still subject to local restrictions.

Leicester’s businesses have been subject to the longest lockdown in the country. While some additional—and hugely welcome—support has been made available, it will not be enough to help many of them survive, even though they were completely viable before the pandemic and have done the right thing. After lobbying from me and other MPs from the city and the county, the Government agreed to provide an additional £2.6 million for Leicester’s businesses to help them to cope with having to stay shut for longer, but I am afraid that, as the East Midlands chamber of commerce has said, Government support for businesses in areas of extra lockdown “only scratches the surface”. What we really need is

“a comprehensive package of support from Government for firms affected by local restrictions, which are sadly becoming more frequent each week.”

I hope the Government will fully acknowledge the additional funding that our local councils need to keep on top of the covid crisis. Leicester City Council’s response to the pandemic is already set to cost more than £40 million, and that figure is likely to get even greater as cases rise and additional lockdown measures come into place.

Finally, I turn to test and trace, the problems we see in Leicester, and what the Government could do to get it right. I pay tribute, as the Minister has done, to the amazing work of our local director of public health, Ivan Browne, his team and all the other Leicester City Council staff who have been working around the clock to get tests to the people who need them. As part of that, the adult social care team under the fantastic directorship of Martin Samuels is working really hard to prevent infections in care homes. In the past 11 weeks they have been ringing each care home at least twice a week and collecting data directly, as little information has been available from the national test and trace system. I do not understand that. Why can we not get the information on care home test results from the national test and trace service back to our local system? Perhaps the Minister can explain that. We have consistently found that staff are being tested about once a fortnight, not once a week—only half as often as recommended.

My own calls with local care homes show that some are having real problems getting test results back and sometime having to wait up to seven days. That means they have to do the next test before getting the results back from the last, with all the risks that that brings from having potentially asymptomatic staff at work for a whole week. The Government first promised weekly testing in care homes with a 24-hour turnaround of results in July, but that is still not happening, even in a high-risk area such as Leicester, where it should have been an absolute priority.

The problems with testing are not confined to care homes, as I am sure hon. Members know from their own experience. Schools in my constituency are also reporting serious issues with testing, particularly for children. Previously, we had lots of walk-in centres in Leicester because of our outbreak. People could simply walk in and get tested, but now parents are being told they must book an appointment first. Not only has that caused confusion, but there are no appointments available to book, so pupils are missing out on yet more time in the classroom. They have to go home and self-isolate because they cannot get a test at all.

The Children’s Commissioner was absolutely right to say today that the Government “risks failing a generation” of children if they do not sort out the testing fiasco, and that the progress made by reopening schools just weeks ago risks being “thrown away” unless the tests are available to keep children in class. That must be an absolute priority. Two things need to happen. First, there has to be much closer working—

[The Chair]

Order. I gently remind the shadow Minister not to stray from the scope of the regulations.

[Liz Kendall]

No, I absolutely will not. You will be relieved to hear, Mrs Murray, that I do not have much more to say. Forgive me for trying to get this on the record but, as a local MP, the lockdown is the most important thing that has happened to our city, and I want to make sure I reflect on that.

We have to work much more closely with local public health teams to share information and build their capacity on test and trace, rather than have a centrally driven approach. We know that our teams get much better results when they call people, because people recognise a local number. That is a basic, simple thing. The teams tell me that when the person they get hold of on the phone gives them all the contacts that they have had in the last 10 days, they have to give that information to the national test and trace system. How on earth does that make sense?

We also have to build lab capacity, which we desperately need to grow to help to bring the testing backlog down and speed up turnaround time for results. Many universities and research facilities stand ready to help, but the Government have again insisted on national contracts with private sector organisations instead of also having a really good local approach. I hope the Minister will say what steps she will take to shift the focus to a more locally led approach to test and trace in Leicester and across the country. That is relevant to these regulations. I do not want the Minister to come back here to put them all in place again because we cannot get the test and trace system working. I want the Minister and the Government to succeed on test and trace, on keeping our kids at school, and on opening our economy, because that is what is best for my constituents.

In conclusion, many lessons need to be learnt from Leicester’s experience. There must be much better handling of local lockdowns in terms of how decisions are taken and information shared, both with residents and those responsible for making the lockdowns work. We must get to get to grips with test and trace, with a more locally led approach that builds on the knowledge, resources and capacity of local public health teams who know their communities, rather than a centrally managed and controlled system, and we must have a much more tailored and flexible approach to supporting local economies that have faced extra restrictions.

People do not want handouts and they do not expect Government schemes to carry on forever—that is not something that I have ever argued for—but they do expect support to help them get back on their feet when they do the right thing. Above all, we need to understand that the failure to sort out testing is making our economic recovery even harder. We cannot deal with the economic crisis unless we effectively deal with the health crisis, and I am afraid the Government have been sadly lacking on both. I thank the Committee for its forbearance.

Oral Answers to Questions

Liz Kendall Excerpts

Tuesday 1st September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

Yes, I can confirm that. Every Care Quality Commission-registered care home in England has been offered testing. Care homes for those who are over 65 and with dementia have been offered repeat testing. We have now opened up repeat testing to care homes for working age adults.

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

Following on from that question, Ministers initially promised weekly testing for care home staff by 6 July. They then abandoned that pledge and said that routine tests would not happen until 7 September. With more than 15,000 deaths from covid-19 in care homes so far and with winter and the flu season fast approaching, regular weekly testing of care home staff is critical. Will the Minister now guarantee that every care home will have weekly testing for their staff by Monday to help all of our loved ones in residential care keep safe?

[Helen Whately]

We are indeed determined to support social care, and particularly the care homes, with repeat, regular testing. As the hon. Member knows, because we have spoken about it, there has been a delay with our repeat testing of care homes because of a particular issue with some of the test kits. That was communicated to her and to the sector. As I said in my previous answer, we have now been able to offer repeat testing to all care homes for older people, to open up the portal to those care homes with working age adults as residents, and to initiate our second round of repeat testing for the older sector.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Leicester) Regulations 2020

Liz Kendall Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2020 General Committees

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher, and I will begin by saying that Members on the Labour Benches support these regulations. As one of the three Members of Parliament for Leicester, I am extremely concerned about the impact of this extended lockdown on children who are missing out on school, on local businesses and jobs, and on our universities and voluntary groups, as well as the mental health and other long-term health consequences for people in our city. However, keeping people safe and getting on top of this virus must be our top priority, so we will not be opposing the regulations.

I do, however, want to put on record my concerns about how these regulations and Leicester’s lockdown as a whole have been handled, and to ask the Minister some serious questions about where we go from here. This is because I want Leicester to get out of this lockdown as quickly as it is safe to do so, and because I hope the Government will learn lessons from what has happened in Leicester so that they do not make the same mistakes in any further local lockdowns.

In summary, I think Ministers were too slow to act; have been too centralised in their approach; and have so far failed to provide the additional support Leicester’s businesses and public services need. That is not only unfair; it makes no economic sense, because if more businesses close and more people lose their jobs and our public services struggle to cope, it will cost not just Leicester but our whole country far more in the longer term.

I want to start with the failure to act quickly enough and share vital information with Leicester at an early stage. I am told that since the launch of the NHS test and trace system at the beginning of May, Leicester’s director of public health repeatedly asked Public Health England for the results data from pillar 2 tests—essentially, all testing outside of hospitals—preferably at postcode or what is called lower-super-output areas of below 2,000 people. That data was not forthcoming to Leicester or any other council, apparently because it,

“wasn't in a fit state”.

That was the data from a test and trace system that, you will recall, Sir Christopher, the Prime Minister launched as “world-beating”. Can the Minister explain why the information was not available from the start? Even if it was not perfect, how could local councils possibly know whether they had a problem without that vital data, especially as the pillar 2 testing was a growing part of the overall test numbers?

The Government finally published the total number of positive tests for pillar 2 data at the beginning of June. I am told that our director of public health immediately raised concerns that Leicester’s rates were higher than in other parts of the country. He asked for more detail, especially at the postcode level—at this stage we got the total numbers for the whole city, not individual wards or smaller areas—and what action should be taken. I understand he received reassurances from Public Health England that there was no cause for concern, and that it was probably a data collection or small numbers issue. He raised the same issues the following week and received a similar response.

On 15 June, Leicester’s director of public health was actually told by Public Health East Midlands,

“We have not identified an obvious geographical hotspot... nor an outbreak to date.”

Yet three days later the Secretary of State said in a press conference that there was an outbreak in Leicester. One would think that in such an urgent situation—I have never denied that it was not an urgent situation—with a dangerous virus that spreads so quickly, we would have immediately been given all the possible data, at the very least broken down by postcode. However, it was not until 25 June, 11 days later, that postcode data for pillar 2 testing were finally sent through to our director of public health.

I am going through all of this in what seems like an awful lot of detail because detailed local data, including on ethnicity and where people live and work, is absolutely essential to identifying the location and cause of any problems and taking action to prevent them from getting any worse. I am afraid we are still not getting all the data that we need in a timely enough fashion. We have only just got the total number of both positive and negative tests. We still need household data, not just postcode data, because not everybody with the same postcode works, eats and worships in the same place. We need data on people’s ethnicity and where they work, which is not mandatory—it says only what is people’s occupation. What we really need to know is where people work so that if there is a problem in a food factory or somewhere else, we can go in and sort it out.

We also need contact tracing data so that we know how many people who have been in contact with someone who has tested positive have been followed up for additional tests and possible isolation. All of that is vital to getting on top of the situation, and we need all of that data daily, not weekly. As my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) said on Tuesday, the virus does not wait a week, so why should our director of public health? I am afraid the problems do not stop there.

The way in which the lockdown and by extension the regulations have been brought in was, I am afraid, badly organised and ill thought through. Over the weekend of 27 and 28 June, it was briefed that Leicester was to be subjected to a further lockdown—a briefing by the Home Secretary in The Sunday Times. That announcement was made without warning and without the involvement of the city council, the local police or our NHS. A front-page headline might feed the ego of those responsible, but it does nothing for the people it actually affects, other than cause serious anxiety and confusion. That is no way to treat people who have already made huge sacrifices and are being asked to make them all over again.

As if that were not enough, the official announcement on the lockdown was not made until very late on the evening of Monday 29 June; the map of the lockdown area was not published until 12 hours later; and the regulations to implement the lockdown, which we are now finally voting on, were not published for another four days. I cannot tell you the chaos and confusion that that caused. My inbox was absolutely inundated with messages from worried constituents, as were other hon. Members’ inboxes. Given all that, I want to put on record my thanks to our city council and, in particular, Leicestershire police for handling the situation with calm confidence, patience and skill.

I say to hon. Members here that we all know that this pandemic is unprecedented. It is one of the hardest things that any Government have ever had to deal with, and mistakes will inevitably be made, but you do not have to be Einstein to realise that you should not announce a lockdown that will affect hundreds of thousands of people in a national newspaper and until you know exactly where, when and how it will be put in place. That is the very least that our constituents deserve.

People in Leicester also want the Government to acknowledge the additional financial and other consequences of putting us back into this extended lockdown. That is something that Ministers—I should say that this is directed not at this particular Minister but at other Ministers in the Government—have so far failed to do.

After receiving so many emails in the course of Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday as the lockdown was coming into place, I wrote to the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), who is responsible for business and industry, to ask whether additional support for businesses and employees would be available as a result of the lockdown. He replied to me on 7 July, saying:

“The Chancellor has already said that there are no plans to change the scope or extend any of the schemes currently available.”

I am told that that explicitly contradicts commitments made by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to the Labour leader of Leicester City Council and the Conservative leader of Leicestershire County Council. I ask hon. Members in this Committee just to think for a minute about this happening to their own constituency and what their constituents, local businesses and others would be saying to them.

Local businesses are having to stay shut, or close back down, through no fault of their own. They have spent huge amounts of time and money getting ready to reopen, only to see their efforts go to waste. I am thinking of businesses such as North Bar and Kitchen, a brilliant and highly recommended restaurant in my constituency, which says that

“we are now really struggling being forced to close for a second lockdown...Through no fault we feel isolated and we need additional financial support from government for the extra strain this has put on us and our small business.”

I am also thinking of hairdressers such as Malcolm Murphy Hair and Jeana Louisa’s Hair Salon, which worked so hard to get everything in place—they were ordering stock, juggling their staff to comply with social distancing and getting all the appointments up—just to see their hopes dashed again.

These businesses are not arguing against the lockdown. They accept that it is necessary to keep people safe and they know that they have to play their part, but they are asking for the Government to acknowledge that they need extra help just to keep the show on the road and their heads above water, and for doing the right thing.

The Government have also failed to offer any reassurance to people on the furlough scheme. Again, I ask hon. Members to consider this. What happens if Leicester’s businesses are still in full lockdown when the Government stop paying national insurance and pension contributions and start reducing furlough payments, because the rest of the country is opening up and businesses are going back and making money, making a profit? My constituents are understandably worried. They are thinking, “If my employer can't pick up the strain because they’re not allowed to open, I’m going to lose my job.”

The East Midlands chamber of commerce says that the failure to provide Leicester’s economy with extra support is “a massive mistake” that could create “a two-tier recovery” that puts Leicester “at a long-term disadvantage”.

Will the Minister tell me, or ask her colleagues, this: why are Leicester’s businesses being unfairly penalised? I am not denying that the Government have done a huge amount to support businesses during this awful pandemic, but I am asking them to recognise the additional problems that we face. Why will the Government not guarantee that the full furlough scheme will continue for as long as Leicester is in lockdown? Do they recognise that the inevitable increase in unemployment as a result of the pandemic could be even worse in Leicester, a city where 40% of children are already growing up in poverty, with all the awful long-term consequences that that brings? If the Minister recognises that, will she speak to her Treasury colleagues and ask them for a more flexible approach that acknowledges that local lockdowns will have an additional impact on local businesses and jobs that should be recognised and funded?

Our public services and voluntary groups need extra support too. For example, throughout the extended lockdown the city council will have to continue to provide an uplift in fees to care homes to cover their additional costs and higher than normal vacancy levels; help for those who will have to stay shielding; support to keep homeless people off the street; and help to our countless food banks to ensure that thousands of people have enough to eat. That extra work comes with an extra cost. Will the Government meet it?

Do the Government recognise that there is extra work for our police? That was particularly so during the first weekend when the lockdown came in. The media said all sorts of things about whether people would be going out into the county, to the pub where everyone else was going, and what they would be doing. We had more police on that weekend than on a typical new year’s eve. Our two universities are seriously concerned about the impact of the extended lockdown, particularly on whether international students will decide to come to Leicester. Our schools are worried about children falling even further behind and how they will ensure that parents are confident that it is safe for their kids to go back to school in September.

Our vital local community organisations and charities face extra costs because they are being locked down for longer, and cannot rely on their usual sources of income. LOROS, which runs an incredible hospice in my constituency, had just reopened 11 of its 29 shops when the renewed lockdown came in. Six of those shops are in the city. As a result LOROS is losing about £15,000 a week. Its chief executive asked me to find out whether any extra help is available. I wonder whether the Minister can respond, or ask one of her colleagues to do so.

Above all, people in Leicester and Leicestershire want to know when and how we will exit the lockdown. Our businesses want to know when they can go back out and try to get back on their feet. People want to know when they can go out and start earning a living. The Secretary of State originally said that the lockdown would be reviewed on Saturday 18 July. In his statement to the House of Commons on Tuesday he said he would be reviewing the data today. I hope that the Minister will confirm when people in Leicester will hear the news. Will it be today or Saturday? Surely, if there is one thing that we have learned from this whole business it is that leaving people hanging is unfair and a recipe for chaos and confusion.

Will the Minister explain the criteria that will be used to judge whether the lockdown will be lifted? Will it be the total number of positive tests or the proportion of positive results per 100,000 of population? Will it be the rate of increase or decrease in positive tests? Will it be the famous R rate that the Government initially said they would use to determine the exit from lockdown for the country as a whole? Will it be the rate of hospital admissions due to covid-19, care home infection rates or death rates in either or both? I know that it is difficult, but it seems unbelievable to me that we still have no sense of how the Government will judge whether Leicester can exit the lockdown. I hope that the Minister will enlighten us.

I will conclude—the Committee will be glad to hear—with some thoughts about the future. I know that my constituents and people across the city are worried about the long-term implications of the pandemic and, in particular, Leicester’s extended lockdown, on lives and livelihoods and people’s perceptions of Leicester as a whole. However, by working together and with the right support and leadership we will, I know, get through and build a brighter future.

Ours is a great, diverse and thriving city. We have amazing businesses, arts, culture, sport and universities. Leicester could and should play a key role in levelling up the midlands economy, particularly in the east midlands. The Space Park in my constituency is a partnership between the University of Leicester and industry that has the potential to create thousands of high-skill, high-value jobs in a global market worth billions. Our financial services sector and IT companies have grown hugely in recent years. We have a burgeoning tourism sector, following the amazing discovery of Richard III. That is not to mention our great restaurants, comedy festival, theatres and vibrant music venues.

In order to fulfil our potential, however, we need a Government who work with us. We need a Government who take their responsibility for helping to crack down on exploitation in the textile industry. Contrary to many reports in the newspapers, we do not have evidence that that is the cause of the outbreak in Leicester. That is not to say it is not, but the local director of public health and Public Health England have found no evidence that that is the cause. However, there are serious problems that need to be addressed. In order to do that, we need a Government who properly fund the bodies responsible for enforcement, such as Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Health and Safety Executive, instead of slashing their budgets. We need a Government who actually implement the recommendations to tackle worker exploitation that were made by the Environmental Audit Committee in its report on fast fashion last year, rather than simply ignore them. We need a Government who invest in our infrastructure and people, because today’s global economy is utterly unforgiving towards people without skills.

We need a Government who understand that, with the right support, we will emerge from this crisis stronger than before, play a critical role in boosting the lives and livelihoods of people across the east midlands, and contribute towards the success of our country as a whole. I hope the Government listen to our concerns, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

[The Chair]

If no one else wishes to participate in this important debate, I call the Minister to respond.