Covid-19 Update

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Bethell) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Thornton and Lady Brinton, for their thoughtful questions. To answer directly, it is extremely important that we are currently here debating the outbreak in Leicester, because in a way it is a tribute to the success of the hygiene, isolation and social distancing strategy that has borne so heavily down on this disease that we are now in the position of focusing on those rock pools of the epidemic that have been left behind by the tide of this disease going out. But I completely accept the importance of this outbreak management. That is where the Government’s focus is centred.

I reassure both noble Baronesses that the data that local authorities and local directors of public health require is being given to them and access is being provided. All local authorities were issued with data-sharing agreements to access personally identifiable local testing data on 22 June. After signing those data-sharing agreements, the first local authorities accessed the data on 24 June. Leicester accessed it with its log-in details on 25 June. An enormous amount of progress is being made in an area that is now very much our focus. Local authorities, public health directors and infection control teams have worked hard in the past few weeks knuckling down on those lockdowns that did not get away, on the local outbursts that were well managed and that have not hit the headlines and that are now falling lines on the epidemiological graph.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, asked about the legal aspect. I reassure her that the lockdown in Leicester is being carried out under the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 at the request of the local authority as the provisions of that Act require. Therefore, regulations will not be brought to this House. The Secretary of State and the Government have sought to manage the epidemic through the consent of the people, not through making things mandatory. That has been our consistent approach because trust and collaboration are at the heart of this country’s response and we do not believe that making things mandatory through regulation will be as effective. However, if regulations are necessary, we will bring them to bear in order to protect lives and save the NHS.

I pay tribute to the British people for their enormous collaboration and the huge sacrifice that many have made in order to put in social distancing and other necessary measures. I pay tribute to the shops, pubs, churches and other venues that are working so hard in order to apply the necessary regulations for reopening on 4 July, which will be an incredibly important but worrying experiment in opening up our society.

On further lockdowns around the country, none is currently planned. Our profound hope is that none will be necessary. Our severe fear is that they will be, because epidemiological experience suggests that a virus that has a doubling rate of two or three days very quickly spirals out of control in geographical focal points. But we remain incredibly vigilant, and the focus of our effort is to use the necessary data to identify outbreaks when they happen and to move epidemiological resources into place in order to deal with those outbreaks.

On further data, we hope to make announcements shortly in order to get the most local data open to the dashboards available to local authorities and public health officials in the very near future.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, asked about the involvement of the Mayor of Leicester in decision-making in Leicester. I reassure the noble Baroness that he was very much at the heart of all the analysis, the meetings with PHE, the gold meetings of the JBC and the process of agreeing the lockdown arrangements. That is entirely right and proper for such a situation.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, asked about PPE in social care. I reassure both noble Baronesses that the measures in place to manage imports and the manufacture of the necessary domestic PPE have proved to have a huge yield and at the moment our RAG rating is extremely positive on PPE for all aspects of the healthcare system.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

We now come to the 30 minutes allocated for Back-Bench questions. I ask that questions and answers be brief so that I can call the maximum number of speakers.