Covid-19

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Thursday 6th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

The noble Baroness of course makes incredibly important points. We already know that about 60% of those in intensive care have not been vaccinated. We know that unvaccinated people are up to eight times more likely to be hospitalised. The noble Baroness is absolutely right about the importance of this, which is why we are pushing the constant message about getting boosted. She will, I hope, be pleased to know—I am not saying that this solves the problem by any stretch—that we have seen more people coming forward to have their first jabs. There was an increase of 44% in the seven days to 22 December, compared to the previous seven days, which is a move in the right direction. However, the noble Baroness is absolutely right: we need to work with social media companies and are continuing to do so to identify and remove dangerous disinformation about vaccines, and make sure that we are getting our positive messages out.

We have allocated £22.5 million to help areas with low vaccine take-up. We recruited vaccine ambassadors, who speak 33 languages between them, to promote take-up across the country. We have a community vaccine scheme to target the 60 local authorities with the lowest uptake and use local networks to promote accurate health information. So we are trying to use a range of sources in order to try and either address the disinformation or the nervousness that is preventing people from coming forward.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, should we not congratulate the Prime Minister on having made the right judgment call about the arrangements between Christmas and new year and on deciding to prevent us from having to have a PCR test on returning from abroad? I declare an interest, having been to the United States over Christmas and new year to see my grandchildren and paying an exorbitant amount in costs for testing. Is it not obvious that profiteering is going on, both in the supply of tests and in the costs that people are being asked to pay in order to be able to go abroad or continue to work? Will the Government ask the Competition and Markets Authority or some other body to look at this and end this absolute rip-off?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My noble friend is right. It is something that I know noble Lords and our colleagues in the other place have raised. Work is going on to try to take action in this area. When the omicron variant was first identified we introduced the travel restrictions to try to slow its arrival, but now that it is so prevalent these measures are having a limited impact but are obviously having a significant impact on the travel industry. I think these are welcome measures that will, I hope, be welcomed by the public. However, there are no changes for unvaccinated adults.