Covid-19 Update

Lord Gardiner of Kimble Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2021 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, I am enormously grateful for those extremely thoughtful questions. As ever, I welcome the challenge and scrutiny that the House of Lords always provides on these matters.

I completely endorse what the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Thornton, very thoughtfully said about Chris Whitty. Chris Whitty and JVT are both complete legends, and both have been accosted in public. This is completely unacceptable. We must look at the security of those who serve us so well, and we must somehow address the disrespect that often happens when public figures walk in public. It is a great regret that this has happened.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, asked about nurses’ pay. I repeat to her what my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health said yesterday: this absolutely remains a priority. We must have a fair pay settlement. That pay settlement is going through the pay review process at the moment, and we look forward to receiving the output on that.

Both the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Thornton, asked about the basis for the optimism that we have at the moment. I have stood at this Dispatch Box for 18 months as the purveyor of difficult news to the House, and have lived through some very difficult moments in that time. I am acutely aware of the concerns that noble Lords have. I think the questions put were very reasonable and deserve a clear answer, so let me explain why we are a bit more optimistic than I think we ever could have been in the recent past. The case rates are slowing down, for both over and under-60s. Hospital admissions among the over-60s have started to fall, and while there are signs in both measures that the rate of growth is slowing, there is just not enough to fundamentally change our assessment of the risk of delta. In the last two weeks, we have seen case rates fall in both Bolton and Blackburn. That is an incredibly important observation, and one that bears testimony to the effectiveness of the local authorities, test and trace, and all of those who have contributed. It is mainly driven by the under-60 group, but not wholly. Rates among older people are plateauing right across the country at a lower level, and hospitalisations and severe illness are being prevented by people being doubled vaccinated against Covid-19. There are very clear signs that the vaccine is working in lots of ways.

By 19 July, two significant things will have changed that may give us stronger confidence. First, we will have offered a first dose to all adults in the United Kingdom. The NHS states that it can do this by 19 July. We will have also given a second dose to a higher proportion of over-40s, giving them more protection against hospitalisation. Secondly, we will be very close to the school holidays, which start on 26 July, and school-aged children being out of school. This will significantly reduce transmission among the population which is unvaccinated and has driven case growth. Universities should also be out.

We are monitoring the data every day. So far, we have not seen indicators that substantially change our assessment of the four tests. I hear loud and clear what the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, says about Andrew Marr and his experience. Vaccination is not a panacea. It does not save everyone from any illness at all, but it has a significantly strong effect for us to move on to the next stage.

In terms of the backlog, I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, that we are putting funds in place to do whatever it takes to get us back to where we began. I cannot give the specific reassurances she asked for on whether specific funds will be extended, but it is our aspiration to work as hard as we can. On GP data, I assure her that the clinical trial progress that we have made on things such as Regeneron in the last few days gives us such a clear inspiration and motivation for ensuring that we get this project right. On trusted research environments, we have demonstrated that we listen and that we will change how we implement the GP data transfer, but our objective remains resolute. We are committed to continuing with this programme of work.

I will give a very clear response to the very important question regarding emails, asked by the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Thornton. I am absolutely rigorous in ensuring that government business is conducted through the correct formal channels. Contracts are negotiated by officials, not by Ministers. Submissions from officials are handled through departmental digital boxes, and that is right. Official decisions are communicated through secure governmental infrastructure.

I have read the Ministerial Code; I have signed it and I will seek to uphold it in everything that I do. The guidelines are clear that it is not wrong for Ministers to have personal email addresses. I have corresponded with a very large number of noble Lords in this Chamber from both my parliamentary address and my personal address. That is right and I will continue to do so. In their enthusiasm, third parties often seek to engage Ministers through whatever means that they can find, including their personal email. That is not the same as using a personal email for formal departmental decision-making. Those who have seen material on the internet should judge it extremely sceptically, because distorted fragments of evidence do not provide sufficient grounds to rush to judgment on how Ministers do their business.

I do not recognise the substance of the comments of the Second Permanent Secretary, as referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and he has indicated to me that he does not recognise the substance of those comments. I completely recognise the comments that were made regarding the meetings with Abingdon Health. The meetings schedule from that week was overlooked because of an administrative oversight. It has now been uploaded to the internet. I will be glad to share a link to that register. On the complaint made by Anneliese Dodds, I have written to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and would be very glad to share that letter with the noble Baronesses, Lady Thornton and Lady Brinton.

I take this post extremely seriously. During the work of the pandemic, many people—officials, Ministers and those in industry—worked extremely hard to address the severe epidemic that we face, and I am extremely proud of how that business was conducted.

[The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord Gardiner of Kimble) (Non-Afl)]

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.