Questions for Written Answers

Lord O'Shaughnessy Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe (Con)]

The noble Lord raises a very important point. I can tell him that Ministers use a number of vehicles to dispel myths about the Covid emergency and the vaccination programme in particular. I thank him for his question, which I am sure will resonate with colleagues in the Department of Health and more widely.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy (Con)]

My Lords, there are a number of Ministers and former Ministers in this House. We all know how seriously they and their officials took and take the prompt and thorough answering of Written Questions. Surely, delays would have taken place only if there were more pressing matters at hand, and we have had to deal with the pandemic. While perhaps upbraiding them on their tardiness, should we not also recognise the service that our Ministers and officials have given during this time and the outstanding job they have been doing?

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend. It is worth noting that, in the Session to date, Ministers for the Department of Health and Social Care—principally my noble friend Lord Bethell—have answered 100 Oral Questions and 22 Private Notice Questions, as well as handling more than 40 Statements. In this House, we have also debated 56 sets of health protection regulations. It is not just through Written Answers that the DHSC has been accountable to this House.

Covid-19 Update

Lord O'Shaughnessy Excerpts

Thursday 7th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy (Con) [V]]

My Lords, as the PM’s Statement yesterday made clear, this lockdown is sadly necessary to avoid medical catastrophe, but he was also clear that it comes with significant costs, not least to schoolchildren, who face a year of disrupted education—I declare my interest as a founder of two schools and a parent of three school-aged children. Does my noble friend agree that the closure of schools if necessary is nevertheless highly regrettable? Does she commit to reopening schools as soon as is humanly possible and before any other institutions in society reopen once the vaccination programme is rolled out? Does she agree with the noble Lord, Lord Newby, with Robert Halfon, the chair of the Select Committee, and with others that teachers and TAs should be vaccinated as an urgent priority to make that happen?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his questions. He is absolutely right. We entirely agree that schools and colleges are the best place for children and young people to be, not just for education but for their health and well-being, which is why we tried so hard to keep them open. Unfortunately, as my noble friend said, we just could not do it. It was not that schools themselves were unsafe for either children or pupils; it is that, with the new variant, we need to use every lever at our disposal to reduce community transmission and contact. It was for that reason that schools were closed; it was not because teachers have not done fantastic work. My brother and sister-in-law, who are both teachers, spent Christmas trying to make their schools Covid secure, but we still had to close them. We will certainly keep this position under review; we will certainly try to bring back schools as soon as we can. Of course, regular testing will be at the centre of our plans. All that hard work will not be in vain; it will just be used slightly further away than we may have hoped.

Coronavirus Bill

Lord O'Shaughnessy Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 25th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, the proposals that the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, has put forward commend themselves to the House. Essentially, he proposes that the Danish system be introduced here. The Resolution Foundation published a paper this morning that applies considerable expertise and global knowledge to this issue and proposes something similar.

I slightly regretted that the noble Lord made party-political points towards the end, because I do not believe that there is any party-political difference on this at all. We are all looking to the Government—indeed, many Conservatives take the same view. I hope that we can address all these things as a House together and not make party points on them.

However, my concern about this amendment is exactly the same as on the previous one. What we are talking about here is one of the most important decisions that the Government will take in dealing with this crisis. The noble Viscount was completely right about the social impact; 5 million gig workers in the economy, all of whom are self-employed but have been dependent on income from services that have been reasonably predictable in their provision, face their livelihoods being decimated at the moment. Unless provisions of this kind are put in place, they will face serious hardship. Unless a Statement is made today by the Chancellor, Parliament will not have the slightest impact on what is proposed, because we will have no opportunity to question Ministers about it—neither the Chancellor in the other place or Ministers in this place—and we will not get to give any views on this issue again until, I understand, 21 April.

That is not satisfactory. These issues are costing billions of pounds to the taxpayer and will have a huge social impact, but Parliament will be entirely irrelevant to the discussion and the announcement of those proposals. I therefore hope that the noble Earl can give us some indication of how Parliament will be involved in both the announcement and the assessment of the package in respect of the self-employed when it is made. It is not satisfactory that we will play no part in this for another month.

[Lord O’Shaughnessy (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, asked for a cross-party view so I will make a brief intervention. The economic and moral case for doing something for this group of people is unarguable. No one in this House or in the other place disagrees with that. Their needs are just as great as of those who have the good fortune to have employed jobs, and it is on all of us to make sure that we have a solution.

If it was possible to do what is in the amendment, it could have been done already. There are technical and potentially moral hazard issues why this specific amendment might not be right. I do not stand in judgment; I just know that there are technical issues, and I know that there is a great deal of sympathy for this kind of solution. However, I know that the Treasury has been looking at this and other solutions and that it has its concerns. However, the most important thing is not to agree today on the specific line-by-line items of a package. Exactly as noble Lords have said, this is about getting a sense from my noble friend about when this package of equal weight and power will happen.

There are economic and moral reasons for doing this but health reasons too. If you are young, financially insecure or both of those things, you are highly likely to be at the very wrong end of the economic consequences, but you are also likely to look at it and think, “I might not get this disease and I’m almost certainly not going to die of it, so I’ll take my chances. I need to pay the rent”—or whatever it is. We simply cannot all be in this together if we have created a system which creates perverse incentives for certain groups. My noble friend knows that I am saying this with support for him and for the Government, but it is incumbent on us all to solve this so that we can act in unison to make sure that we deal with this health crisis together.

[Lord Blunkett]

I add my support by saying that those words from the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, were very wise. On the people that we have addressed so far and who have been talked about publicly, I reinforce that it is quite right that we should seek, in whatever way we can, to provide the support that has just been described. However, there is a group that falls between those who have already been assisted in support to companies and the purely self-employed: the worker working for themselves in our economy.

There is a group of entrepreneurs, many of them with start-ups and some with continuing businesses, who cannot access what is on offer to those in slightly different circumstances because of this. If they are using serviced premises—I will give an example in this House in a second—and therefore do not pay business rates, they are not entitled to the help that is already been granted on business rates or the grants that have been put in place, all of which are extremely welcome. In addition to what we describe as the self-employed there is therefore a group of people with very small microbusinesses.

The hairdresser’s in the Palace of Westminster—I make no declaration other than that I use it—is not unique but is a good example of someone running a small business which employs people but which cannot draw down on the help currently available for the reasons I have just described. It does not pay business rates in this building, and those with serviced premises that they rent do not pay them either. I hope that the noble Earl will be able to take back to his colleagues that there is this little additional gap that we should not have to come back to and say, “We forgot about those.” I am sure that is not the case but I just want to reinforce it.