Covid-19: Response

Lord Patel Excerpts

Monday 27th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell [V]]

The noble Baroness is entirely right that these local outbreaks create invidious choices for local authorities, and the fine tuning of the boundaries is an important part of the lockdown process. We saw that in Leicester, where the boundaries of the lockdown were changed for the very reasons that she outlines, both to preserve trust and in order to be effective. However, I remind the noble Baroness that the movements of people within areas mean that the disease can spread. Therefore, the lockdowns do not necessarily apply only to those areas with high prevalence in any one period, and sometimes buffers need to be put around the infection area, which is why these areas can seem to be either unfair or overextended.

[Lord Patel (CB) [V]]

My Lords, Amnesty has reported that the UK has had 540 deaths among health and care workers, second only to Russia. Compare that to Spain, which has had 63 deaths. Have the Government carried out a root-cause analysis to find out the causes of these deaths, and will they publish the results? If the Government have not carried out such an analysis, will the Minister agree that one should be carried out with some urgency in case there is a second wave of infection?

[Lord Bethell [V]]

My Lords, local trusts have been urged for many months now to undertake a profound risk assessment of workers, particularly BAME workers, in order to understand where infection may have come from. Infection control teams in individual trusts are charged with the responsibility for delivering infection control plans. It is at that level that we can understand the detailed causes of infection because in each trust those causes can be quite different.