Public Services: Update

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 29th April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating yesterday’s Statement. He will know that we share the Government’s aim to save lives and rebuild our economy and well-being. In this context, there is much in the Statement that we applaud, particularly its acknowledgment of the role of volunteers, the health service, food growers and retailers, pharmacists, care workers, educators, charities, the police and the military. I would also add the BBC and indeed Ministers and civil servants, who have had to respond to previously unimaginable demands.

Unlike anything we have ever seen, this crisis has literally involved every single one of us. It is a national challenge like no other. We therefore have a population who are part and parcel of the country’s response and, in return, we owe it to them to be honest and transparent about the risks, the difficult trade-offs, the certainties and uncertainties, the data, and what the Government are actually doing, and planning to do. The Prime Minister, on his return to Downing Street from Chequers, pledged to act with “maximum possible transparency”. We therefore hope that we will soon have reliable data on the rate of BAME infections and deaths—an issue of major concern to our Caribbean and Asian communities.

We very much welcome that, from today, the statistics will include deaths in care homes and in the community, as well as those in hospitals. This is right in itself, but it is particularly important because of the numbers involved—perhaps 19,000 Covid-related deaths; a near tripling of the number of deaths in care homes over three weeks—and because of the failure to ensure that these people in society’s care, and the staff who look after them, were properly protected with equipment and testing. This is no time to look backwards and consider why that was, but it is time to look forward and ensure that the situation is remedied. This is especially true as it looks as if the UK’s overall coronavirus death rate could outstrip that of Italy, France and Spain, and may even be the highest in Europe.

We need the Government to take all necessary steps, and that includes heeding the very wise words “to underpromise and overdeliver, rather than overpromise and underdeliver”—as we saw, I am afraid, with PPE and testing. The Cabinet Office has a key role in this, not just on procurement, as mentioned quite rightly by the Minister, but on cross-departmental working and liaison, ensuring that lessons are learned as speedily as they are in the medical world, where advances in treatment of the virus in one week are disseminated around the health service profession by the following Monday. The Cabinet Office has a similar role in ensuring that everyone knows the lessons being learned elsewhere.

The Cabinet Office also has a role to ensure that all our citizens are fully informed about what is happening and what is being discussed. In that context, could the Minister explain why, if the Welsh, Scottish and indeed other Governments can ensure that signers are available and on-screen in daily press conferences, somehow No. 10 cannot quite arrange this? It can easily be done at a distance and so not break social distancing rules. Our deaf communities feel very strongly that they are being excluded from daily updates.

Going forward, plans to test and trace will affect all sectors of society, including those with a disability, and we will need every agency to help inform, encourage, test, safeguard and trace. That is a real cross-government task, involving local government, devolved authorities, charities—especially those working with the vulnerable—service providers, civic society, businesses and trade unions.

Until now, there have been some forgotten groups in all this, such as those who receive care in their own homes and domiciliary care staff. All these people must get the PPE that they need, and social care must be properly funded to deal with the extra costs of the pandemic.

These are some of the “here and now” issues, but we also need a viable and sustainable national recovery plan, which I assume will be Cabinet Office-led. For these next decisions, involvement across the piece is needed, not simply to help craft those plans, but to ensure that businesses, schools and other organisations have time to prepare, such that the infection rates do not increase again. Transparency and consultation will be vital, so will the Government publish their next- steps framework?

We stand ready to help—it is in the national interest—to ensure that the NHS, public services, businesses, workers, families and communities recover and become more resilient. But we need to understand, and contribute to, the Government’s thinking, so we ask that there is that involvement. Will the Government agree to hold talks with teachers, trade unions, businesses, charities and local authorities on how their forward strategy can be developed and implemented to rebuild the economy and jobs?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

I, too, welcome this Statement and the remarkable change of tone it contains about public sector workers used by Conservative Ministers and advisers until a few weeks ago. Last December’s Conservative manifesto, and even more the writings of Conservative advisers such as Dominic Cummings and Rachel Wolf, condemned the Civil Service as “incompetent” and wasteful, as ignorant about science and looking after their own interests rather than the public as a whole.

Happily, Ministers have now realised that civil servants and others across the public sector believe in the concept of public service, which right-wing libertarians and public choice economists have rubbished for so long. Across our entire public service, from the NHS to the police and military to Whitehall and local authorities, we have seen people rising to the challenge, moving jobs to help others, and working all hours. Many of them, we should also recognise, are far more modestly paid than their equivalents in the private sector, but they have shown their commitment and their loyalty to the communities they serve.

I am glad to see the reference to local resilience forums, and the recognition that this is a series of local crises across the country as well as a national crisis. I hope that this will persuade the Government to reverse their marginalisation of local authorities and to recognise the vital contribution that effective local government makes to a thriving democracy. I was struck when I read the section on democracy and political reform in last December’s Conservative manifesto that it contained no reference at all to local democracy. I hope that the Minister will argue for its inclusion in the agenda for the constitution, democracy and human rights commission which the Government have promised to set up this year.

The Statement expresses gratitude to

“to colleagues from the devolved Administrations for their participation and their constructive contributions to all our discussions. Those discussions have helped us to understand how the virus has affected every part of our United Kingdom.”

Can the Minister tell the House how the Government have ensured that they have understood the impact on every part of the UK, given that the large majority of the UK’s population lives in England and that there appears to have been no visible mechanism for consultation with the English regions or even with the city mayors from outside London?

The Minister mentioned that the military has now been brought in to help out with logistics but also with expanding testing for the virus. The Statement does not explain why the initial programme of testing was contracted out to a large private consultancy firm: a contract which, the Daily Telegraph has reported, was awarded without the normal tendering process. Was that because of an instinctive Conservative assumption that the private sector is always better than the public sector? The underutilisation of the first testing centres, reported and repeated difficulties with the booking system, and the apparent assumption that all care and health workers had access to their own cars and had time to drive up to 50 miles to be tested all show this to have been one of the weakest aspects of the response to the epidemic. I am glad that the military have now been brought in to expand testing. Why were they not brought in at the outset? My own experience in government, dealing with the digitisation of Whitehall, suggested that outside consultancies often charge more and deliver less.

The Statement refers also to the redeployment of a large number of civil servants across Whitehall to cope with the crisis. What other tasks of government have had to be put on hold as a result? I understand, for example, that the Government’s promised White Paper on data strategy, for which the Minister is responsible to the Lords, is now several months behind schedule, since officials had been transferred; first, to help with preparation for Brexit and now to respond to the epidemic. I understand that officials working on the Brexit negotiations have also been redeployed in response to the epidemic. Will the Minister commit to informing the House in the near future whether the team negotiating Brexit is still sufficiently staffed to handle the complex negotiations that we are engaged in or whether the demands of this emergency will enforce a change of pace if we are to avoid confusion or failure?

Finally, I welcome very warmly the Government’s tribute to

“the stoicism and steadfastness, the hard work and heroism, the compassion and commitment of those working at the front line of public service.”

We all make that tribute, and long may the Government’s change of tone continue.

[Lord True]

My Lords, perhaps I may begin by congratulating the Prime Minister and Carrie Symonds on the birth of their son. It is a story of movement from near death to new life in a few weeks. I am sure that that is what we all avidly pray for for this economy and this nation as we look ahead to a way out of this crisis and to new hope.

I thank the noble Lord and the noble Baroness for their responses to the Statement and the constructive way in which they put forward their points of view, many of which I share. I endorse their admiration for all that is being done in the NHS, social care, the public services and the private sector in the face of this crisis. Naturally, I add my own respect and prayers for those people and their families who have given, literally, all they had to give. None of us, as the nation showed at 11 o’clock yesterday, will forget them.

Everyone across the land, which includes central government and, yes, local government, is doing the best they can, as fast as they can, and the most they can in these difficult times. As the noble Baroness said, there has been an extraordinary response from the public in the coming-together across the land, and long may it last.

We must not forget that some remarkable things have been achieved. I acknowledge to both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord that there have also been things that have not gone as well in every detail as all would hope. I think that it was General Moltke who said that no plan extends with certainty beyond first contact with the main force of the enemy, and Covid is a new, hidden, mutable and invisible enemy with characteristics not met before. However, I assure the House that the Government and all their agencies are working night and day to ensure that our front-line health and social care staff have the equipment they need to tackle this virus, and we have delivered more than 1,000 million items of PPE since the outbreak began, including 36 million to care homes.

I agree with the noble Baroness that transparency is important. As she acknowledged, we are moving today to bring together the different strands of statistics in relation to care homes, which will give full and proper transparency on that. Her point on BAME is very important. Work on that is under way, as the scientists have said at the daily briefings. I cannot give her a date for an outcome to the work.

Care homes are obviously a sector of enormous importance, and they have been of concern to the Government all the way through. As I have said, 36 million items of PPE have already been delivered to care homes, but it is a vulnerable section of the community where I acknowledge the need always to strive to do better.

On communications, I will take up the noble Baroness’s point; I understand it very well. I acknowledge her point on the need for the broadest co-operation if and when we move into test and trace. On publishing frameworks, I think that the noble Baroness and the House know that the Government’s position is that we have first to keep on with the effort that that public are making to contain this virus and to meet the five tests before we move forward to any release from the current lockdown provisions. As the Prime Minister acknowledged when he came back to work, over the next few days, the Government will continue to examine carefully all these issues.

On the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, I do not need any reminder of the need to commend the Civil Service. I have always had the highest respect for it and have worked with it through my life. The ideal of public service is one that I personally consider to be of the highest importance, and it is something to which I have always aspired. I assure the noble Lord that that is shared widely, if not universally, across the Government. On the importance of local authorities, I referred to the local resilience fora. Local authorities are making a great contribution. We will continue to work to improve and maintain communications with them and with agencies right across England, as the noble Lord rightly said.

I welcome what the noble Lord said about the military. Its role has been extraordinary. The Armed Forces have made a great difference and perhaps have not had as much attention in the media as they might have done, but I was grateful for what he said on that score.

So far as the redeployment of civil servants and the delay of business is concerned, there has been an impact on some aspects of government business, of course. It is right that full priority should be given to confronting this crisis, but on the noble Lord’s concerns about the negotiations towards the transition on 31 December, I assure him that a very effective team with a large number of civil servants is at work there, as was said in the recent Statement. Indeed, if he read Monsieur Barnier’s statement, he will have seen how Monsieur Barnier himself commented on the professionalism of David Frost and his team in carrying forward those negotiations. I believe that we can have confidence in that.

I hope that I have answered most of the points made. If not, I will write to noble Lords.