Covid-19

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab) [V]]

Coronavirus has had a profound impact on all our lives. The UK has had the worst death toll in Europe, and there have been more than 120,000 covid-19 related deaths. In Wirral, more than 850 people have lost their lives, leaving thousands of people grieving.

Today, the Prime Minister announced his plan for the easing of lockdown measures in England, and of course we all want life to return to normal as soon as it is safe, but the number of those with covid is still high, and so are infection rates. There is much the Government must learn from their failings. They were too slow to lock down at the start of the pandemic. They failed and continue to fail to make sure that people on low incomes get the financial support they need to isolate, and they also failed to quickly put in place an effective test and trace system.

In a debate last March, the Opposition spelled out the fact that almost 2 million workers on low incomes and 5 million self-employed workers did not qualify for statutory sick pay and that the level of payment was too low. We called on Ministers to address that as a matter of urgency. Now, as then, those who need to isolate must be able to do so without fear of how they will pay the bills. The Government ignored our call, and it took them until September to introduce the £500 Test and Trace support payment, yet the Resolution Foundation has said that seven in eight workers will not qualify for it. Ministers have had nearly a year to get this right. Why are they still getting it wrong?

The Government have failed, too, on test and trace. I wrote to the Minister on numerous occasions calling for local authority public health departments to be given the data they needed. The Government dragged their heels all the way and prioritised giving money to private companies to implement a centralised system. Ministers have been obsessed with outsourcing and spent almost £2 billion of public money on giving crony contracts to their Conservative friends and donors.

The dedication and commitment of NHS and care workers throughout the pandemic have been heroic, yet the Government have chosen this time of immense stress for all of them to publish a White Paper on proposals for major changes in the way health and social care are delivered in England. NHS England ran a consultation over Christmas and new year when health and care workers were either working round the clock or taking a few days’ break. It is wholly unacceptable for the Secretary of State to go ahead with such huge changes while we are in the middle of the biggest public health crisis our NHS has ever faced and while staff are exhausted. So I call on him to pause the whole process until all covid restrictions have been lifted and to carry out a full consultation with the public, setting out clearly what those proposals mean for patients and staff. To do anything less would be an insult to NHS workers, care staff and every single person who believes in and relies on our national health service.