Coronavirus

Matt Hancock Excerpts

Thursday 25th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Matt Hancock)]

I beg to move,

That the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Steps) (England) Regulations 2021 (S.I., 2021, No. 364), dated 22 March 2021, a copy of which was laid before this House on 22 March, be approved.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

With this we shall discuss the following:

Motion 3—Coronavirus Act 2020 (Review of Temporary Provisions) (No. 2)—

That the temporary provisions of the Coronavirus Act 2020 should not yet expire.

Motion 4—Coronavirus Act 2020 (One-year Status Report)—

That this House has considered the one-year report on the status on the non-devolved provisions of the Coronavirus Act 2020.

Motion 5—Proceedings during the Pandemic (No. 6)—

That the Order of 2 June 2020 (Proceedings during the pandemic (No. 2)), as amended on 1 July and 22 October 2020, the Order of 4 June 2020 (Virtual participation in proceedings during the pandemic), as amended on 1 July, 2 September, 22 October and 30 December 2020, the Order of 3 November 2020 (Proxy voting during the pandemic (No. 2)) and the Order of 25 February (Sittings in Westminster Hall during the pandemic) shall have effect until 21 June.

[Matt Hancock]

Over the past year, we have all been engaged in a monumental national effort to fight coronavirus, which has required the House to take extraordinary measures in response to this extraordinary threat. Today, we debate our road map to recovery and what is legally needed to take the cautious but irreversible path out of this pandemic. We propose to remove some of the emergency powers that the House put in place a year ago and set the steps of the road map that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has set out into law, replacing the existing national lockdown. We are able to take this action and propose these measures thanks to the perseverance of the British people in following the rules and the success story that is our UK vaccination programme, which has now vaccinated more than 28.6 million people—55% of all adults in the United Kingdom.

Hospitalisations are now at their lowest point since September and are down 90% since the peak. To put this into context, there are today just over 5,000 people in hospital with covid. At the peak, just two months ago, there were just under 5,000 new admissions with covid each day. Deaths are now at their lowest point since October and they are down 94% since the peak. The research published today shows that our vaccination programme has already saved the lives of more than 6,000 people across the UK, up to the end of February.

The success of the vaccination programme means that we are now able to carefully replace the short-term protection of the restrictions that we have all endured, with the long-term protection provided by the vaccine. Our goal is to be cautious yet irreversible. I must tell the House, Madam Deputy Speaker, that while I am still, by nature, an optimist, there remain causes for caution. Cases are rising in some areas and they are rising among those under 18. There are early signs of cases flattening among the working-age population, too.

I am delighted that uptake of the vaccine is now 95% among over-60s and that protection against dying from the vaccine is around 85%. Both of those figures, 95% uptake and 85% protection, are higher than we could have hoped for, but while we are confident that we have broken the link between the number of cases and the hospitalisations and deaths that previously inevitably followed, no vaccine is perfect and take-up is not 100%, so that link, while broken, is not yet severed.

New variants also remain a risk because we do not yet know with confidence the impact of the vaccine against the new variants. We all want these next few months to be a one-way route to freedom, so as we restore the freedoms that we all cherish, we must do so in a way that does not put our NHS at risk.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

On that point about the take-up and the efficacy, one thing that the chief medical officer said was that the timings in the road map were driven by some of the modelling that the Government had seen. The assumptions behind that modelling I think came from February and are much more pessimistic than what we now know about take-up and efficacy. Can the Secretary of State ensure that that modelling is redone with the new assumptions to see whether that would justify a faster unlocking of the country, which is important to save jobs, save businesses and maximise the economic future of our young people?

[Matt Hancock]

While modelling is obviously something that is looked at, the observation of the actual data is I think the best guide. The good news is that the number of deaths has fallen very sharply and continues to fall sharply, and the number of hospitalisations has fallen sharply—not quite as sharply as deaths, but nevertheless sharply. Critically, the link has broken, so the weight that we place on the number of cases as an indicator is not nearly as great as it was before, because it used to be inevitable that that led to hospitalisations and deaths.

The reason for the timings in the road map is so that, after each step, we can see its impact before being able, carefully, to take the next step. That is the core reason for the timings in the road map—four weeks to see the impact of a step, and then one week to give warning of the next step. It is that, rather than the modelling, that I put the stress on for the timings in the road map.

[Mr Harper]

To come back very briefly on that final point, if deaths and hospitalisations are what is important, is the Secretary of State able to confirm the information that was published in The Times this morning on the modelling by SPI-M—the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, the Government’s advisory committee —showing a dramatic reduction in hospitalisations and deaths taking place over the next week and throughout April? That really drives my assumption that we could go a bit faster. Is he able to confirm that for the House?

[Matt Hancock]

I have not seen that article in The Times—I have read parts of The Times, but not that bit—so I cannot confirm, but I can write to my right hon. Friend with details on this point. However, I would stress that the focus only on modelling is not really where the ultimate judgment on the timings of the road map is; it is about being able to observe progress and then take the next step with confidence. The central point here is that cases may well rise. In fact, I would say cases are likely to rise, not least with schools going back. The critical thing is that the automaticity—cases going up having an impact on hospitalisations—is no longer there. However, if cases got extremely high, even with a much weaker link from cases to hospitalisations, that is something we clearly have to guard against and it is set out in test 3 of the Prime Minister’s four tests.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

The Health Secretary has talked of protections for the over-60s. Can he appreciate why, for some of our constituents who crave a foreign holiday, it looks very odd that a Stanley Johnson loophole seems to have been negotiated, so that someone over 60 with their own property abroad can get around that? Can he also appreciate that a lot of our constituents think that these measures—the Prime Minister used to talk about women who look like bank robbers—have now mandated us all to wear these masks?

[Matt Hancock]

I am not quite sure what point the hon. Member is making, but this is what I was going on to say. The critical point where I ended the exchange with my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) is that we must restore the freedoms that we all cherish, but in a way that does not put the NHS at risk. Throughout the crisis, we have successfully protected the NHS, and I am delighted to be able to inform the House that there are now record numbers of NHS doctors and NHS nurses in England. New data published this morning show that there are over 300,000 nurses in the NHS in England for the first time in its history. So we have protected our NHS and we are delivering our commitments to it. Nobody wants to have to reimpose measures, as we have sadly seen elsewhere in Europe only this week, so we must follow this cautious and, we hope, irreversible road map.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend mentions data on occurrences within the NHS. Does the NHS have data to suggest how many people have, sadly, died from covid in NHS hospitals three weeks after receiving their first dose of a covid vaccine?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, the data on the impact of the vaccine—including side effects from the vaccine and the rare occasions when, sadly, people die after having had the vaccine—are published by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. If there are any data in this area that are not published but my hon. Friend would like to be published, he can write to me and I would be very happy to look into publishing them. Essentially, we take an attitude of being as transparent as possible, because there are side effects to the vaccine as there are to all pharmaceutical drugs and we want to be completely open and transparent about those side effects—essentially to reassure people that the risks are extremely low.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend answered a question from me on this very subject by saying that the data was not available. I cannot understand why crucial data—such as the number of people who have been vaccinated for more than three weeks, who are then admitted to hospital and subsequently die—is not collected. Why is that?

[Matt Hancock]

This data has been collated recently; it is in the so-called SIREN study from Public Health England. I am very happy to look into exactly the data that my hon. Friends are looking for and, if we have it, to publish it. I think we have what has been asked for, but let us try to do this by correspondence to ensure that we get exactly what is being looked for. On the face of it, my hon. Friend is absolutely right; it is exactly the sort of thing that we are looking at, but I want to make sure that we get the details right.

As I was just saying, each step of the road map is guided by the data and the progress against the four tests. We were able to take the first step on 8 March, when we allowed the return of face-to-face education in schools, relaxed the rules on two people gathering outside for recreation and allowed care home residents to nominate a single regular visitor, supported by regular testing and personal protective equipment.

The regulations before the House today ease restrictions further—again, in a careful and controlled way. First, they allow us to put in place the remaining measures of step 1, which will come into force on Monday. That means that the “stay at home” rule will end and six people or two households will be able to meet outdoors, and outdoor sports can resume. The regulations also commit the remaining steps of our road map into law, so that we can gradually ease restrictions at the right time before eventually removing them all together, which we hope to be able to do on 21 June.

[Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)]

My constituents have been in touch to raise concerns about these measures being in place for longer than absolutely necessary, but they have also been raising concerns about long covid. Will the Secretary of State respond to my constituents on both issues, and explain to the House what he and his Department are looking into to better understand the effects of long covid on the population?

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Hancock]

We clearly want to lift these measures as soon as is reasonably possible. My goal is that we will eventually see covid as something that has to be managed rather like flu. We do not put in place restrictions on normal life to tackle flu, but we do have a regular vaccination programme. With vaccines, that is where I hope we will be able to get to.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Matt Hancock]

I just want to answer my hon. Friend’s second point before taking further interventions. His point about long covid is important. In fact, the National Institute for Health Research, which has done a brilliant job during the pandemic, has today put out a £20 million call for further research and diagnostics, including patient and public involvement, so that long covid can be properly understood, and people who catch covid and have symptoms over a long time—which I know can be deeply debilitating for some people—can get the support they need on the NHS.

[Greg Clark (Tunbridge Wells) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend mentions the fact that we live with flu every winter and act against it. Has he made an assessment of what level of hospital admissions would be consistent with protecting the NHS?

[Matt Hancock]

It is very difficult to know in advance. At the peak of this pandemic, we had 38,000 patients in hospital across the UK at any one time with covid, but of course that meant that other non-urgent treatments had to be delayed. There is a question of the trade-off and how much treatment is delayed. In a bad flu season, elective operations and non-urgent treatments are delayed. That is one way in which the NHS manages through a difficult flu season in winter. Measures like that will be necessary if we have an increase in covid cases.

If we have learned anything in the last year, we have learned that we have to live with risk as a society. That is a reality, so the goal and the strategy are to invest in the NHS so that it has more capacity, make sure that it can expand capacity and make sure that we have the vaccine effort and the continued efforts that people will no doubt take personal responsibility for, such as mask-wearing—and people will be highly likely do that to protect themselves and others, after the experience we have just had. I want to get to a point of personal responsibility plus the vaccine plus the test and trace programme, so that people can be regularly tested and we can use that to break the chains of transmission. I want to manage covid in that way, while restoring our freedoms. That is the best way, once we have made our way carefully down this road.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

What my right hon. Friend has just said is extremely encouraging, and I am very grateful. Will he confirm that the reason that step 4 is not in the regulations is that it does not need any regulations? It is freedom from these regulations.

[Matt Hancock]

Yes—that is a very good way of putting it; in fact, it was on the next page of my script. It is a pleasure to be as one with my hon. Friend after all this time, and I hope very much that he joins us in the Lobby later.

[Mr Baker]

No comment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Hancock]

I am an optimist, as I just said.

Let me carry on detailing the purpose of these measures. Step 2 allows non-essential retail and personal care services to reopen. We have said that that will happen not before 12 April. It will also allow the reopening of leisure services, indoor leisure such as gyms, and self-contained accommodation. Step 2 also sees the reopening—outdoors—of our pubs and restaurants, which I know so many of us are looking forward to.

Step 3 will lift restrictions on meetings outdoors, subject to a limit of 30, and up to six people, or two households, will be able to meet inside. Indoor hospitality, indoor entertainment and all other types of accommodation will be able to open their doors once again. Step 4 will begin no earlier than 21 June. This is the final stage in the road map, because, bolstered by a mammoth testing effort and capacity and by the protection of the vaccination, that is when we aim to remove all legal limits on social contact and restore our freedoms once again.

I know how hard these restrictions have been. I know they have meant missing out on special moments with loved ones and putting important events on hold, and they have also taken a significant economic toll, so we do not want to keep them in place any longer than we judge we have to. I am therefore pleased to say that these road map regulations will expire at the end of June.

Let me turn now to the renewal of the temporary provisions in the Coronavirus Act 2020, which are also before the House today. The Act has been a crucial part of our response to this virus. It helped us to protect the NHS in its hour of need, to keep public services, courts and local democracy running and to offer the financial assistance that has been a lifeline to so many people.

Some provisions in the Act require renewal every six months. If we were to remove the temporary provisions in the Act altogether, we would lose, for instance, measures protecting commercial tenants and renters from eviction, we would not be able to run virtual court hearings, which are an integral part of maintaining the rule of law, and people would not be able to receive statutory sick pay for the full period for which they are required to self-isolate. So there are some important technical provisions that allow for the running of public services, given the social distancing we have at the moment.

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

The word “crucial” has been doing a lot of heavy lifting in the Minister’s speech. Is it not correct that if these measures are voted down today, the Government would have 21 days to bring a new Bill to Parliament? Is it not also correct that a lot of what we are relying on comes from other legislation and not actually the Coronavirus Act?

[Matt Hancock]

Absolutely. The main provisions under which we put in place the lockdown come from the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984, not the Coronavirus Act. The mainstay in terms of the Coronavirus Act is to allow us to support people and public services. For instance, furlough is in the Coronavirus Act; that is not up for renewal, because it is a permanent part—it is for the full period of the Act. Nevertheless, in terms of being able to pay statutory sick pay to people when they are self-isolating, I am asking the House today to renew that provision, and I think that we must.

I want to stress this point to those who are understandably concerned about the extent of powers in the Coronavirus Act. Although the Act remains essential and we are seeking the renewal of elements of it, we have always said that we will only retain powers as long as they are necessary. They are exceptional powers. They are approved by the House for use in the most extreme of situations and they must be seen in that light. Because of the progress we have made, we are now able to expire and suspend a whole raft of measures in the Act, just as we expired provisions after the previous review six months ago.

We propose to expire 12 provisions in the Act: section 15, which allowed local authorities to ease some responsibilities around social care; section 24, which allowed biometric data held for national security purposes to be retained for an extra six months; five provisions that required information for businesses and people involved in the food supply chain; section 71, which allowed a single Treasury Minister to sign on behalf of all Treasury Commissioners—I know the Whips Office is looking forward to getting its signatures out again. There are two provisions that created a new form of emergency volunteering leave, which we have not needed and are retiring. Section 79 extended arrangements for business improvement districts and section 84 allowed for the postponement of General Synod elections. Those are not needed anymore and we are therefore not seeking to extend them. We only extend that which we think is necessary.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

I welcome the expiry of some measures, particularly the social care easements, which were discriminatory against the most vulnerable in our society. Will the Secretary of State accept that under the Coronavirus Act we have had 250 people wrongfully charged? The Act is full of far-reaching powers that are not needed. The practical measures he talked about can be brought forward in the next 21 days. As he suggested, the fake news that furlough cannot go on without renewing the Act is just untrue, because that is a permanent provision.

[Matt Hancock]

Furlough is provided for under the Act. As I just said, it is a permanent provision of the Act, but the statutory sick pay is not and I think we should be giving people statutory sick pay to help them to self-isolate.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

The Secretary of State is asking for a further six months under the Act, which is all that we can do. The Prime Minister has been talking in the last few days about the need for section 2, for instance, on the emergency registration of nurses, to help us to deal with the backlog. The same is true of sections 53, 54, 55 and 56 with respect to the courts. In six months’ time, will we need that? Will we have dealt with the backlog in the health service and the courts, or will he need to renew this again in six months?

[Matt Hancock]

That is a good question. The truth is that we have a record number of nurses in the NHS, over 300,000, in part because the Act allowed for their emergency registration much more swiftly than previously. Parts of the Act have allowed us to do good things like that, which everybody would like to see. When we come to retire the Act, which we must within one year and preferably within six months, we will need to make sure we can continue to do that sort of thing to ensure that nurses can be enrolled into the NHS as easily as possible. I cannot answer whether we will be retiring it in six months. My preference would be yes, but given the last year I think a prediction would be hasty.

[Steve Brine]

Further to that point, may I make a suggestion to my right hon. Friend? The expansion of the availability of live links for criminal proceedings will be put into the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, so that will not be needed. The Secretary of State is bringing forward a new health Bill during the new Session. Would that be an opportunity to update that?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, that is an important point. We have just started the process of working on that. If measures have worked well and we want to keep them because they are good, can we put them permanently on the statute book? That should, properly, take the process of normal primary legislation. My hon. Friend mentions a forthcoming health and care Bill. I look to the Leader of the House and I can see that he is smiling, although I cannot, of course, say whether that Bill will be brought forward until we have a proper sign-off—it is nice to see him looking so handsome there. [Laughter.]Our aim would be to get that on to the statute book, should we bring it forward, in the middle of next year, so there is a shorter-term question of the handling from here to there. We need to do that with the best administrative efficiency that we can, but I am talking here about the less controversial elements of the Act.

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful for the Secretary of State’s judgment and I will try not to test his patience again. He mentioned that there are some very valuable administrative measures. If they were the only things being rolled forward, I do not think people would mind, although my reading of the Act is that the registration provisions for medical staff are in section 89, in the permanent part of the Act rather than the temporary part. The controversial parts include the police powers to detain potentially infectious persons, which the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) referred to, and which have been used unlawfully on a number of occasions. It says in the one-year review of the Act that those are intended to be long-term powers and my right hon. Friend has just suggested that those provisions might be rolled forward a further six months. That is why so many of us are worried. These are extraordinary provisions, not for normal times, and they should be expired at the earliest possible opportunity.

[Matt Hancock]

I actually agree with my right hon. Friend that they should be expired at the earliest possible opportunity. The challenge, especially as we lift measures on all of us, is if there are, for instance, new variants that we need to pin down absolutely—in the same way that a new variant came about in Liverpool and we tackled it. We have not seen any new cases of it, not only because of fantastic local work, but because in lockdown that is easier. Having these very targeted interventions for now is important. Therefore, we have made the judgment that we should propose that they are necessary for now. I know that we disagree on that point, but I suggest that by voting against all these renewals, a whole load of valuable things that he and I would agree on would not be renewed, were that vote to go through.

[Mr Steve Baker]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Matt Hancock]

I will just make a little more progress.

We are also suspending three further provisions, although they may need to be restored and called on if required. As well as that, we have completed the six-month statutory review on covid-secure regulations for businesses, the collection of contact details and self-isolation, and concluded that they remain necessary at this time. The Coronavirus Act is temporary, time-limited and proportionate to the threat we face, and we are keeping measures only where they are necessary as we exit this pandemic, and then we can do away with this Act for good.

Throughout the pandemic, this House has also found a way to meet. I cannot wait for the time when this Chamber will be full and rowdy once again as the cockpit of our democracy, where we can almost literally take the temperature of the nation. I may pay for that when I say something particularly unfortunate, but I prefer it, and I think everybody in this House does. After widespread consultation and on the basis of detailed public health advice, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has tabled a motion to extend virtual participation and the current proxy voting arrangements until 21 June, the proposed date for the removal of all legal restrictions on social contact. We thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and through you the other Deputy Speakers, Mr Speaker and the House authorities for the work that has been done in these unprecedented times to keep people safe here.

The measures before the House today show how we will put the pandemic behind us and restore life to normal. We are on the road to recovery, but we are not at the finish line yet, and by passing these measures, we can keep protecting lives and livelihoods while we get our nation back on its feet once more.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

On a specific point, which I rather hoped the Secretary of State would cover but I anticipate will not, we are obviously very concerned about variants in Europe and the surge that we are seeing there. Is it the Government’s intention to impose restrictions on those coming in from France or Germany—to add either France or other European countries to the red list—or to impose testing on hauliers coming into the country?

[Matt Hancock]

All these questions will be answered as part of the work of the global travel taskforce, which the Prime Minister has announced will be published on 5 April, so I recommend that the right hon. Gentleman waits until then. In answering that final question, I commend the motions to the House.