Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Blackburn with Darwen and Bradford) Regulations 2020 Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Blackburn with Darwen and Bradford) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Blackburn with Darwen and Bradford) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2020 Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Blackburn with Darwen and Bradford) (Amendment) (No. 3) Regulations 2020

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 21st September 2020 General Committees

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. As my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting says, we support the extension of the regulations. It is absolutely vital in a period of a public health pandemic that we put lives and people’s safety first. The rates are very high in Blackburn with Darwen, and I want to be clear about what support the Government are providing to the local authority to communicate with its residents.

The Minister talked about putting information on gov.uk. Although I can reassure him that I find that a useful resource, it is not useful for everybody. It assumes a level of digital connectivity, which is not the case for lots of people, whose access, even if they have a mobile phone, is data limited. For many people, there will be language issues with access. There is a cost to a local authority in providing information in the right languages; sometimes that is orally, not on paper, because of the literacy levels of residents. What extra funding and support is being provided to the council to ensure that this can be funded, and that it is not having to make a choice about what other services it cuts to do that?

There is also a cost to enforcing the regulations and, crucially, pre-empting them. I completely concur with my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting that we need to ensure that councils are seen as partners in the process, because they have tentacles that run deep into the community: into faith groups, community groups, tenant groups and those individuals—we all know them in our constituencies—who are like gold dust. They are the people who can talk to a neighbour and persuade them to do the right thing—perhaps those people are scared or unable to communicate as clearly about it. The key issue is that a lot of people will be having to make the right choice but will be suffering in hardship.

It is a welcome step that the Government have finally announced that they will increase benefits to £500 for the isolation period. It would be helpful to know whether that is 10 days or a fortnight, and whether the Government are considering any support for people who are giving up jobs and will not get paid. It is easy to say that people will get £500, but they have to get through the benefit claims. In the meantime, they can end up with quite significant bills. For people on low incomes, £100, £200 or £300 is an insurmountable object. For many months or even years to come, that becomes a huge issue.

Only a few weeks ago, the Business and Planning Act 2020 was passed. It encouraged off-sales from licensed premises for the same hours as the licences on those premises, yet we now see in Blackburn with Darwen, and elsewhere in the country, a curfew—a closure of such premises from 10 pm to 5 am.

I would be grateful if the Minister outlined the rationale. What happens after 10 o’clock that makes the virus more likely to spread? There are many other environments where people are able to meet and will be doing so. What is the particular rationale for that? If they are to open at all, why not later? If they are not safe, why are they opening at all? Maybe I am being too black and white about it, but it would be helpful to hear what the Minister has to say.

Overall, I am confused, as are many residents and constituents, about the messaging that we are getting from the Government. Six hundred people can meet and mix in a school. It is quite right that our children should be back at school, which is something I fully support. Sixty people can be in a pub, but there is the rule of six. Of course, there are different rules altogether in Blackburn with Darwen. I do not think it is down to the Minister, but how will the Government, for whom he speaks—his boss, the Prime Minister, at No. 10—finally start getting some clarity out on this issue? The rule of six sounded so simple, but it has raised as many questions as it was supposed to resolve. I did not criticise it in the first few days because I felt that at least it sounded clear, but the more you delve into it, the less clear it becomes. It is important that local authorities are funded to be proactive and ahead of the curve. It is Blackburn with Darwen today, with other areas that have been locked down in the north-east and Merseyside and so on. However, as the Mayor of London is highlighting and as those of us in London know, it is likely to hit London soon and other areas of the country are there. Local authorities and local public health teams are able and willing to be proactive: not sitting at their desks waiting for a trace call, but able to be proactive, out there in the community to try and pre-empt things and be ahead of that curve. Are the Government putting any thought into how we can use that huge, useful and talented local resource to make sure that, together, we work—if I dare say “to beat this virus” I echo No. 10, so let me say—to manage the difficult health situation we are all suffering at the moment?

[Edward Argar]

Multiple questions were asked. I will endeavour to answer as many as I can, but where a specific figure was asked for by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Tooting, or the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch, if I do not have it to hand, I will endeavour to write to them with any further information.

I am grateful, as always in these meetings, for the tone adopted by the shadow Minister: while challenging, it was reasonable and pragmatic. She is quite right to highlight the importance and the focus of all Members on keeping people safe. I particularly highlight the fact that she, in her other work, goes a little bit above and beyond most Members in doing that. I thank her for that. She raised a number of points and I will try to capture them all.

The hon. Lady’s first point was around social isolation: the mental health cost and the cost on people’s lives of the national lockdown restrictions—people have seen the light at the end of the tunnel, but then local restrictions have been imposed. It will not surprise her to know that, while some of my constituents were only caught up in the local lockdown in Leicester and Leicestershire for a few weeks, I still had casework and people writing to me raising exactly that issue.

Support bubbles, while not a solution to everything, have been a big step in helping to combat loneliness for those who are single and very isolated. It is not a panacea for all of those problems, but it was an important step forward. I know the investment the Minister for Patient Safety, Mental Health and Suicide Prevention, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries) is making in this space, and I know that she and the hon. Lady have spoken about that, certainly across the Dispatch Box and I suspect probably in the corridors of this place. My hon. Friend shares the determination of the shadow Minister to make sure that we are able to do everything we can to tackle the mental health cost of the pandemic, and she is right to highlight the impact that that can have on particular groups.

The hon. Member for Hartlepool always makes thoughtful and compassionate contributions in this House and in Committees such as this one. He is right to highlight the impact on people of a lack of visits, often for very good reasons. Before I was a Minister, I was co-chair, with the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), of the all-party parliamentary group on dementia. People with dementia are another group where you can see the rapid decline that a lack of human contact can bring about. That is something, in terms of mental health, that the Government are fully seized upon, and my hon. Friend the Minister for Patient Safety, Mental Health and Suicide Prevention takes that incredibly seriously.

The shadow Minister was also right to talk, as I did in my opening remarks, about the sacrifices that people have made throughout, and it is right that we remember all of those and are grateful to everyone for what they have done to protect their fellow citizens. I do not believe that the Department has the statistics that she asked for in respect of those giving birth alone within that particular area, but I will ask that question on her behalf. I know it is something that, again, my hon. Friend the Minister for Patient Safety, Mental Health and Suicide Prevention, my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) and others across the House have been raising—quite rightly. The guidance has been updated and clarified. It is important that trusts adhere to that guidance and follow the guidance set out by the Government.

The shadow Minister talked about partnership working, as did the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch. They know that I had a background in local government in London before becoming a Member of this House. As such, I am very clear that when we work in partnership with local authorities and local councils, we achieve a far better outcome, because we combine the scale and—for want of a better way of putting it—the clout of national Government with knowledge of individual communities and what works within them. In that way, we get a much better outcome than if we try to pursue one at the exclusion of the other.

The hon. Lady and the shadow Minister asked what the engagement meant in practice with regard to local authorities being consulted and engaged in the making of these regulations and the changes. Although I do not attend meetings of the Joint Biosecurity Centre or the gold meetings that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State chairs, the views of local council leaders and local public health leads all feed into his work and form a clear part of his decision making and the consultations that he undertakes. This does not mean he is bound to follow exactly what those people say, but they are consulted, and he takes it very seriously. I know this because I saw it from the other side of the fence, as it were, as a constituency MP in Leicestershire. I think that that is the only sensible way to approach this, and of course, local Members of Parliament also get to feed their views into the regular review periods and review sessions that the Secretary of State undertakes.

I will clarify the figures and write to hon. Members to make sure I have the right ones, but my recollection—it is only a recollection—is that across the four tranches of support for Blackburn and Darwen, for example, about £11 million of Government support has gone to the council. However, I commit to checking that that figure is accurate and writing to hon. Members to confirm it. There is financial support to help councils cope, just as we put in in Leicester, and that support is not only to help them cope with the additional work they have to do and the local public health work, exactly as the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch said. Forgive me for coming back to my own city, but in Leicester, multiple languages are spoken, and one of the key things was to provide the councils there with funding to put out communications in a variety of languages and forms, to try to address the point that has been raised by all those who have spoken: it is not just about doing this work, but communicating it so that people know what is happening in a way that is accessible and clear to them. In my experience, people want to do the right thing, but it is up to us to make that as clear to them as possible. This is inevitably complex, because the regulations change, the circumstances change, and the scientific advice we receive and act on changes. However, it is incumbent on us to try to make all of those things as clear and intelligible to everyone as possible.

The shadow Minister raised the issue of test and trace. We have made it clear, as has the Prime Minister, that the UK has achieved a significant amount in terms of its testing system over the past six months. Per 1,000 people, we are testing at a higher rate than any large European country, including France, Spain, Italy and Germany. We are testing on average 2.3 people per 1,000; each of those countries is testing about 1.15 or 1 person per 1,000, so we have massively increased our testing capacity. However, it is absolutely right—the Prime Minister was very clear about this—that we are open with the British people about the fact that a lot more needs to be done, and at pace. Although we have scaled up capacity, we need to do more.

The shadow Minister asked what reassurance I could offer to suggest that we are making progress in that area. She will be aware of what the biggest bottleneck is: although demand has significantly increased, this is not about blaming people who are understandably anxious, worried or concerned, and go and get a test. Yes, it is the people who have symptoms who should get tests, but this is not about blaming people who are anxious and worried: it is just a reflection of the fact that demand has gone up significantly. The real bottleneck—the real challenge—is to make sure capacity keeps up with that demand. The lab capacity is the bottleneck that we have seen. A new lighthouse lab came on stream recently in Loughborough, near my own patch, and more are coming on stream on an almost weekly basis to meet significantly increased lab demand, with greater use of automation and machine analysis of the tests in those labs. I suspect that the shadow Minister has a greater sense of what that means in practice than I do as a non-scientist, but we are rapidly expanding lab capacity to meet that need.

[Meg Hillier]

The Government have committed to increase tests to 500,000 a day by the end of October. Are the Government still on target to deliver that?

[Edward Argar]

The hon. Lady, who is a very experienced parliamentarian, is encouraging me to nail my colours to the mast, and I will.  Yes, I believe we are. The Prime Minister has been very clear that there will be 500,000 tests across the pillars by the end of October. That is a very clear target, and it is one that he intends to meet, just as we met the 100,000-tests target. It was very difficult to do that, but we did it, and I am confident that we will meet this target. In this place, it is sometimes easier to set very low targets, because we know we will hit them. That is not the way of the Prime Minister or my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who wants to set ambitious targets because he knows that if we meet them, we will be delivering what we need.

--- Later in debate ---

[Edward Argar]

Yes.

The final thing that I was going to touch on before concluding was something raised by the shadow Minister. Again, I do not have the stats on a localised level to hand, but if I can get them I will write to her. She raised the fixed-penalty notices and offences within that area. I do not have up-to-date, detailed stats for that exact area, but if I can obtain them, I am of course happy to write to her. I reiterate my gratitude to all Committee members, local councillors, local authorities and the people in the affected areas for their forbearance with the challenging restrictions to protect people.

[Meg Hillier]

Noting the questions that I asked, does the Minister have any comment to make about the curfew—the 10 o’clock finish for licenced premises? It would be helpful to hear the Government’s view.

[Edward Argar]

Oh, yes. I mentioned this previously. The challenge is not pubs and hospitality venues, which are all doing a phenomenal job to keep their customers safe and try to ensure that they function as a business. They have had a very tough time, and I pay tribute to them for what they are doing, the measures they have put in place and how diligently they are working. Pubs in my constituency outside the lockdown area, when bits of it were in, went so far as to check, when they signed everyone in, whether the postcode came from within the lockdown area, and if it was they would very politely say, “You shouldn’t be here.” I pay tribute to landlords, restauranteurs and others.

We are anecdotally hearing that if people have been in a pub or out for dinner for two or three hours—how can I put this gently?—their adherence to or recollection of the regulations can lapse after a few drinks. The regulations try to strike a balance that addresses that and reduces the risk of those contacts through groups mingling while allowing those sectors to continue to operate in as a safe way as possible. We are cognisant of the health impact and the economic impact on them if restrictions were to be much tougher, so we are seeking to strike a scientifically advised balance in addressing those issues.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Blackburn with Darwen and Bradford) Regulations 2020 (S.I. 2020, No.822).

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Blackburn with Darwen and Bradford) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 (S.I. 2020, No.898)

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Blackburn with Darwen and Bradford) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 (S.I. 2020, No.898).—(Edward Argar.)

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Blackburn with Darwen and Bradford) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2020 (S.I. 2020, No.930)

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Blackburn with Darwen and Bradford) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2020 (S.I. 2020, No.930).—(Edward Argar.)

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Blackburn with Darwen and Bradford) (Amendment) (No. 3) Regulations 2020 (S.I. 2020, No.935)

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Blackburn with Darwen and Bradford) (Amendment) (No. 3) Regulations 2020 (S.I. 2020, No.935).—(Edward Argar.)