Covid-19 Update

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 14th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I can tell my right hon. Friend that when the Government or any Government make decisions that have such an impact on people’s liberties, even if those decisions are made for all the right reasons—in this case, of course, to deal with this pandemic—they should be working with the House and working with colleagues. On any measures that are significant, of course the Government will come to the House and seek a vote of the House.

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

The Secretary of State talked about international work, and unless we tackle this issue across the world we are going to be in a pandemic forever. When he was at the G20, he shared with other countries what we are doing to help tackle it internationally, so could he please share with the House what is being done to tackle vaccination rates across the globe?

[Sajid Javid]

I can tell the hon. Lady that there was significant discussion about that with my G20 colleagues, but not all of them have, let us say, behaved in the same way as the UK in offering donations to poorer countries of vaccines. The hon. Lady will know that we are committed to offering 100 million doses to international friends, and that we have already provided or donated 9.2 million doses, most of those for the COVAX programme. We remain committed to that programme, and one of the things we are trying to do internationally, including through the Foreign Secretary, is encourage more countries to honour their commitments to COVAX and encourage those who have not joined the COVAX commitment to come forward and help in that way.

Covid-19 Update

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s important and thoughtful question, and for his words of encouragement as well.

Let us look at what the vaccines have achieved. We have achieved a situation in which we have weakened—severely weakened—the link between cases going up rapidly, serious infection, hospitalisation and death. We are in a very different place today. This new equilibrium is where we want to be able to head to in steady state. The challenge that will come over the next few weeks and months is that there will be upward pressure on that equilibrium. We may break it in the wrong way because schools are reopening, there will be a higher number of infections, and those infections could seep through to the older age groups who are much more vulnerable. The booster campaign would help to push it the right way, with the infection rates being forced up but not leaking into the most vulnerable. That is why the JCVI stressed that we should boost the most vulnerable first.

I hope that this next challenge will enable us to demonstrate to the world that we are one of the first major economies in the world to bring about the transition of this virus from pandemic to endemic and then live with it over the years to come, through an annual vaccination or inoculation programme.

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

It is interesting to note that the Minister has a short-term job in some respects, as the vaccines Minister. He should perhaps recognise that some of us are in favour of covid passports because they should also be a short-term measure, and it will probably be a sign of his success if they are.

My main point, however, is that the Minister dangled in front of us—although I know that this is not in the written statement that was circulated—the extra money going into the NHS. I have mentioned the short-term nature of the Minister’s job in some respects, but it is long-term funding that is needed. We know that money injected at short notice in large amounts is not always spent very well, even by our beloved health service, and I have direct experience of recruitment processes whereby posts have become pretty much redundant by the time people have been recruited to them. What is the Minister’s Department doing—and what is he doing personally if he has some responsibility in this regard—to ensure that the money will be spent well, and that there is a long-term financial plan for recovery?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I have grateful for the hon. Lady’s words, including those about the issue of vaccine certification, on which I agree with her. No one in this Government, and certainly not this Prime Minister—as I said at the weekend, it goes against his DNA—wants to curtail people’s freedoms, so we will not do this lightly at the end of September. As for her question about the funding, let me try and give her some more details.

The £5.4 billion cash injection over the next six months in response to covid-19 includes £1 billion to help tackle the backlog, delivering routine surgery and treatments for patients. As I said in my statement, the total Government support for the health service is £34 billion in this year alone. The funding will go towards helping the NHS to manage the immediate pressure of the pandemic. As I have said, it includes an extra £1 billion to help tackle the backlog, along with £2.8 billion to cover related costs such as those of the enhanced infection control measures that are so important to keep staff and patients safe from the virus, and £478 million to continue the hospital discharge programme, freeing up beds.

NHS Update

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

I join my hon. Friend in thanking NHS staff in the Meon Valley and also, as she says, the many volunteers in her area and across the country who have been so invaluable in their support during the vaccination roll-out. She asked about her new hospital in Hampshire. She will know that the Government are going full steam ahead with bringing forward new hospitals, and I will take up her specific question with my hon. Friend the Minister with responsibility for hospitals.

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

First, let me associate myself with the Minister’s comments about Lord Stevens and Dame Cheryl Gillan. Both contributed massively to the Public Accounts Committee, albeit from different sides of the witness table.

This statement is disappointing. It is great to hear about the autism strategy, but that was already a written statement today. Why have we not heard about the backlog, social care or NHS pay? The Minister has talked about recruiting more people. I could go to town on how many failed targets there have been, and we are still not sure whether the Government will meet this one. The key issue in NHS staffing is retention of staff. If she cannot tell us about NHS pay now, when, Minister?

[Helen Whately]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right that retention is vital to us for maintaining the staff that we have in the NHS. For instance, to achieve our 50,000 more nurses for the NHS, there will be a combination of new domestic recruitment, staff training to become nurses, international recruitment, but also retaining the nurses that we have, which is a really important part of it. That is why we worked so hard during the pandemic to support NHS staff to stay with the NHS. What we have seen—I am truly grateful to many staff for this—is people sticking with the NHS during this time. Some staff have even delayed their retirement in order to help the NHS through the pandemic. Looking ahead, we must be ready to continue supporting staff, including, for instance, staff who are nearing the end of their careers, making sure that, if they want to work a bit differently—more flexibly for instance—that should be available. That is one thing among a whole host of things that we are doing in order to support the retention of staff.

Covid-19: Government’s Publication of Contracts

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 9th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the point he makes on behalf of his constituents. The overwhelming priority was to ensure that we got the PPE in the quantities we needed to our frontline, and we procured that in an incredibly challenging environment. I pay tribute to all the officials who worked flat out to do that. The Court judgment found that there was no policy of deprioritisation of meeting transparency requirements, but it also found as a matter of fact, which is clear in the judgment, that that bar was not met. That is something we have worked very hard on subsequently and continue to do so, to ensure that transparency requirements are met.

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

It feels a bit like groundhog day. Once again, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who has overall responsibility for procurement, is missing in action, and the Health Minister has come to the House to talk about how breathlessly urgent it all was at the beginning of the pandemic—I do not disagree with that, but it is not an excuse for not publishing these contracts in time. With contracts worth more than £10 billion awarded without tendering action between the beginning of the pandemic and July, seeing that paperwork urgently is more important, not less. If the paperwork is still not being published in time—and this goes back to the problems we discussed two weeks ago—can the Minister not just apologise and give a firm commitment that from now on, every contract will be published in time? It is either insouciance or incompetence that they were not published in the first place.

[Edward Argar]

I have known the hon. Lady since I came to this House, so I will not take it personally if she suggests that, as I am not the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the import of my answers is in some way diminished. I will endeavour to answer her specific questions. As I made clear, we have published 100% of the CANs that give the information on the contracts awarded—in the context of this case, the contracts awarded by the Department of Health and Social Care.

However, the hon. Lady asked a very fair question at the end about the future, and I can give her the reassurance that this Department is doing everything possible to ensure that it meets those transparency requirements. Officials are aware of them and officials are reminded of them. I recognise the vital importance of transparency, not least for building trust, which she mentioned last time in her question, but in allowing her, the NAO and other Members of this House to do their job, quite rightly, in scrutinising and challenging those contracts and Government decisions, where appropriate.

Covid Contracts: Judicial Review

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. We did take every step we could to ensure that trusts had the PPE they needed. The NAO report said:

“The NHS provider organisations we spoke to told us that, while they were concerned about the low stocks of PPE, they were always able to get what they needed in time.”

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

I will touch on that point first. Paragraph 18 of the summary says exactly what the Minister said, but it then goes on to say, however, that frontline workers reported shortages of PPE. It does not behove him well to come to this House clearly having had Back Benchers briefed about a partial element of the National Audit Office’s report that is inaccurate when taken in the round. He needs to deal with that point.

My bigger point is on the transparency of the contracts. The Minister has talked breathlessly about the urgency at the early stage of the pandemic. Let us be clear: by the end of the summer and the autumn, many of the contracts had still not been published. The civil service is usually good at record-keeping and transparency, but on this occasion there was a failure. He should have the guts to come to the House, apologise, and promise it will not happen again. More transparency, not less, is vital when billions of pounds are being spent, in haste in a pandemic.

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, who knows this issue exceptionally well and has investigated it over a number of months. Of course, as always, I listen to what she says carefully and with considerable respect. On her first point, she is right to say that the NAO reported that some frontline workers had told it that they had experienced shortages. We are reflecting what we were told by our trusts and by those running the delivery of PPE in those trusts, and what the NAO was told by them. She alluded to the key point—as I believe I said in response to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas)—that we did not run out of PPE nationally, but there were challenges, which I acknowledged and do acknowledge, at some individual trusts and in some localities. That is why we worked at pace to make sure that they got what they needed and did not run out of PPE. That is exactly why officials in the Department were working so hard and pulling out all the stops to make sure we ordered more PPE and got more of it delivered.

The hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch made a broader point about transparency, and of course it is a vital point. I believe it was the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) who highlighted trust. Trust is always the currency of politics; it is always the one thing that everyone requires, in government and in this House. It is important that that is fostered by as much transparency as possible. The judgment found that in a number of cases the Government did not meet the 30-day deadline. The hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch asks for an assurance now, and I can give her the assurance that the Government are doing everything they can to ensure that regulation 50 is complied with, and complied with fully.

Public Health

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 30th December 2020 Commons Chamber

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

I also pay tribute to those working on the frontline, particularly at the moment at the Homerton hospital in the heart of my constituency, which is experiencing a very high pressure of new covid cases coming in, and the Royal London, where I lived for nine weeks with one of my children when they were very sick, which is also experiencing huge pressure and serves my constituency well as well. I also want to pay tribute to Hackney council staff, in particular those who empty our bins and keep our streets clean and our parks nice. Our public realm has risen to the occasion, which is an odd thing to say in covid, but we always had clean streets and good parks. They have done a sterling job and kept us going through the dark days of lockdown.

Hackney and the City—we were linked with the City for health purposes—were already in tier 4 and have been since before Christmas. Our cases are now more than 850 per 100,000, which is an exponential increase when we look back to 25 November when we were at 124 per 100,000. Just before we went into tier 4 we were at just over 500 cases per 100,000. It is a very serious matter and had this been a month ago, when we were at 124, I would perhaps have been arguing a slightly different case. So on public health grounds I back tier 4 and I suspect—I hope that the Minister will be honest—that there will be a tier 5 or some further lockdown if this new strain keeps replicating at the rate it is doing, and of course if any other new strains arrive. We all pray that no strain becomes apparent that will affect our children worse than they are already affected.

I do have concerns—very big concerns—about how the Government have handled this. We have had mixed messages. The schools announcements today and just before the recess were all over the place. Half-announcements are made, but no detailed information is available. If we press a question, we get nothing back. It is great when the House is sitting, so theoretically we can hold Ministers to account, but too often we get no answers. At times we have online briefings, but—I say this with respect for the Minister, who is a good Minister and tries hard—they are short; they are not enough. We cannot get hundreds of colleagues on and get their questions answered. As MPs in our area, we need information to be able to answer the questions that are already flying in from headteachers not knowing what is going on with schools next week, with our rates so high but our schools still open. Of course I and local headteachers want our schools open, but why are they open when schools in neighbouring boroughs with similar rates are closed? It is very confusing.

We also need clarity about where the transmission is coming from. What I understand from public health briefings—I am sure the Minister will elaborate—is that it is largely community-driven. The community driver goes into schools, from where it then spreads. We need to be really clear about that, because, judging by a number of emails I have had in the past couple of days, teachers and headteachers are frightened about what next week will bring. They need clarity and certainty. They are vital frontline key workers, doing their best to educate our children in difficult circumstances.

I completely agree with the hon. Member for East Devon (Simon Jupp) about the business issues. My local hospitality industry has been decimated. The 10 pm curfew seems to have been plucked from the air, because it became 11 pm only about six weeks later. Again, we need clarity. If it is not clear, or the decision is a subjective one, fine, but level with the British public and the industries affected—the events industry, the creative industries. Tell them, engage them, get them into Government earlier. When I talk to permanent secretaries, as I often do on the Public Accounts Committee, and ask them who they are engaging with, I get vague answers, but actually sometimes they do not have the right people in the room. However brilliant and clever our civil servants are, they need to be talking to people on the frontline, because in the end who is delivering the tests in schools? It is the headteachers and staff. Who is at the frontline in hospitals? It is not civil servants; it is our health workers, and we need to listen to them.

I am concerned about the frontline impact in the NHS. Earlier, I raised with the Secretary of State the number of nurses who are potentially able to work and want to—about 71,000 of them, yet only 1,000 got through the system. Frontline nurses from various parts of the country, not just Hackney, have told me that they are struggling to get to the right place to contribute.

In short, we need proper economic support for the businesses that are closed. We need proper testing in place, and that must be worked on with the organisations that will have to deliver testing. We need clarity on testing and in the messaging. Above all, we need honesty—honesty about the route out. We need to treat the British public with the respect they deserve by providing information and explanation when it is not clear. That is enough. People understand that difficult decisions have to be made, sometimes at the last minute, but people need to know if something is coming down the line. People in government always think they need to have a definite decision or a definite point of view to put out there, but actually, in this situation, people can sense what is coming and the Government need to be much more honest about that. I hope the Minister will respond when she winds up the debate.

Covid-19 Update

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 30th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Well, yes—in principle. The point is to protect the NHS and to stop people dying from the disease. While at the moment cases are a very clear proxy for future hospitalisations and future deaths, as the vaccine is rolled out, we would hope that for every number of cases we would have fewer hospitalisations and fewer deaths. It is that protection from hospitalisations and deaths that the vaccine gives us, which is why it is the route out of the crisis.

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

I pay tribute to Homerton University Hospital in the heart of my constituency, where the staff are working flat out now with the rising number of cases, and to the Royal London Hospital in a neighbouring constituency, which of course had a queue of ambulances with covid patients waiting to be treated. Given the pressure on the NHS, which I know the Secretary of State also feels very strongly about, what is he doing to ensure that the nurses and other staff we need are available? Recent press reports suggest that of the 71,000 available nurses, only just over 1,000 had been deployed. Is he working with the Nursing and Midwifery Council to track down those with the right registration and skills and to get them into the right places?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, it is incredibly important that we support the NHS with the workforce that it needs—both the permanent workforce, where we have increased the number of nurses by over 13,000 in the past 12 months, and a temporary workforce for the difficult few weeks that we have ahead of us in the NHS. I am working with the NHS and others on exactly the question that hon. Lady rightly raises, and I join her in praising the team at the Homerton, who are doing a great job.

Covid-19 Vaccine Roll-out

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

My hon. Friend’s constituents will be able to access the vaccine in Colchester from now, and some will be being called forward. Like many others, he rightly asks for the vaccination roll-out to reach Ipswich itself, and it will reach Ipswich itself just as soon as we can get that sorted. I have a lot of sympathy with what he said about two days feeling like a year!

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

It is a great day for medicine, science and the population, but in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith), the Secretary of State was somewhat dismissive of an important National Audit Office report that raised serious concerns about the letting of contracts in Government—contracts being published late; missing paperwork; the establishment of a high-priority lane, with one in 10 of those applying via that route awarded contracts; and an overall lack of transparency. As the NAO says, the lack of documentation of key decisions, including

“why particular suppliers were chosen”,

is important. It is taxpayers’ money that is being spent. In relation to the vaccine roll-out, are private companies involved, and will the Secretary of State commit to being open and transparent and publishing the contracts and all the paperwork that goes with them?

[Matt Hancock]

Of course I will defend to the end the work that we did to get the PPE roll-out to which the hon. Lady refers. Of course we had priority contracts, because we wanted, when somebody had a good lead, to be able to see if we could make an arrangement as fast as possible, but that was all done through the proper processes, as the NAO report sets out. She asks—I have a lot of respect for the hon. Lady, but really—whether private companies will be involved in the vaccine roll-out. Try Pfizer or BioNTech, the people who came up with and are manufacturing this vaccine. Without them, we would not have a vaccine at all, and a bit of a thank you would do well from the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee.

Covid-19 Update

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, of course. I have seen some heart-rending stories and I have met people who are affected by their inability to see their relatives in care homes. The lateral flow tests that we are sending to directors of public health can be used for cases that they think are important locally, so they can use them for this purpose if they so choose. But we are also looking at a broader solution to this problem, which is a conundrum we have discussed many times in this House: we need to keep people in care homes safe but at the same time, of course, we want to allow as much visiting as can be safe, which directly impacts on the health of many residents.

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

It would be very helpful to know how long the roll-out of the vaccinations will take once the Secretary of State gets the go-ahead. He has outlined a major Government project that does not stop with the first vaccinations, and with the mutations rife in Denmark and elsewhere, it could affect children in future, so as part of his major project planning, how is he going to make sure that we can logistically get this out through the entire population if that does, sadly, become necessary?

[Matt Hancock]

That is a very good question from the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee—I would expect nothing less. The critical answer to how long this takes is that it depends on the speed of manufacture in the first instance. My goal, and the goal I have set the NHS, is to be able to roll this out as quickly as it can be manufactured. That manufacturing schedule is uncertain because this is really hard stuff to make. We have got the Major Projects Authority in the Government involved in many of the projects that we have built up in the Department over the past nine months, because I respect its views and its ability to kick the tyres. The roll-out of the vaccine is a huge endeavour, but it builds on the annual roll-out of the flu vaccine—it is just bigger and needs to be done faster.

Covid-19 Restrictions: South Yorkshire

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

My hon. Friend highlights an important point, and we have been clear that people in tier 3 areas should not undertake travel in and out of that area. They should abide by the rules of the area in which they live, rather than travelling to another area and applying the rules in that area. The rules apply on the basis of the area in which someone lives.

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

One big concern about the local lockdowns in South Yorkshire and elsewhere is that if there is not enough money to support businesses to survive, there will be a longer-term impact on the economy and individual livelihoods if that is not put right. That will have a big impact on public health, and one of the biggest concerns is the loneliness of people living in single households, and the impact on their mental health. How is the Minister looking ahead—I hope that he will answer this point directly—to ensure that there is no long-term oncost to the health service from this misery for people who are left alone and are now unable to mix with households in South Yorkshire and other areas with hard lockdowns?

[Edward Argar]

The hon. Lady makes an important point about loneliness and its impact on mental health. She will know that support bubbles still exist, but she alludes to a broader point about long-term mental health support. As I said in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford), we have invested heavily in the NHS, which includes funding for mental health support services. The hon. Lady is right: this is not just about funding during this pandemic; this is about being aware of people’s long-term needs and the impact on them. I am happy to commit to considering that issue carefully in the months and years ahead.