Oral Answers to Questions Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Michael Gove
Main Page: Michael Gove (Conservative - Surrey Heath)Department Debates - View all Michael Gove's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
(3 years, 11 months ago)
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Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Michael Gove)
Every NHS and careworker must get the personal protective equipment they need. That is why we have appointed Lord Deighton to lead a national effort to boost PPE production and to support the scaling up of engineering efforts for small companies capable of contributing supplies.
Grahame Morris [V]
A large number of UK companies and consortia came forward with offers to manufacture and supply PPE, including the Protecting Heroes community interest company, which manufactures plastic visors and face masks. However, after the pandemic began, how many of those offers did not receive a reply for weeks at a critical time, resulting in some businesses selling vital PPE abroad? What were the reasons for the delay in processing and responding to such offers? Have the Government now established a more timely and efficient system for doing so?
Michael Gove
We have received 12,789 offers of help with the provision of PPE and 10,436 of those companies have now been contacted. I am sure that the House appreciates that many of those who make well-intentioned and generous offers of help are offering PPE that may not be appropriate in health and social care settings. We must ensure that we have appropriate PPE in appropriate settings.
Mark Eastwood [V]
I have been assisting manufacturers in Dewsbury, Mirfield, Kirkburn and Denby Dale to register as potential suppliers of PPE on the gov.uk portal. I am pleased that the Cabinet Office is now responding to those businesses. My right hon. Friend has just confirmed how many have registered on the site nationally. Will he confirm when those that have registered are likely to start receiving orders for PPE?
Michael Gove
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for the work that he, along with so many others, has done in order that generous offers of support can be processed efficiently. As I mentioned, we have 10,436 organisations with whom we have been in contact. But specifically with regard to UK manufacturing, there are 201 manufacturers with whom we are in touch at the moment, 180 of whom are qualified to provide PPE and 22 of whom are going through the technical product review necessary in order to ensure that their personal protective equipment is appropriate.
Gary Sambrook
While the number of offers of help from UK manufacturers to produce PPE is high, unfortunately many will simply not be able to meet the medical standards required. What help can the Government give to those companies who wish to play their part in this national effort?
Michael Gove
Again, I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the efforts that he and his constituents are making. It is the case that specifications of the type of personal protective equipment required in a health and social care setting have been shared by the NHS and by Public Health England, but it is also the case that companies are in a conversation with the Department of Health and Social Care about what more they might be able to do to augment those who are not necessarily operating in those settings.
Nigel Mills
I thank the businesses, and also John Flamsteed Community School in Amber Valley, who have been making PPE for healthcare providers. Does the Minister agree that we are going to need UK manufacturers to keep making this equipment for the long term, and will he therefore be able to relax procurement rules to allow these people to have some longer-term contracts so that they can get maximum efficiency in producing this equipment?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. We do need to show flexibility in the way in which procurement operates, particularly in order to ensure that we have domestic production in the future upon which we can rely. My right hon. Friend Lord Deighton is leading the work in this area.
Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)
Colleagues have made important points about shortages of PPE. Those who look after the sick and the vulnerable deserve our protection, and getting PPE to them is the priority of all of us. The Prime Minister said last week that as part of coming out of the lockdown, face coverings will be useful. As the Minister knows, in Germany and France it is now required or advised to wear face masks on public transport and elsewhere. So as the Government look to announce plans to ease some of our lockdown restrictions, how many face masks suitable for wearing by the public are currently available, and what work is being done with health experts to ensure that face coverings that people are using are of sufficient quality to stop the virus from spreading?
Michael Gove
I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for her questions. She is right that there are other European countries that are prescribing face coverings, particularly on public transport and in other settings where a number of people congregate. We follow the scientific advice. There is a clear distinction, as I know she knows, between the sophisticated type of face mask that will be appropriate in a surgical or social care setting and the sort of face covering that can be used by individuals in order to shield others. It is important to recognise that the wearing of these face coverings affords no protection to the individual, but, properly worn, they can be a contribution to making sure that others are protected from the aerosols—from the droplets—that all of us might be responsible for producing when we cough or sneeze. That is why Lord Deighton and my right hon. Friend Lord Agnew are working together in order to ensure that we can increase domestic production of just such face coverings.
Rachel Reeves
I thank the Minister for that, but it is of huge concern that he lacks clear answers to the questions that I put, especially given the ongoing fiasco of getting PPE to health and social care workers. So I ask again: how many of these face masks, for public use, are currently available? Other countries are ahead of us. France has increased production and procurement to about 8 million masks per week. The Japanese Government are sending masks to 50 million households. What are the Government doing to ensure that masks are distributed to all those who need them? Given that the Government were slow to engage with the UK textile manufacturing sector in the production of PPE for frontline workers, what are they doing to ensure that production of masks by British manufacturers is increased, looking forward to what might come next?
Michael Gove
The hon. Lady again makes a series of important points. In terms of the numbers of masks that have been distributed overall, from 25 February to 3 May we distributed 152 million masks, and just on 3 May we distributed 2.7 million masks. Of course, it is the case that for those masks that are appropriate in surgical settings we do need to have a particular material—melt-blown plastic—in order to provide the necessary protection for those wearing the masks. We have been in touch with the specific suppliers of that type of material here in the United Kingdom. It is also the case that suppliers of those materials tend to predominate in countries that have petrochemical industries, and we have been in touch with those, including in the Gulf in order to provide it. They are a very different sort of material from the type of face covering that would be appropriate on public transport or elsewhere, and that is a very different exercise, and the numbers that we can produce of those would be significantly greater because we do not have a reliance, as I have said, on that meltdown plastic, which can generally only be provided by other countries.
Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)
One of the key issues on this rather vexed subject is that of transparency. Would my right hon. Friend consider releasing the figures that he and other members of Government are made aware of each morning on the Cabinet Office dashboard to show stocks and quantities of PPE set against demand?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend makes an important point. It is the responsibility of all of us to do everything we can to ensure that we have visibility on the need for PPE. That is why NHS trusts and others report on their stocks and the additional requirements that they have. It is also why we have ensured that, across our resilience forums that are responsible for the distribution of PPE to more than 58,000 settings, we have seen something like 57 million pieces of PPE distributed, but, again, he makes an important point about improving the visibility that we all have, and I will talk to my right hon. Friend the Secretary State for Health and Social Care about just that.
Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Michael Gove)
My Department and the Department of Health and Social Care have been working with a variety of UK manufacturers in order to increase the supply of ventilators to the NHS. We have placed an order with one in particular, Penlon, for 15,000 additional ventilators. I am pleased to see so many UK manufacturers and medical supply companies working so well together to ensure that we can increase domestic supply.
Mrs Latham [V]
Will my right hon. Friend tell the House how many companies have risen to the challenge to make the extra ventilators needed—companies that do not normally make them such as Dyson or Rolls-Royce?
Michael Gove
Yes, of course. We have been working with 11 new potential, or existing potential, suppliers, but more than 5,000 businesses have been involved, offering to provide services, because, of course, when producing a complex machine such as a ventilator, we need to make sure that we source everything from the appropriate batteries, the appropriate valves and the appropriate other technology. As I say, 5,000 businesses, including Rolls-Royce, have been involved in the manufacture.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
Allan Dorans (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (SNP)
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Michael Gove)
From 20 to 24 April, a full and constructive negotiating round took place, with a full range of discussions across all workstreams. Our next scheduled round of talks with our EU friends will take place in the week beginning 11 May.
Wes Streeting
Everyone will understand that we have left the European Union and everyone will understand that the impact of covid-19 might have an impact on the timetable for negotiating our future relationship, so why will the Minister not give businesses the reassurance they need that if the Government need more time, they will take more time? Is it dogma; is it vanity; or is it paranoia?
Michael Gove
The hon. Gentleman provides a helpful list of conditions, but it is none of those. It is plain prudence. Were we to perpetuate our membership of the European Union-lite through the transition period, we would end up spending more taxpayers’ money, which could be spent on the NHS. We would have to accept new EU rules that might constrain our ability to fight covid-19 and to deal with other crises, and we would, of course, be unfortunately and unfairly trespassing on the EU’s need to concentrate on other vital priorities.
Nick Fletcher [V]
Can my right hon. Friend inform my constituents in Don Valley whether the covid-19 pandemic is likely to lead to an extension of the transition period?
Michael Gove
I can reassure my hon. Friend and the good people of Don Valley that the Government are not going to extend the transition period at the end of this year.
Allan Dorans [V]
Michel Barnier, the leader of the EU negotiating team, has expressed frustration that the UK’s negotiators seem happy to run down the clock on leaving the transition with no deal in place at the end of this year. We have already heard repeated warnings of the perils of a cliff-edge Brexit, which could be calamitous for the economy at a time when businesses are fragile and crave stability. Will the Chancellor of the Duchy do the right thing by ensuring that his party does not bring about this calamity?
Michael Gove
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising this issue. There have been cordial conversations and negotiations between our negotiator David Frost and Michel Barnier, and I would not want to prejudice those by making any criticism of Michel Barnier, other than to say that he will negotiate hard on behalf of the Commission, but we will negotiate hard on behalf of the whole United Kingdom.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP) [V]
Is it not the case that what businesses want more than anything else is certainty that this Government will not do anything to compound the economic difficulties caused by this pandemic? The Government could not of course do anything to stop covid coming to our shores, but it is in their hands to stop further economic misery from a disastrous Brexit. Does the Minister agree that the last thing businesses need is more economic turbulence and that the certainty they seek is one that says there will be no no-deal Brexit and there will be an extension to let them recover from this pandemic?
Michael Gove
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the point he makes. There will not be a no-deal Brexit; we have a deal, and that deal was legislated for in the House of Commons. I think he is right: it is important that we give business certainty, and I think one of the best ways of giving business certainty is recognising that we respect referendums. That is why this House has voted to respect the referendum that saw the British people take us out of the European Union, and I would urge him and others to respect the referendum that made it clear that the people of Scotland want to stay in the United Kingdom, instead of having the damaging uncertainty of an indyref2 hanging over future investment decisions.
Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Michael Gove)
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. Owing to an initial communication problem, the UK did not receive the invitation in time to join the four EU joint procurements, including on PPE. We will, however, participate in the EU joint procurement scheme on therapeutics that is soon to launch, and we will consider participating in future schemes, including any on PPE, on the basis of public health requirements.
Naz Shah [V]
The UK has left the EU, but the NHS Confederation and other top health officials have warned that failing to continue co-operation would be a disaster for public health. Does the failure of working together over PPE signal a new approach by the Government that puts ideology before the nation’s health?
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab) [V]
It was good to hear reports this morning that the Government are getting behind the EU-led international initiatives to find a coronavirus vaccine. Given this approach, can the Minister confirm reports that the Government are now seeking to retain participation in the EU’s early warning and response system for pandemics, as requested by the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS Providers, and will they look again at participation in the European Medicines Agency?
Michael Gove
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point. We will co-operate not just with our European neighbours, but with other countries in the fight against covid-19. He is right to say that the Prime Minister is joining the call today to ensure that we can support the effort to secure a vaccine. The effort to secure a vaccine is necessarily an international one. We will of course look pragmatically at how we can co-operate with our European friends and partners, but participation in the European Medicines Agency would involve, certainly at the moment, the acceptance of the European Court of Justice’s oversight, and that is not something the British people voted to do.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Michael Gove)
As I think Members will appreciate given previous exchanges, the Government will not be extending the transition period. Indeed, Parliament has legislated to prevent Ministers from agreeing to such an extension. The Government will therefore continue to negotiate a new fair trade deal with the EU, the process of which will conclude by the end of December.
Layla Moran [V]
A YouGov poll released this weekend showed that half the population now think that the transition period should be extended, versus 35% who think the Government should press ahead. The public know that kicking the economy when it is down, especially with a no-deal Brexit on top of a covid crash, is in no one’s best interests. The right hon. Gentleman said just now that there was a deal, but he knows full well that that is the withdrawal agreement and not the future deal that will determine the trade relationship. No deal is still on the table, so will the Government consider asking for even a short extension to avoid a no-deal Brexit, or are they intent on putting ideology before pragmatism?
Michael Gove
This Government always put pragmatism and the interests of the British people first. The hon. Lady mentioned a YouGov poll. There was another poll, on 12 December last year; it was called a general election, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) secured a majority in order to take this country out of the European Union on the basis of the deal that he negotiated. The Liberal Democrats took part in that poll. I cannot recall exactly how well they did, but it certainly the case that they were not entrusted by the British people with the discharge of policy on our relationship with the EU.
Virginia Crosbie (Ynys Môn) (Con)