Public Health: Coronavirus Regulations

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

Will the Secretary of State acknowledge—a simple yes or no—that we should not be in this position in the first place and that the best exit strategy is having an effective system of testing, tracing and isolating that is locally led? If that were working properly—even SAGE has admitted that it is not—we would not be here.

[Matt Hancock]

We have one of the biggest systems of tracking and tracing in the world. The idea that I sometimes get from people in this House is that, somehow, it is not one of the biggest systems in the world or one of the most effective in the world. I get that in this House, but I do not get it when I talk to my international colleagues. They ask me, “How did you manage to build this capacity so fast?” That is the truth of it.

Of course we need to continue to build it and to make sure it is continuously more integrated into the local communities, who can often go to reach the contacts that the national system finds it hard to reach. However, to argue that the enormous system that is working so effectively, with so many brilliant people working on it, is at the root of this challenge is, unfortunately, to miss the big picture, which is that, sadly, this virus passes on—until we have a vaccine or a massive testing capacity that nobody yet has, this virus passes on through social contact and that is, unfortunately, what we need to tackle in order to get this under control.

Let me make a point about the numbers. In the first peak, about 8% of people caught covid and 42,000 people died. If we do not have the virus under control, even with the better survival rates we now have, thanks to both drug discoveries by British science and improvements in clinical practice, those figures will multiply. In addition, harder economic measures would then inevitably be needed to get it under control and they would be needed for longer. If you, Madam Deputy Speaker, like me, want our economy back on full throttle, we need to keep this virus in check.

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[Munira Wilson]

Does the hon. Member agree with me that one of the other reasons why SAGE said that test, trace and isolate is having a marginal impact is because the “isolate” part is not working, and that rather than slapping £10,000 fines on people for not self-isolating, what we actually need to do is provide incentives and support so that people isolate?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. I agree entirely with her. I have been having these exchanges with the Secretary of State on almost a twice-weekly basis, and when I go over the remarks I have made at the Dispatch Box and remind myself of what he has said at the Dispatch Box in case I can catch him out, throw quotes back at him and all that kind of stuff, I have noticed that we were making this argument months and months ago. It is not good enough just to give one £500 payment; people need support to isolate. If they are poor and on a zero-hours contract, and they are forced to make a choice between not feeding their family or going to work, they will go to work. That has been one of the most significant failures in the test, trace and isolate regime, and the Government, I am afraid to say, still have not fixed it. We would argue again that they have to put testing and tracing in the hands of public health and local NHS partnerships, because unless we get testing sorted out, we will have a never-ending rollercoaster of restrictions, while deaths and damage continue.

When it comes to the overall set of restrictions announced yesterday, the fundamental question for us as an Opposition is not whether they go too far, but whether the overall package in fact goes far enough. A question was posed by the chief medical officer himself at the Downing Street press conference yesterday. He commented that the areas worst hit by covid will need extra measures on top of those announced on Monday if infection rates are to be significantly lowered. The question is: will the measures announced yesterday reverse the rising tide of hospital admissions and reverse the rising tide of critical care admissions? I obviously hope so; but I am sorry, I fear it will not. The rate of growth in the virus may at this stage be quicker in the northern regions, but the embers are burning brightly everywhere else as well, and I fear further action is going to be needed.

The Prime Minister says he follows the science. Yesterday the SAGE minutes that came out—after the press conference, frustratingly—warned of a very large epidemic with catastrophic consequences, and said that the burden of a large second wave would fall disproportionately on the frailest in society, and on those on lower incomes and from the black, Asian and minority ethnic community. That last point is exactly what is currently happening in our intensive care units across the country.

The same minutes reveal that the Government were advised to close all hospitality, move all university teaching online and put in place a national circuit break three weeks ago, with immediate action. The Government rejected that advice, presumably in favour of the measures that we are debating today. Of course, it is only advice to Government—Ministers are perfectly within their rights to choose what advice to take and not to take; to govern is indeed to choose—but the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State have come to the Dispatch Box week after week and told us that they are following the science. So at what precise moment did the Prime Minister stop following the science?

I am sorry to say that SAGE advised the Government to take action in March, but the Prime Minister was too slow. After the Prime Minister spoke yesterday, we saw that yet again he has been advised to take action and has so far refused. It is the same virus, the same delays, the same country and the same Government making the same mistakes again. Our constituents will ask, “Is history repeating itself?” If these tiers do not work, then what? Tier 4? Tier 5? What is the plan? Well, there isn’t one.

We had whack-a-mole—a fairground game—but there was never a strategy, just a soundbite from the circus ring showman. We have had exaggerated claims, complaints when challenged and a lack of transparency with the public, but further action and a clear plan are needed. Just at the time when hospital admissions are rising again, we have the Prime Minister hanging on to a rising balloon, and—to quote “Withnail and I”—not knowing whether to

“let go before it’s too late or hang on and keep getting higher”.

We have the highest deficit in Europe, the worst recession in Europe and are now not even pretending to follow the science. We will not divide the House against these restrictions, because we believe they are necessary as far as they go, but I fear that the Government now need to go further. The sooner that the Prime Minister is clear with the British public, the better.

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

I have heard one or two people say that the Government do not have a plan, but I do not agree with that. I think the Government have a good plan, which they set out in May. I read it at the time and thought it was very sound. My problem is that the Government often do not seem to remember that they have a plan and do not always follow through on some of the things in it, for example, the risks of a vaccine, which my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) reminded us about. The Prime Minister said in the foreword to the plan:

“It is clear that the only feasible long-term solution lies with a vaccine or drug-based treatment.”

But he was frank enough to say that

“while we hope for a breakthrough, hope is not a plan. A mass vaccine or treatment may be more than a year away.”

The best evidence, even now, is that that year, which would take us to next May or so, is about the best-case scenario for being able to vaccinate older members of the community if all goes well, so it is clear that we have to do other things.

The first phase of the Government’s plan was the lockdown, to drive down the virus to a very low level. The second phase was to introduce smarter controls, for example, covid-safe workplaces in hospitality venues, combined with an effective testing and tracing system. I said in my intervention on the Secretary of State, looking at the evidence at the moment, that the second most important piece of that, according to the Government’s plan, was the following:

“local authority public health services to bring a valuable local dimension to testing, contact tracing and support to people who need to self-isolate”.

I welcome the extra support given to the local public health teams in the high-risk areas that the Government have set out, but I would argue that it should go further and extend across the country. The importance of that is seen if we look at the data, which shows we are reaching only about 74% of those who test positive to get their contact information. We are reaching only 68.6% of those contacts in total, according to the latest data, which is the lowest percentage. That means that overall we are reaching only about half of the contacts of people who test positive.

[Munira Wilson]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the data also shows that the tracing rates for local authority or regional public health teams are somewhere between 90% and 100%, whereas the central contact tracing percentage is only somewhere in the 60s? That is more evidence that we should be running this locally.

[Mr Harper]

I do think there is some evidence to show that local teams are better. I work closely with my local director of public health in Gloucestershire—I am sure every Member of the House does with theirs—the fantastic Sarah Scott, who has recently been promoted to a wider brief, and her team. I would have real confidence that if she were given the resources, she and her team would do a fantastic job of tracing contacts quickly, getting to them, working with them to explain why isolating was important and perhaps being able to work with them to identify some of the barriers that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) mentioned, might stop them isolating. If we were to do that and be much more effective, that would enable us not only to live with this virus, but to live meaningful lives where people could have more social contact; they could have more ability to have those important contacts—the Secretary of State acknowledged they were important. That was in the Government’s original plan and they should lean into it. The Government have a strategy and they need to go back to that original strategy to look at the areas that are not being executed as well as they could be. I said in my intervention that I give credit to the Test and Trace team for massively expanding testing, but the testing is not an end; it is a means to an end: to identify the virus, isolate areas where we need to put in further measures and encourage people to isolate. If we do that, we will be successful and the country will thank us for it.

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[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat). As he pointed out, there is some significant uncertainty about when we might have a vaccine, so there are two critical levers to tackling this virus: one is public trust, which the Government can achieve by taking people with them on the measures that they seek to implement; the other is a functioning, locally led, test, trace and isolate system.

On public trust, the Government have made much of following the science. Yesterday, we found out that there were plenty of recommendations from SAGE that the Government chose not to follow. The legislation that we are considering is before us today. That may be so, but it is up to politicians to make policy decisions and advisers to advise. To build public trust, the Government need to explain their thinking. What are their trade-offs? They need to show their working. When they have considered these measures, what are the wider health impacts of not taking them? What are the economic impacts of taking these measures? People need to see for themselves, and there must be trust from the public in following the new measures. I strongly agree that clarity of message is important for public trust.

Many Members have mentioned following the science, and my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) made a passionate argument about the curfew, which we know is resulting in other behaviours that frankly put public health and those businesses at risk. A publican in my constituency said, “We will just have to make up for the lost income by encouraging people to drink earlier in the day,” with bottomless brunches and so on. That binge drinking will happen earlier, or in people’s homes after the pubs have shut.

The Minister will have heard my earlier interventions on test, trace and isolate, and I believe that the 90 pages of complex rules and regulations would not be necessary if we had a properly functioning system. We got the R rate below one in the national lockdown, and on 23 April the Secretary of State said:

“Test, track and trace will be vital to stop a second peak of the virus.”

I know he likes to talk about his very large testing system, but we have had all sorts of issues with data, and sadly he was making jokes about that in the Smoking Room last week, apparently.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Not true.

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[Munira Wilson]

Okay, but he has not denied it. [Hon. Members: “Yes, he has!] Fair enough. I withdraw that remark. This is not a party political point. I care for my country, and lives and jobs are at risk. Please can we sort out test, trace and isolate, because none of the measures will work if the system is not operating properly.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

It was a very decent thing to do to withdraw that remark.