Covid-19: Effect on People with Learning Disabilities

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (in the Chair)]

I remind the hon. Members that we have some changes due to covid and that we must observe social distancing rules. Before they exit, Members should wipe down any surfaces that they have spoken into or touched. I will call Members according to the list in front of me.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the effect of the covid-19 outbreak on people with learning disabilities.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ghani. I thank all colleagues and hon. Members for attending this debate.

Health inequality for people with learning disabilities has been evident for decades; even during non-covid times, there were three preventable deaths every day. In 2004, it was reported that 37% of deaths of people with learning disabilities were preventable, and, in 2017, the Equality and Human Rights Commission found that 42% of people with learning disabilities died prematurely.

Despite clear data showing those disproportionate health inequalities, very little has been achieved in tackling the issue in the intervening years. The pandemic has highlighted the issues that many people with learning disabilities face and the lack of understanding in our society of their needs. Things need to change, and quickly; these are deaths that can be prevented and lives that should be lived.

The pandemic has provided a wave of challenges for the NHS and care systems; we do recognise the workers there for their hard work and their sacrifices. However, underlying the struggles faced by the NHS this year are 10 years of austerity and cuts to our public services. It is the most vulnerable who suffer most from these cuts.

In addition to the historic health inequalities, the pandemic has only made things worse and had an even greater, disproportionate impact on people with learning disabilities. They face reduced access to vital care and support, as well as to valued activities and day centres. Increased isolation and loneliness, during the lockdowns, have also had a profound effect on their mental health and will leave lasting effects on their health and wellbeing.

This isolation and loneliness is exacerbated because people with learning disabilities are less likely to have access to technology, which so many people relied on to stay in touch during the pandemic. Professor Jane Seale from the Open University found that, before the pandemic, there was evidence to show that people with learning disabilities already experienced significant digital exclusion, and that this had a devastating impact on their mental health and wellbeing.

A number of my own constituents have been in touch to raise these issues and to tell me how important it is for people with learning disabilities to have some kind of normality—or, at least, access to specialist activities and day centres. One of my constituents was worried that they were not able to take their son to a disabled swimming club—which the son had been attending for years and finds extremely beneficial—because it was across the border, in Wales. Can the Minister clarify that exemptions for cross-border travel exist? Will she make the guidelines easily accessible to ensure that people with learning disabilities are able to access valued activities and care, during the pandemic, without any extra anxiety?

People with learning disabilities have always been more likely to die in hospital, but during the pandemic that percentage has been particularly high. Perhaps one of the main issues that has led to their disproportionate deaths is the lack of awareness and understanding about people with learning disabilities and their needs. The learning disabilities mortality review found that during covid, in 21% of cases that indicated a need for reasonable adjustments—such as the provision of specialist learning disabilities services in hospital, tailored care provisions, or ensuring that the person was supported in an unfamiliar setting by those who knew them—the adjustments were not made.

During the height of the pandemic, specialist learning disabilities support was one of the most requested reasonable adjustments. However, many healthcare staff have been redeployed—working in unfamiliar environments, stressed and exhausted—making it harder to provide the adjustments and specialist care needed for people with learning disabilities. One nurse commented that she was 

“redeployed for four weeks to another ward. During this period there was no specialist learning disability service provided across the Trust.”

Additionally, during the pandemic, a parent or carer simply not being able to accompany a patient with learning disabilities to the hospital can have profound results. Official guidelines stated that non-essential persons were unable to accompany covid-19 patients in ambulances or in hospital, but no definition of “essential” was provided; it was often left as a decision for the healthcare staff. Many people with learning disabilities struggle to communicate—especially in unfamiliar settings—and rely on their carers. Such a lack of communication placed patients at an even higher risk. Will the Minister work with the public health bodies across all the nations to review their guidance to ambulance and hospital services on that important issue? The lack of ability to communicate, and often the lack of specialist training, means that many non-verbal cues such as posture, gestures and general body language are often missed. That has become even more serious during the pandemic as the number of remote consultations and the reliance on the NHS 111 service has increased. NHS 111 is heavily reliant on algorithms, but the specialist care needed for people with learning disabilities cannot simply be picked up by an algorithm. We need an urgent review of the service and whether it is the right way to treat people with learning disabilities.

One of the biggest factors in preventable deaths is diagnostic overshadowing, which is when changes in behaviour are simply attributed to the individual’s learning disability and not investigated further as separate symptoms. My main inspiration for seeking the debate was my constituent Angela, who has led a vocal and active campaign to improve healthcare for people with learning disabilities following her experiences with her son. Parents and carers are crucial to helping to determine if something is wrong with their child. People with learning disabilities do not always demonstrate pain in the same way as other patients, so they cannot always express that something is wrong. Angela’s son was in pain and she knew it, yet healthcare staff refused to listen to her and just attributed her son’s pain to his learning disabilities. It was later revealed that he had a severe case of appendicitis. Their story was later used as a storyline on “Casualty”.

Training specialised nurses for people with learning disabilities is a good step forward, but that must be supported by a widespread understanding of learning disabilities across healthcare staff. The ability of all healthcare staff to provide reasonable adjustments or to be aware of the need just to listen and take parents or carers seriously could be a matter of life and death. Will the Minister therefore commit to providing adequate support to improve the understanding of learning disabilities across all healthcare staff and ensure that all people with learning disabilities are prioritised for face-to-face consultation and care?

People with learning disabilities have faced other huge healthcare challenges. Throughout the pandemic, hundreds of people with learning disabilities have been wrongly—in some cases unlawfully—denied potential life-saving treatment. At the beginning of the first wave of the pandemic, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence published new guidance on the treatment of patients in critical care, grading them on a clinical frailty scale. The guidelines suggested that those who cannot do everyday tasks such as cooking, handling or making money or performing personal care independently would be considered frail and, as a result, not receive intensive care. All of those tasks are often difficult for people with learning disabilities, but that does not make them frail. I believe the policy was hastily reversed in April, but it has had ongoing damaging consequences, and many individuals with learning difficulties still have do not attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation orders and do not resuscitate notices on their records without their knowledge. I welcome the Secretary of State’s requesting that the Care Quality Commission looks into inappropriate use of DNACPRs, but will the Minister commit to ensuring that all people with such unjust DNR notices are identified and that those notices are removed from their records to ensure that they can receive intensive care treatment that may save their lives?

Furthermore, in March 2020, the policy of rapid discharge was introduced, leading to thousands of patients being discharged prematurely, discharged without support, discharged to care homes without being tested and discharged into unfamiliar settings with unfamiliar staff who were unable to meet their needs, all of which have a huge impact on people with learning disabilities and are wholly avoidable. I hope we are moving away from that.

Finally, I wish to draw attention to how the pandemic has affected young people with learning disabilities. Statistics show that when it comes to preventable deaths, young people with learning disabilities are worse affected than older people. However, healthcare was not the only factor that greatly affected young people with learning disabilities. Children with learning disabilities or special educational needs faced challenges in education even before the pandemic. Lockdown, the closure of schools and cutbacks to additional support services during lockdown therefore raised new challenges and had specific implications for children with special educational needs, in terms of their learning support, structure, routine and behaviour. Although organisations such as Scope and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children have produced resources for parents, achieving a constructive learning environment is likely to have proved extremely challenging in many cases.

Matters were made even more challenging as the supplementary support and activities provided outside school, which promote children’s wellbeing, provide social engagement and routine, and act as an additional resource for parents, were also affected by lockdown. The Petitions Committee highlighted an e-petition that asks for an urgent extension of the statutory age limit for special educational needs provision due to the effects of covid-19. I thank everybody who signed it, and I hope this debate covers their concerns. Young people with learning disabilities often rely on going out in order to learn life skills. They must not be left behind as a result of this pandemic.

Professor Sam Parsons of University College London and Lucinda Platt of the London School of Economics found that the disruption to routine caused by lockdown can be particularly negative for children with special educational needs and can exacerbate behavioural problems. A lack of structure has negative impacts on the social and emotional development of children with learning disabilities and exacerbates mental health problems. Their research also suggests that, given the need for additional educational support, difficulties in catching up are likely to be exacerbated for children with learning difficulties, so ensuring that local authorities have adequate resources to provide services for those children will be even more important in the coming year, following the current disruption to their education and support. What steps will the Minister take to ensure that adequate funding is provided to support children with learning disabilities and special educational needs properly in their education following the school closures during lockdown?

Many of the figures and stories I have mentioned today are shocking, but sadly for many that is the reality and the norm. Some 37% of deaths of people with learning disabilities were preventable. That is simply not acceptable. We must work together to ensure that people with learning disabilities are not an afterthought when it comes to healthcare, education and day-to-day life. More needs to be done to understand their needs properly and give them the support they deserve. The pandemic has shown that the social care system is at breaking point. The Government must provide adequate funding for the care sector and learn from each death of a person with learning disabilities to ensure that those disproportionate and horrific inequalities do not continue.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (in the Chair)]

I ask the Back Benchers to keep their speeches to about five or six minutes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Mullan]

To continue, I will focus today on the risks that the economic consequences of covid pose to the job opportunities of people with learning disabilities. Locally in Crewe and Nantwich, there are a range of organisations that try to find job opportunities for people. Organisations such as Safe Opportunities and Seetec Pluss, employers such as AO.com and charities such as Community Recycle Cycles have all worked tremendously hard, and secured successful and ongoing employment for people with diagnoses associated with learning disabilities, such as Down’s syndrome and autism.

Those organisations are understandably concerned about the impact the covid-19 pandemic we will have on their ability to carry on delivering this work. We know that even before the pandemic there was a significant gap in the employment of those with learning disabilities. I have heard from residents who have struggled to find work because of their disabilities, and from their families. Recently, I took part in a meeting with Scope that explored this issue and heard from people with lived experience of it.

What might happen now? Employers might rightly be concerned about the health risks their employees could face, given what we discussed earlier regarding the additional risks that we have seen for people with learning disabilities. If we are being realistic, employers who are laying people off and struggling to make ends meet might not go as far as they ordinarily would to try and stretch people’s employability and support people into employment who have disabilities of any kind, including learning disabilities. That is the reality we will face.

Nevertheless, we cannot afford to have a lost generation of young people with learning disabilities who have missed out on employment that they would otherwise have been able to secure. The Disability Confident campaign was launched by the then Prime Minister in 2013, and it aims to encourage businesses to employ disabled people. By December 2019, more than 15,000 employers had signed up to the scheme, as they wanted to offer disabled people roles in their organisations.

There are also local initiatives. As I mentioned, we have an organisation in Crewe and Nantwich called Safe Opportunities. It has launched a campaign called Big10forSEN, which is building towards having 10 big employers locally that are putting in the effort to secure employment for people with learning disabilities.

There are other measures available. There is the 2017 personal support package, which gives people access to a disability employment adviser, and the Access to Work scheme, which provides financial support for the extra costs of being in work that go beyond the reasonable adjustments that are required in law. As part of the Access to Work scheme, specialist support is provided to people with learning disabilities and other less visible disabilities through a hidden impairment specialist team.

In response to the pandemic, the Department for Work and Pensions has worked tremendously hard to develop policy to prevent ill health-related job losses, but we must not forget the Government’s ambition to get 1 million more disabled people into work by 2027. We cannot allow the coronavirus to prevent that from happening.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (in the Chair)]

There is now a formal time limit of five minutes. I call Ms Olivia Blake.

Covid-19 Update

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Monday 14th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The truth is that it all depends on how people behave, and it is very important that we all urge people to behave with great care and responsibility over the Christmas period.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the fantastic work he has done on the vaccine, but may I make a plea to him on behalf of my constituents in Wealden whom I spoke to this weekend? They will struggle to get to some of the hospitals which are over an hour away, so will he do all he can to ensure the vaccine comes into my rural constituency?

The other bit of good news is my right hon. Friend saying from the Dispatch Box that the tiers will no longer be at county level. My Wealden residents have gone above and beyond to keep infection rates down; they must not pay the price for what is happening outside of Wealden so can we ensure that their tier remains the same or is reduced?

[Matt Hancock]

I will take a look at the numbers in Wealden in particular. I am concerned about the rate of increase in other parts of the south-east and will have to look very carefully at that case.

On the vaccine roll-out, of course we want the vaccine in all communities across the country. I am delighted that today we managed to start the GP roll-out, which means that we have been able to get vaccine out of the major centres and major hospitals and into over 100 different local communities, and I will check whether Wealden is on the list to make sure everybody in Wealden can get their vaccine at the appropriate time.

Covid-19 Update

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Thursday 26th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

We have taken the decision to roll out the vaccine UK-wide at the same pace. I want to get it as soon as possible to the west midlands and to everywhere else, but it is fair to the areas that have had a low, or relatively low, incidence of the disease to make sure that they also have access to the vaccine. Also, the incidence in different parts of the country changes, and the vaccine roll-out programme is very complicated. It does not speed up the delivery of the vaccine in one area to have slowed it down in another. That is why we have taken a UK-wide approach.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

In keeping with my right hon. Friend’s spirit of working together, I stand not only to represent Wealden, but to speak on behalf of my hon. Friends the Members for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), for Eastbourne (Caroline Ansell) and for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart). We wish to collectively thank the CEOs of the clinical commissioning group and East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, our county leader, Keith Glazier, and our local department for public health for working with us day in, day out to understand the data and the reason for the infection rates.

We are deeply disappointed that, considering all the five indicators, where we mark extremely low, we are in tier 2, and we are disappointed that central Government have not consulted local leaders, because they would then have been able to investigate the data and, hopefully, show us how we can move into tier 1 from tier 2. Will my right hon. Friend provide some assurances that these conversations will take place with local leaders and confirm that transparent objective criteria will be published for each tier, and how we can slide between each tier?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, absolutely—I can give both those assurances. Across Sussex, case rates are at 120. They do need to come down. Like my hon. Friend, I would like to see Sussex get to tier 1 as soon as possible, and we will keep talking to the local area. As I said earlier, all directors of public health have been invited to discussions and consultations with the public health team. That feedback fed into these decisions, but we have to make sure that those conversations continue. The key message to everybody across Sussex and in the Weald, in particular, is that if we all stick together and follow the rules, we know that we can get this virus under control, and that will then lead directly to the lifting of restrictions, which we will regularly review.

Covid-19 Update

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Programme motion
Monday 19th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The proportion of contacts that are reached that are in what are called complex settings in the system—for instance, in care homes it is relatively easy to find all the contacts by the nature of the setting—has itself fallen, as the number of cases has risen. If we look at the effectiveness of the system as a whole, both national and local, at reaching people in the community, we see that it has been broadly flat, as has the proportion reached in those complex settings where it is much easier and often the proportion is close to 100%. The challenge has been that as the number of contacts in the community has risen, so the overall proportion of those who are harder by their nature for the contact tracing system to reach has gone up. That is the direct explanation for the figures that the hon. Lady describes. The best solution to that problem is the combination of the national and local systems working together, and we are putting in place closer connection and extra financial support, both in Liverpool and Knowsley, as she sets out.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

I commend my right hon. Friend for overseeing 300,000 tests a day across the country. Will the Minister thank care workers who do such tremendous work in care homes in Wealden? He will know our concerns about winter flu coming to care homes as well. I had a long meeting with care home providers across the constituency and they are incredibly pleased with the access to testing, but one care home in Uckfield complained that 25% of tests were not picked up by a courier—I know that my right hon. Friend will want to nip that in the bud immediately.

[Matt Hancock]

Throughout this, and even with the challenges with demand for testing that we saw last month, we kept the tests going to care homes because people who live in care homes are the most vulnerable. No matter what we do to protect care homes from coronavirus, the higher the number of cases in the community, with staff living in the community and, of course, people visiting where visits are allowed, there is more likelihood of a case getting into a care home. It is a sad fact of life. We do everything we possibly can to prevent that, as do the brilliant care staff who work in her constituency, to whom I pay tribute. On the particular point about a courier being late for a pick-up, I will look into that immediately and see if we can resolve that.

Public Health: Coronavirus Regulations

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

I am pleased to contribute to the debate. Many of us on the Back Benches fought for this opportunity to contribute, although I was hoping that we would have longer than three minutes. I do not doubt that Ministers are grappling with the most difficult trade-offs in managing the spread of the virus. In particular, I know that the Minister for Health bears a huge responsibility in trying to ensure the lowest possible number of covid fatalities.

I support the Government in their efforts to manage the virus and their three-tier system, but I have concerns similar to those of my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay), and I want to raise three of them. First, the Prime Minister was brutally honest yesterday in telling my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) that a vaccine may or may not be available, depending on what science delivers. If that is the case, we need a long-term covid strategy that does not involve areas being put in and out of restrictive measure for many years to come, which will not only damage local economies but have a tragic impact on the diagnosis and treatment of other potentially fatal health conditions among my constituents in Wealden.

In particular, cancer comes to mind. The national health service has been called the national covid service by many of my constituents. I received an email from a local resident, Mike, who is trying to get a neurosurgery consultation appointment. He has been told that, for his condition, he has to wait 48 weeks, not the 26 weeks that it would have been in February. Amusingly—even though my residents in Wealden are struggling, they still have a sense of humour—he says that patients are asked to use their “fastest finger first” when ringing to try to get a same-day hospital appointment:

“Anyone without a swish redialling telephone and the persistence of Miss Marple has little chance of getting an appointment.”

That is the problem we face. Our efforts to protect the NHS and protect our constituents from getting covid are unfortunately leading to people being unable to manage their other health conditions.

Secondly, testing and tracing continues to be an issue in my care homes and schools, and I urge the Minister to do what he can to ensure that the turnaround time for tests is much swifter than it is at the moment. The final point I wish to raise is about hospitality. It is clear that there is no scientific basis for the 10 pm curfew. The SAGE scientists say:

“Curfews likely to have a marginal impact. Low confidence.”

We are repeatedly told that this virus spreads indoors. A story in today’s Telegraph says that spending on alcohol is £261 million more than it was in September. That is no doubt because people are spending money on booze to drink at home, where the virus spreads much more. We need to be clear about the unintended consequences of the decisions we take.

Coronavirus Act 2020 (Review of Temporary Provisions)

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Wednesday 30th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

If I may, I will make a bit of progress, because otherwise I will take the whole 90 minutes myself.

The central point is that we need to ensure that we strike a balance so that we get the scrutiny right and also meet the need to act fast. The vote tonight is about whether to renew the Coronavirus Act, and I emphatically urge Members on both sides to vote in favour of that Act because of the broad range of powers without which it would simply be impossible to have an effective response to this virus.

First, the Act has helped us boost the health and social care workforce. One of the achievements in this crisis is that we are able to protect the NHS, and one of the reasons we were able to do that was that we were able to support people on the frontline. This Act allowed the emergency registration of health and social care professionals—nurses, midwives, paramedics, social workers —who wanted to return to the national effort. Skilled and experienced staff were able to return to work and add capacity at a time of emergency.

Secondly, this Act does not just support the NHS frontline: the second part of the Act protects all public servants who keep the UK running safely and securely. Over the past few months we have seen huge changes in the way our public services have operated. This Act allows for remote working and for moving meetings online, and it is about acting quickly to prioritise essential activities. The Act supports vital temporary measures that have allowed public services to keep their work going. This includes courts keeping running in a covid-secure way through the use of virtual hearings; up to 65% of hearings each day now involve somebody joining remotely, so it is integral to maintaining the rule of law that we keep these measures in place. The measures have also kept local democracy going by allowing councils to hold their meetings virtually. These are sensible and pragmatic steps that have helped us keep vital institutions operating in the midst of the pandemic.

The Act gives the Home Secretary powers to close and suspend operations at UK ports and airports if there are insufficient staff to maintain border security. This is one of the powers that has not yet been used, and I hope we will never have to use it, but it remains an important tool at our disposal.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s earlier statement. My constituents are incredibly concerned about the powers given in this Act, but I would argue that this debate is not only about scrutiny and allowing the House to debate and vote; it is also about giving the Secretary of State the credibility to continue the work he is doing. It also exposes the difficult decisions and trade-offs he has to make, balancing the spread of the virus against all the restrictions we have to face, so I welcome the opportunity for further debates—much longer, I hope—and votes, too.

[Matt Hancock]

We are absolutely open to further and longer debates—for instance, the debate we had on Monday. Under the Standing Orders of the House, this debate is 90 minutes, and neither the Speaker nor we had the choice over that, but we introduced a full day’s debate on Monday, and there will be many more debates to come.

I turn to a measure that we will not be renewing. I have said that we will keep measures in place only for as long as is necessary, and I can tell the House that in one area we will revoke a power that was part of the original Act. When creating the Act, we included provisions to modify mental health legislation to reduce from two to one the number of doctors’ opinions needed to detain someone under the Mental Health Act 1983 and to extend legal time limits on the detention of mental health patients. These were always powers of last resort, and I was not persuaded, even in the peak, that they were necessary, because our mental health services have shown incredible resilience and ingenuity. I have therefore decided that these powers are no longer required in England and will not remain part of the Act. We will shortly bring forward the necessary secondary legislation to sunset these provisions.

The third part of the Act contains measures to suppress the virus. As a nation, we have succeeded in suppressing the virus once, thanks to so many sacrifices by so many people, but with cases on the rise, we know that more needs to be done, and we need to do it together. Our central strategy of suppressing the virus while protecting the economy, education and the NHS until a vaccine arrives is underpinned by this part of the Act. It gives us stronger powers to restrict or prohibit events and public gatherings, and where necessary to shut down premises. It gives police and immigration officers the power to isolate a person who is or may be infectious, and it allows us to close educational settings or childcare providers. Again, these are not measures that anyone wants to use, but we must keep them in place for the moment, because we need every weapon in our arsenal to fight this virus, and these are a proportionate response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con)]

I will support the Government today because, although I fully understand the concerns about parliamentary scrutiny eloquently expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady), the biggest threat that we face as a country is not the erosion of liberty but the explosion of the virus. We now know, as we go forward into a second wave, that for every death directly caused by covid there is at least one death indirectly caused by the disruption to cancer services, the interruption of emergency care and people being discharged early from hospital.

I wish to ask the Government about measures that could reduce such indirect deaths, particularly the introduction of the routine weekly testing of NHS staff, which we have discussed many times in the House—I see the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) smiling. In fairness to the Government, they have moved on this issue. In July, Chris Whitty told the Health and Social Care Committee that he supported the routine testing of asymptomatic NHS staff in hotspots. I would like there to be such testing everywhere, including in my constituency, where recently we seem to have seen live cases trebling, but even in the hotspots it is not currently happening with any consistency. That is a worry, because up to a fifth of staff in hospitals got the virus during the first wave and up to 11% of deaths of coronavirus patients were caused by patients having caught the virus in their own hospital. That is the context.

I recognise that some hospitals are trying to do routine testing, but it is very difficult for them to do it on a weekly basis when they cannot access pillar 2 testing, so will the Secretary of State ask all hospitals to make weekly testing happen, under their own steam if they can, or with the support of NHS Test and Trace supplying the reagents, or using pooled testing?

[Ms Ghani]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that when we talk about NHS staff and testing, we need to focus on the most vulnerable—those BAME NHS workers who are dying at a much faster rate? We need data and they need support.

[Jeremy Hunt]

My hon. Friend has done a lot of campaigning to highlight that issue, as have Select Committee members from all parties. The Select Committee will publish a report tomorrow that considers that very issue and will be coming back to it.

The Government’s own figures show that at least a thousand additional cancer patients died because of the interruption caused by the pandemic. As we go into a second wave, it does not have to be the same again. The Government have rightly introduced weekly testing for people in care homes; the arguments are exactly the same for our hospitals. Patients need to know that their NHS hospital is safe and NHS staff need to know that they are not infecting their own patients. As we go into this very difficult period, please, will the Government act and make this happen?

Covid-19

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Monday 28th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden). I, too, want to thank all our frontline key workers.

This has no doubt been a very difficult job for Ministers, especially those in the Department of Health and Social Care. They have done tremendous work to try to understand this new virus and manage the spread of covid. I want to put on record my gratitude to the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill). She has taken my phone calls in the evening, at weekends and during the day. Sometimes my requests on behalf of my constituents have not even fallen in her portfolio, but she has always tried to track down the right response, and for that I am incredibly grateful.

We have had some successes. We have had successes on testing—we are testing more than the rest of Europe—but we now need to get the tracing element right. I had huge concerns about PPE early on. There is now a PPE strategy, and 70% of PPE will now be produced here in the UK compared with 1% earlier on. And who can forget the huge efforts to get the Nightingale hospitals up and running?

However, I have huge concerns about how the Government want to progress with the extension of covid laws. I do not feel it is appropriate that Members of Parliament read about new restrictions in the press—restrictions that cover criminal offences, duties and penalties that can reach up to £10,000—and I am hugely concerned about the role of covid marshals. I am sent to the House of Commons to represent my constituents in Wealden, and I cannot do that if parliamentary democracy is suspended. That is why I will support the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady) and share the concerns of many Government Members about the lack of scrutiny.

I do not doubt that Ministers want their arguments to be tested, so that they can be assured that these laws will have minimal side effects. We need to understand more of the evidence, and we need more diverse scientific evidence put in front of us. I do not feel that I am in any position to tell my constituents that they cannot see their kids for Christmas—I do not understand how we can even implement that. I do not feel comfortable telling my constituents that they cannot visit their loved ones in care homes whose mental health is deteriorating fast because we do not have the track and trace or testing in place.

I want to touch on three themes that we should be focusing on. We need to get back to basics and focus on what we can get right. I had an email recently from Peter Appleton, who oversees a care home and said that once again, the issue of getting testing results back in time has reared its ugly head. If care home staff do not get their test results back in time, they cannot provide a service to the residents, who are already struggling without the support of their families.

I turn to the impact on our young people, who have not had access to formal education for many months, and now we are making decisions that mean they will not get any sort of educational activity outside school. In my constituency of Wealden, we have two outdoor centres: Bowles Rocks and Hindleap Warren. They enable youngsters who may not even have access to a garden to experience a bit of outdoors, whether it is climbing or doing a bit of mentoring or leadership training. They could do that within bubbles, and they have all the covid-safe protections in place, but once again, broadbrush restrictions based on covid are undermining not only businesses but young people’s experiences outside the classroom.



I will conclude with an issue that the Minister will be familiar with, which is Public Health England. As the Minister will know, I have put on the record my belief that Public Health England lacks transparency, accountability and leadership. We have had three times more deaths among the BAME community, and higher deaths among BAME medical practitioners. At one point Public Health England claimed that it did not have the data. One can hope only that it has the data now, but I have yet to see what changes it has made to ensure that vulnerable groups within the BAME community are kept safe. As we introduce new restrictive laws, I am concerned that we are not applying the laws we already have in place.

Last Wednesday I was at a funeral in my village of Nutley—of course, only 30 people were present. A member of the family gave a very moving speech, but nobody was allowed to hug her. That is the state we are in. The Government need Back-Bench support from across the House, and we need parliamentary scrutiny for that. I hope the Government will understand why we would support such an amendment.

Covid-19 Update

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I pay tribute to Kirklees and colleagues who represent the seats within it, who have worked across party lines with national and local government. We have put more resources in, and they will continue for the time being when they are needed. We are, of course, driven by the data, so in a way, it would be good news if they were not needed, because that would mean that the number of cases had come down. The hon. Lady represents exactly the sort of approach that we should be taking. We are all on the same side against this virus. It is far better to be constructive and work together in a team effort. That is what the public want and expect. They do not want sniping from the sidelines, like we have seen from the Labour Front Bench.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s commitment to mass testing. In rural constituencies like mine, mobile testing units such as the one in Uckfield are key, but there seems to be a glitch in the system. A constituent called Colin, who lives in the village of Fletching, was directed miles away when he could have been directed to the local mobile unit. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that the glitch is fixed?

[Matt Hancock]

With pleasure.

Coronavirus Response

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

We have been building the test and trace system and improving the data that flows from it and underpins it all the way through this crisis, and I am glad that the hon. Lady is pleased by the continued progress that we are making. That is the way to look at this. We have been building this extraordinary service at extraordinary pace, and I am really glad we are able to get more.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

I welcome the Health Secretary’s statement and share his concerns that we do not know how the virus will react when we enter our cold weather season. Wealden constituents are already concerned about winter flu. When he has the data on cold weather and the virus, will he ensure that it is shared with East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, East Sussex County Council and Wealden District Council so that we can prepare and be resourced to deal with both covid and winter flu?

[Matt Hancock]

I will do better than that: when we get scientific evidence on the impact of cold weather on this virus, we will publish it.

Covid-19 Update

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Monday 29th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I am absolutely determined to address the questions and the impact of covid on those who live with disabilities. The hon. Lady’s point is important and this will form part of our work on inequalities and the response to covid. The Minister for Equalities is taking that work forward.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend share what factors lie behind the infection rate being so high in Leicester? Will those factors be shared with local resilience forums, such as mine in the south-east, so that they can also prepare? Secondly, he said that children in Leicester were particularly vulnerable. That is not the norm for covid, so is this a separate strand of covid or can he say why the youngsters in Leicester are so vulnerable?

[Matt Hancock]

To be clear, children have a very low risk of suffering from covid, but we have been looking at the proportion of children who have tested positive and therefore may be transmitting the disease. Thankfully, the disease poses a very low risk to any individual child in terms of their becoming ill or worse, but the challenge is that it still transmits through children. That is why we have taken the decision that we have on schools in Leicester. Of course, there are many reasons and potential reasons why the outbreak has occurred in the way it has in Leicester. We are still getting to the bottom of those, but I undertake to ensure that directors of public health in other areas understand those reasons. For instance, we are doing work specifically on food processing factories, which seem to have a higher rate of infection around the world, including in America, Germany and also in north Wales. Of course, there is a challenge in the community to ensure that we understand properly the origins and the spread of the outbreak in Leicester and then look at similar cities where the case rate is thankfully much lower, but ensure that we learn the lessons for similar cities, precisely as the shadow Secretary of State said.