Coronavirus and Care Homes

Philippa Whitford Excerpts

Tuesday 19th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I entirely agree. We have seen much better partnership working in most parts of the country during this crisis. The partnerships between local authorities, with their statutory responsibilities, and, as my right hon. and learned Friend mentioned, all parts of the NHS, with its statutory responsibilities—clinical commissioning groups, trusts and the integrated care systems—is very important. They have worked much better over the last few months than they had hitherto. We need to make sure that that coming together—in a very difficult circumstance, which has broken down boundaries—continues. I look forward to working with him and others in making sure that the boundaries that exist in social care can be brought to the ground.

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP) [V]]

The London School of Economics reported that there were over 23,000 excess deaths in care homes in England and Wales, but only 12,000 were put down as due to covid. How does the Secretary of State explain the other 10,000? Testing of care home staff is critical to reduce the spread, but how will he improve the return of results to local GPs and public health teams? Concerns have been raised that a quarter of tests are false negatives, which could send staff with the virus back into care homes and hospitals. It is a difficult sample to take, so is any comparison being made between self-administered tests and those carried out by healthcare staff? Finally, where is the Green Paper that was promised in 2017?

[Matt Hancock]

On the point about tests, absolutely, work was done to assess the difference in efficacy between professionally administered and self-administered tests, and it found that their efficacy was very similar and not significantly different. That is why across England and Scotland, and indeed the whole UK, we use home tests, which are an important part of our testing regime.

The hon. Lady asks about the increased number of deaths, sadly, that there have been in care homes. She is absolutely right that there has been an increase. We analyse the causes of all the different factors that may have had an impact, which is something our clinical advisers are looking at. The same is true in Scotland, and I am sure that the Scottish medical advisers are looking into the same. When it comes to a Green Paper, at the moment we are working on crisis response, and I think that is the appropriate thing to do.