Public Health

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)]

While we wait for the roll-out of the vaccine, there are no easy choices available to the Government. The choice is between lockdown, a tiered system and unrestricted return to normal life. From an economic and social perspective, lockdowns are by far the worst option. Entering a cycle of lockdown, reopen and repeat does not amount to living with the virus; it is hiding from it, while causing long-lasting damage at the same time. People have put up with a great deal this year and are understandably desperate to return to their normal lives, but we know that the national health service comes under strain in the winter months in normal times and that these are very far from normal times. To simply reopen with no restrictions would be a huge gamble that could lead to the loss of tens of thousands of lives. That leaves the option of regional tiers, which I believe offer the best option for living with the virus while waiting for a full deployment of the vaccine. In acknowledging that, it is important to recognise that tiers are not a destination; they are a holding pattern.

As colleagues have said, the Government could do a great deal more in making transparent the evidential basis for decisions on tiers. I am not especially happy with my constituency’s tier. Orpington is part of the London Borough of Bromley and as such is part of Greater London. While Greater London has a range of infection rates, most are much higher than those in my borough. Greater London also has a very large number of hospitals. We know from Department of Health and Social Care figures that the NHS in London is now, at the end of the year, at only 76% of the level it was in spring. On that basis, it is possible to make the argument that the NHS has surge capacity to cope with a spike of infections in London and it could therefore perhaps have been placed in tier 1, rather than in tier 2. However, it is also possible to conceive of a situation where the virus could run out of control.

In addition, I note that the Government have listened to representations from colleagues on the Conservative Benches and across the House, and a range of activities can now resume in tier 2 that were not available during lockdown. However, as other colleagues have said, hospitality, in particular pubs, will be hard hit. While the existing measures and the additional financial support announced by the Prime Minister today are welcome, I call on the Government to have another look and see whether more can be done while we wait for the vaccine.

In closing, I must comment on the total abdication of responsibility offered today by the Leader of the Opposition. It is truly scandalous. It is all very well pointing to the faults of others, but a supposedly alternative Government must have an alternative plan. The moral vacuity of standing and saying, “I do not like what you are doing” but neither offering an alternative nor having the courage to vote on it is absolutely damning.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Speakers 82 to 84 have withdrawn, so we go straight to Rob Butler.

--- Later in debate ---

[Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)]

I am glad that I came to the Chamber in good time.

I was one of those who voted against the national lockdown, because I am in a privileged position: I am a Cornwall MP and I represent the Isles of Scilly—and Cornwall, the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight are the only parts of England in tier 1. I will therefore be voting, if not enthusiastically, certainly in support of the Government, because the tier system is the right thing to have, in particular for Cornwall.

I want to raise a few things. As a libertarian, I do not want to say this, but it is an important part of a national effort to control the spread of coronavirus. Cornwall, the Isles of Scilly and, I assume, the Isle of Wight are concerned about what might happen after today, right through to the Christmas break, because we are already attractive parts of the world and we have suddenly become very much more attractive. Will the Minister and the Secretary of State consider strengthening travel restrictions to ensure that travel from tier 3, for example, is only done when absolutely essential?

We will always welcome visitors to Cornwall to spend their money, but not when we are in a national effort to control the spread of the virus. I say that not just for my constituents, but for the whole of the country. We are seeking to battle the virus, to put an end to it, and to move into 2021 with, I hope, a brighter and more hopeful future.

Even a tier 1 MP, however, needs to make the case for hospitality. This year has been brutal for hospitality. Most of the businesses in Cornwall—as well as in Devon and across the country—depend in some way on tourism and on providing food, accommodation and entertainment for people. Despite the generous support so far, large parts of the sector are very unlikely to survive. Again, as a Cornish MP, so much of my hospitality can open, but it is still very curtailed.

I recognise that this is partly driving the restrictions that we have to vote on tonight: I long for the day, as I am sure millions of people in the UK do, when the NHS can return fully to providing the care that it usually would to people with long-term conditions. I chair the all-party parliamentary group for diabetes; it is a great honour and privilege to do so. A recent report from Manchester University with the Salford Royal Hospital demonstrates that, in April alone, there were twice as many deaths of people with diabetes during the lockdown as would normally be the case; and that there were 45,000 missed or delayed diagnoses of diabetes type 2. We know that, if diabetes is identified later, people’s life chances are reduced, their conditions are aggravated, and pressure of all kinds on the system of social care and the NHS is increased. Please may we do what we can to get the NHS to return to fully caring for those with long-term conditions?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I am not going to reduce the time limit, but I will say that if colleagues speak for less than three minutes, more people will get in.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

A month ago, my reasons for not supporting a second lockdown were that the measures represented a gross overreach of Government powers over our basic freedoms, that the tiers provided a more targeted response and needed more time, and that the information provided by Government was inadequate and unpersuasive. I made the following requests of the Government: to operationalise rapid testing on a community and venue basis; to put covid into context with other illnesses, so that they did not appear disappeared in terms of their importance; and to make available to Members of Parliament a full assessment of policy consequences before we are asked to make decisions.

In the intervening period, the Government have indeed progressed on many of those fronts. Thankfully, freedom of communal worship has been restored. Freedom to trade has been substantially restored. More needs to be done on freedom to associate. Rapid testing is being deployed, but more needs to be done, particularly to restore confidence in events, in the travel industry and in theatres.

The Government have been kind enough at last to give us the criteria and the data on the decisions about restrictions and we have had a stab at an impact assessment. I have to say to the Minister that the impact assessment has all the hallmarks of an essay crisis, with all possible factors raised, but few of them investigated with any rigour. This is important because for too long the decisions of Government have been in thrall to the medical profession alone, and the trade-offs of the medical profession are always likely to be more precautionary than the broader considerations of Members of Parliament. But we can work with this to help us inform our future decisions.

A month ago, I wrote to constituents to say:

“I am sure we are all irritated that restrictive measures are being proposed, but irritation is not a sufficient basis for a Member of Parliament to oppose them.

We are all irritated that perhaps some of us have been placed in higher tiers than we should have been. We are irritated that the geographies are broader than we think they should be. We are irritated that the Government have, in a sense, put us in a place where we are looking backwards rather than forward, but irritation is not a sufficiency for an alternative policy. We will be able to make tweaks, we will be able to make suggestions, but I return to my conclusion of a month ago that the continuation of the tiered approach is the right policy. We must, however, ask the Government to challenge clause 3.11 of the impact assessment, where they talk about the NHS being overwhelmed in terms of the loss of life, saying such a scenario is considered intolerable. The best way to do that is through scenarios of hospital occupancy to March being made available.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I remind Members again of the two-minute target to get more people in.