Coronavirus

Steve Brine Excerpts

Thursday 25th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Furlough is provided for under the Act. As I just said, it is a permanent provision of the Act, but the statutory sick pay is not and I think we should be giving people statutory sick pay to help them to self-isolate.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

The Secretary of State is asking for a further six months under the Act, which is all that we can do. The Prime Minister has been talking in the last few days about the need for section 2, for instance, on the emergency registration of nurses, to help us to deal with the backlog. The same is true of sections 53, 54, 55 and 56 with respect to the courts. In six months’ time, will we need that? Will we have dealt with the backlog in the health service and the courts, or will he need to renew this again in six months?

[Matt Hancock]

That is a good question. The truth is that we have a record number of nurses in the NHS, over 300,000, in part because the Act allowed for their emergency registration much more swiftly than previously. Parts of the Act have allowed us to do good things like that, which everybody would like to see. When we come to retire the Act, which we must within one year and preferably within six months, we will need to make sure we can continue to do that sort of thing to ensure that nurses can be enrolled into the NHS as easily as possible. I cannot answer whether we will be retiring it in six months. My preference would be yes, but given the last year I think a prediction would be hasty.

[Steve Brine]

Further to that point, may I make a suggestion to my right hon. Friend? The expansion of the availability of live links for criminal proceedings will be put into the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, so that will not be needed. The Secretary of State is bringing forward a new health Bill during the new Session. Would that be an opportunity to update that?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, that is an important point. We have just started the process of working on that. If measures have worked well and we want to keep them because they are good, can we put them permanently on the statute book? That should, properly, take the process of normal primary legislation. My hon. Friend mentions a forthcoming health and care Bill. I look to the Leader of the House and I can see that he is smiling, although I cannot, of course, say whether that Bill will be brought forward until we have a proper sign-off—it is nice to see him looking so handsome there. [Laughter.]Our aim would be to get that on to the statute book, should we bring it forward, in the middle of next year, so there is a shorter-term question of the handling from here to there. We need to do that with the best administrative efficiency that we can, but I am talking here about the less controversial elements of the Act.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

I welcome motion 5 in the name of the Leader of the House. It is high time that the House of Commons took back some control. I expect the House of Commons Commission to follow the lead and move in lockstep with the road map for everything else here when it comes to it.

I welcomed the road map in the House when it was published last month and I will support the regulations today, because it is a route out that I called for and it would be churlish not to. I have not changed my view that it is too cumbersome in parts—it is. I do not think it shows enough belief in vaccines, which must give us immunity from covid at the same time as giving us immunity from the restrictions on our lives—otherwise what is the point? I have not changed my view that it unfairly singles out hospitality as the villain, for instance, opening all retail and personal care businesses on 12 April—which the Prime Minister says is a date that is looking good—yet ensuring Winchester’s pubs and restaurants cannot open in any truly profitable way until 17 May at the earliest. I asked the Prime Minister on 22 February why, after all the good work they did last year to create covid-secure environments, restaurants and cafés face another three months—it is still seven weeks from today—before they can open in any meaningful way. Again, I ask those on the Front Bench today, given that we are putting the road map into law, what evidence have the Government seen that has convinced them to make that decision? It is, let us remember, data, not dates.

Turning to the Coronavirus Act, I have been through the one-year report on the provisions of the Act and I thank the team for it. I note and welcome the parts that Ministers are retiring, such as section 8 on emergency volunteering leave and section 24, which gives the state crazy provision to retain the fingerprints and DNA profiles of my constituents. There are other sections—for example, section 14 allows the NHS not to comply with the requirement to continue healthcare assessments—which could be expired, given that we are nowhere near last resort territory and the NHS is clearly not at risk of being overwhelmed. There are many others. I dislike intensely schedules 21 and 22 in particular, which is very sinister, and would gladly have supported the amendment to remove it in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) had it been allowed.

Generally, however, we are in danger of conflating the regulations, the road map out of lockdown, with the Act. They are not the same and one can happen without the other. The real action centres around the four reviews, the main three being social distancing, covid status certification and international travel, but ahead of today, I checked in with my local NHS and the two main professional bodies impacted by the emergency registration of nurses. They tell me that some provisions are still needed. I cannot deny that they said that. I checked in with the legal beagles and, given the backlog, I can see the importance of live links for criminal proceedings in our court system. So, if I am honest, I think we are rather hoist by our own petard on the renewal of the Act. Six months is way too long and it does not fit the road map, but that is what the Act says—those of us who were involved in drafting it have to take our share of responsibility for that—so it is take it or leave it territory and “leave it” would have consequences, too, even if it left behind some parts of the Act that I have said I do not like. There is no “perfect” here and I cannot, in all good sense, allow this to be a binary “good versus evil” choice of the kind so ridiculously set out, in a rare appearance, by the leader of the Liberal Democrats. It is not.

The Government should deliver on their road map, keep on retiring parts of the Act, which they can do on the two-monthly schedule, and make damn sure that we are not back here in six months’ time, because they will get a very different answer from the House of Commons.