Covid-19 Update

Steve Brine Excerpts

Monday 12th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I can tell the hon. Lady that there are currently about 30,000 infections a day. In the last 24 hours in England, we have seen about 400 people being hospitalised. The last time that infections were around the same level—at 30,000 cases a day—I believe that more than 2,000 people a day were being hospitalised. That is what I mean when I say that the link has been severely weakened, and for that we have the vaccines to thank.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

I look forward to having a look at and scrutinising the new road map when it is published this afternoon. Further to the point raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), I am just trying to get clear the data on hospitalisations. I was told today of a lady admitted this weekend to a hospital in my region to give birth. She was, of course, tested on admission and was positive, so she is a covid-positive person in hospital. Given the advice that the Secretary of State has just confirmed to the House that he has sought, when does he think he will be able to advise us of the figures for those admitted with covid versus those admitted for covid?

[Sajid Javid]

I know that my hon. Friend speaks with experience, and I am glad he has raised this point again. I have asked for that advice, because it is important that we try to analyse better the primary diagnosis of anyone coming into hospital. I can understand why that was not easily possible in the early days of the pandemic, but I think we have now reached the stage at which we can provide better data, and I hope I can get that done as quickly as possible.

Covid-19 Update

Steve Brine Excerpts

Monday 5th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I can tell the right hon. Gentleman that that will happen very soon, and the Secretary of State for Transport will have more to say on this very shortly.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

Last week, I said that I wanted to see from the new Secretary of State

“a change in policy as much as a change in tone.”—[Official Report, 28 June 2021; Vol. 698, c. 60.]

We have had that today, or at least an indication of it for next Monday, and I am grateful. Will my right hon. Friend give us an insight into his thinking about the future of test and trace? Surely it cannot continue as now, with contacts of contacts—even if they are double-vaccinated—being forced into isolation for 10 days at a time, with all the knock-on effects that that has on society and the economy.

[Sajid Javid]

I will be making a statement to Parliament on just that issue. I think I will probably make it tomorrow.

Covid-19 Update

Steve Brine Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his kind and warm remarks. I know that he has taken great interest throughout the pandemic in the restrictions in particular, and I absolutely understand why it has been so important to him and others. I am very happy to meet with him to discuss the issues in more detail and listen to his views. He should know that it is my intention, and the Government’s intention, as I have said from day one on this job, to remove all restrictions as quickly as possible.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

I give a warm welcome to my right hon. Friend. I wish him very well. I am looking for a change in policy as much as a change in tone. I return him to the subject of education. Estimates suggest that a quarter of a million children are missing school today due to precautionary isolations, the vast majority of them sequential due to the bubbles that they are caught in. Under the current rules, 10 days of isolation is then unavoidable, even with a negative PCR test. Have our young people not suffered enough? Are we really going to continue to do this to ourselves? Is this not an area, given the availability and reliability of testing now, where I might find the change of policy that I am looking for?

[Sajid Javid]

Other hon. Members have rightly raised this very important issue, and my hon. Friend is right to draw attention to it once again. It is something that I have focused on from day one on the job. That is why I have asked for fresh advice on it. As he knows, that decision was made with the data that was available at the time. Clearly, data is changing all the time, and we must ensure that we keep that under review for exactly the reasons that he has just set out. As I say, I have asked for advice on that and will hopefully be able to say more on it as soon as possible.

Coronavirus

Steve Brine Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

With flu, of course, if people have symptomatic flu and are ill, they do tend to stay at home. Of course we have not done that on a mandatory basis before, but it is advisable that if people have symptoms of flu, they stay at home. For contacts, as the hon. Gentleman probably knows, we are already piloting an approach whereby instead of having to isolate as contacts, vaccinated people go into a testing regime. That is an approach that I am very attracted to for the future, especially as more and more people get vaccinated, because we know that the risk once vaccinated is so much lower.

We are accelerating the second doses, and we are reducing from 12 weeks to eight weeks the time from first to second jab for all those aged 40 and above. In fact, since I came to this House on Monday, I have rearranged my second jab to be eight weeks rather than 12 weeks after my first.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

Me too—I have rearranged mine for tomorrow morning, in line with my right hon. Friend’s advice.

Further to the intervention from my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), it is very clear that the regulations will be passed by the House today. Regulation 2(3) talks about substituting 18 July for 30 June, and the Prime Minister talked about 19 July being a “terminus”. The definition of a terminus is the end point—the end of the line. Would the Secretary of State categorise it in exactly those terms? I think our constituents want to know what 19 July means that 21 June did not.

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, I would characterise it in that way. Our goal, ahead of 19 July, is to take step 4. On the basis of the evidence so far, I am confident that we will not need more than the four weeks to get this job done and take step 4.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I begin by paying tribute to our much-missed friend and colleague Jo Cox. Jo was an internationalist, and I know that, if she were with us today, she would be rallying support not just across this country but through her international contacts for a campaign to vaccinate the world. She would remind us that we will defeat this virus only through our common endeavour. I think that all of us miss Jo and want to send our best wishes to her family today.

We will support the extension of restrictions in the Lobbies tonight, but we of course do so with a heavy heart. We are guided by data not dates, and we have to recognise the facts before us. The delta variant is 60% more transmissible than the alpha, and even with the current restrictions in place the daily total of positive cases has been rising, with a seven-day rolling average of more than 7,000 per day compared with around 2,000 per day in early May. That is beginning to translate into hospitalisations. With cases doubling every nine days, at the moment it looks like hospitalisations are also doubling. On 4 June, 96 people with covid were admitted; nine days later, 187 people were admitted—almost double. If that continues to double, within four sets of doublings we will be close to the April 2020 peak.

Given that we know that there is always a lag in the figures, we are no doubt likely to see around 250 admissions a day in 10 days’ time. We are seeing a third wave in the NHS. We need to do all that we can to stop hospitalisations rising, because this is a time of huge pressure on the national health service. We have lost a number of beds over the past 10 years, and because of the need for infection control measures we have fewer general and acute beds open today in the NHS as well. We are facing a monumental backlog in care, with 5 million people on the waiting list, more than 385,000 waiting over 12 months for treatment, and nearly 3,000 now waiting over two years for treatment.

Throughout the crisis, we have said that the NHS was not overwhelmed, but it was not overwhelmed only because of some of the terrible choices that had to be made. To be frank, I do not want to see the NHS forced to make choices between providing covid care and cancer care. That is why we should listen to those NHS leaders who have warned us about the increasing pressures on the NHS. Chris Hopson of NHS Providers said:

“The NHS is running hot at the moment dealing with backlog recovery and emergency care pressures.”

The NHS Confederation said:

“Health leaders are very aware of the damaging effects that prolonged social restrictions could have on the nation’s physical health and mental wellbeing…Yet, according to our survey the majority of NHS leaders are concerned about the risks that lifting prematurely could have on the NHS’s ability to cope”.

[Steve Brine]

I know that the official Opposition’s position will be to support the regulations today, but I am keen to explore this with the right hon. Gentleman. Would he be happy to see the terminus on 19 July, or would he like to see it maybe at the end of September, when the entire adult population will be double-jabbed, or at the end of next year, when the G7 thinks that the rest of the world will be vaccinated? What would his instinct be?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

Of course I want to see terminus day on the 19th, although I am not sure if we are going to see terminus day on the 19th. The hon. Gentleman, who is always well-informed, will no doubt have read the explanatory notes, which indicate that this four-week period is to assess the data, and the four tests will be applied at the end of that four-week period. That is not quite the terminus day that the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State have indicated.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

rose—

[Steve Brine]

rose—

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I will give way first to the former Public Health Minister, and then to the former Chief Whip.

[Steve Brine]

The right hon. Gentleman is right: we had a battle royal with influenza in the first year that I was in the job, but the difference was that we did not have any non-pharmaceutical interventions. Our interventions were about the take-up of the vaccine—yes, for children as well as for adults, especially the vulnerable. One of our chief advisers, the deputy chief medical officer then, one Professor Chris Whitty, never suggested masks, let alone closing schools—just a really good roll-out of the flu vaccine. We lost 22,000 people that year. Never were those numbers rolled on BBC News; never did we know the R number, but there was a point where we accepted an element of risk in society. I guess that was the point of my earlier intervention on the hon. Gentleman: what element of risk is he prepared to accept? Because that is what it comes down to—our own mortality is part of the human condition.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

We do accept it but we do not glibly accept it, because year by year we are looking for improvements in vaccinations, therapeutics and medicines to push infection rates down as low as possible. Even though we are grown-up enough to be aware that sadly some people will die from flu and pneumonia, we do all we can to avoid it. That is what we will have to do with this, but I do not want to see it done by some of the wider restrictions and lockdowns that we have heard about. That is why I would be interested to know whether the Department has developed plans for restrictions this winter and whether the Secretary of State has been discussing that with Whitehall colleagues.

Covid-19 Update

Steve Brine Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

This is an issue I have discussed with my clinical advisers, because it is very sensitive. I am sure that the hon. Lady would join me in urging all pregnant women to come forward and discuss vaccination with their clinician, because that is important, and she set out some of the reasons why. Of course, we have opened up, from tomorrow, vaccination to all those aged 23 and over, so vaccination will soon be available to every adult, which means that questions of prioritisation will be for the past—other than the question of the vaccination of children, which is separate in many ways and an important question that we will address in the coming weeks.

To anybody who is pregnant, I say: as soon as you are eligible for a vaccine, please discuss it with your doctor, because for the vast majority of people who are pregnant the right thing to do is to get the jab as soon as possible and get both jabs as soon as is practicable. I think that is something on which the hon. Lady and I would agree.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

Last week, the Secretary of State told me:

“Our goal…is not a covid-free world…the goal is to live with covid”.—[Official Report, 7 June 2021; Vol. 696, c. 678.]

Well, you could have fooled me, and many of our constituents. There is dismay out there tonight. The reopening of the wedding industry is not a meaningful reopening and I think it is cruel the way some are being misled. The Prime Minister and my right hon. Friend have been very clear today that 19 July is not a new “not before” date but an end to all this, so will the Secretary of State tell the country his assessment of risk and personal responsibility and whether he feels that as a country we remotely have that right at this time?

[Matt Hancock]

In a pandemic, the balance between risk and personal responsibility is different, because someone can affect somebody else in a life-threatening manner even without knowing it. If we go to the philosophy of this, the first duty—in fact, the legitimate duty—of the state for any liberal is to prevent harm by individuals to others. Unfortunately, in a pandemic that is what people do if they have the disease, especially asymptomatically—they could be harming others without even knowing it.

Once we have the offer of a vaccine to everybody, and once we have protected and mitigated the large part of that risk, we do need to move back to a world based on personal responsibility. That is right, and that is where we intend to go. I think that we have made steps already in that direction in steps 1, 2 and 3. This country is freer than almost any other in Europe in terms of our economy and of our society. That is partly because of the very rapid vaccination effort here, but I hope that my hon. Friend can take from that the direction we intend to go.

Covid-19 Update

Steve Brine Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The hon. Gentleman is obviously a mentor of his former leader, Tony Blair, who made this case at the weekend. We are looking into this question for certain occasions. It will be necessary for international travel. However, in this country we have moved together—everyone is treated equally—in the same way that the virus treats us equally. I note that Israel, which did bring this proposal in, has now removed it.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

The Secretary of State’s announcement that we are opening up appointments for 25-year-olds will be warmly welcomed by many in the NHS in my area, so I thank him for that. On any possible delay to stage 4 of the road map on the 21st of this month, I totally get the logic that he is talking about; he is absolutely right to reserve judgment until one week before, as was always to be the case when the road map was published. However, may I gently press him to tell the House what we would be delaying for? Would it be a world without covid and therefore without any possibility of a variant of concern in the future, which I do not think is his belief? Can he see, though, why, for many, that would be to write covid a blank cheque and just continually delay?

[Matt Hancock]

That is an excellent question astutely put. The purpose of the road map, and the purpose of following the data within the road map and therefore having not-before dates, is that we are in a race between the vaccine programme and the virus, and with the delta variant the virus got extra legs. Our goal, sadly, is not a covid-free world, because that is impossible; the goal is to live with covid much as we live with some other unpleasant diseases, including, of course, flu. That does mean that there will be vaccinations long into the future; it means that, especially in winter, in hospitals for instance, we will have to be very careful to prevent infection from spreading; and it means that we will have to live with this virus and manage our way through it, but with the supreme power of science and the vaccine at our hand. That will be so powerful, and it is already proving, including through the data that I announced to the House just now, to be an incredibly powerful ally in getting us through this. However, at the moment, only 76% of people have had the jab and only 52% of people have had both jabs, and unlike with the previous variant, the second jab appears to be even more important this time around.

Covid-19: Government Handling and Preparedness

Steve Brine Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Of course we are donating items directly—for instance, to India, Nepal and others—but the single biggest global contribution that the UK has made is the Oxford vaccine, which is being delivered at cost by AstraZeneca around the world following funding from Oxford, AstraZeneca and the UK Government. That has already led to 450 million jabs globally, two thirds of which are in low and middle-income countries. Everybody, in all parts of this country, should be proud of that, and there was Scottish support in the development of that vaccine. Of course, we will do as much as we can within the official development assistance budget directly, but that decision to waive the intellectual property charge has been called for from others—from President Biden down—but it is something that we in this House and the whole country should be very proud of.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

The vaccine roll-out is going really well in my area and I cannot help but note that the turning of the tide against covid, because of that roll-out, seemed to exactly mirror the turning of the year. Is not it the case that, far from the world being divided into people who are either useless or brilliant and the British state failing at every turn, we have a Government in this country who did their best and a public who came together, as always in the UK, when the chips were down?

[Matt Hancock]

My hon. Friend, who was a superb Health Minister, has captured not just the spirit of what this country has been through in the last 18 months, but the spirit of the debate today in this House. The truth of the matter is that we work best when we work together, and we work together when we have a common mission, and the common mission has been tackling this virus. It is absolutely true that we must always do that with an open mind on how to do it better in future, but, in my view, the attitude needed is one where you welcome people in and take things forward in a spirit of positive partnership. That is how you get stuff done, and that is how we have made the progress we have been able to make.

Public Health

Steve Brine Excerpts

Monday 26th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

No, I am not suggesting for a moment that such a system should be in place forever, and clearly there has to be scientific evidence about that. However, we certainly need to be at a more advanced stage of our own roll-out before we give such consideration, as the right hon. Gentleman suggests. The comprehensive hotel quarantine system should already have been in place.

The second weakness in the current position is that there are countries with significant outbreaks of the South African and Brazilian variants that are not even on the red list. We understand that the recent South African strain discovered in south London came to the UK via a traveller from an African country not on the red list. Warning No. 2 was ignored, and it came to pass. We know that people travelling to the UK on connecting journeys from red list countries have been mixing with people from non-red list countries on planes and in airports, creating dangerous opportunities for cross-infection. We have seen that in scenes from airports in recent months. Warning No. 3 was ignored, and it came to pass.

The Government try to say that their quarantine measures are tough, but the reality suggests otherwise. It is not just the Opposition giving these warnings. Minutes from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies on 21 January show that Ministers were told

“that reactive, geographically targeted travel bans cannot be relied upon to stop importation of new variants…due to the time lag between the emergence and identification of variants of concern, and the potential for indirect travel via a third country.”

When the director general of Border Force gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee, he set out a damning statistic that of the 15,000 people entering the country each day, only around 1% were entering hotel quarantine. That leaves 99% of visitors entering the country with virtually no controls. It is no use the Government saying that other quarantine measures in place are working, because their own figures show that just three in every 100 people quarantining have been successfully contacted. It is a record of negligence that leaves the doors open.

We know things are in a dire state when a video exists of the Home Secretary speaking against her own quarantine policy, and even the implementation of the half-baked measures we have now has been beset by mismanagement. It took 18 days after the announcement on 27 January for hotel quarantine to begin—more time lost. Even now, I hear reports from colleagues about mismanagement of the system—people unable to book in, poor service, lack of support for disabled people, and exceptions not working as they should for people in difficult circumstances. Then there is the Government’s glacial pace of adding countries to the red list.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

May I probe a bit further the point raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) about the regime the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) is proposing? The right hon. Gentleman said he would like to see our domestic vaccine programme a little further advanced and mentioned the figure of 99%. Let me give him another 99% figure: groups 1 to 9 on the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation list account for 99% of those who are hospitalised and then die from covid. Given that we have already vaccinated those groups and that by the end of July we will have offered a vaccination to the whole adult population, what more does he want?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

It is clearly about our own vaccination roll-out, but it is also about vaccination rates around the world, as the hon. Gentleman knows. However, I point out to him and to his right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean that this system should already have been in place, and I have been arguing for it for several months. I had the same debate with the Minister two months ago, back in February.

I think people watching this debate will be staggered to discover that travellers from India were required to isolate in hotels only from Friday, at a time when India, sadly, is in the midst of a devastating wave, with the highest recorded daily cases of covid anywhere in the world. The stakes for these failures are incredibly high. We have seen outbreaks of variants from South Africa, Brazil and India here in the UK. Until now, strict lockdown conditions are likely to have helped to halt the spread, but as lockdowns lift that handbrake comes off. The Government’s blasé attitude was summed up by the Prime Minister himself when he predicted that a third wave from Europe would

“wash up on our shores”.

It does not have to be this way. Throughout the crisis, the Government should have acted more decisively to secure our borders from the first emergence of the virus to failing to act swiftly on the devastating outbreak in India. In debating this statutory instrument, we are clear that the measures are nowhere near enough to provide the protections our country needs. The hopes of our country rely on guarding against vaccine-resistant strains of the virus reaching the UK, but the Government are just not delivering the protections we need. The Government must think again; they must bring forward the long-awaited sector support deal for our aviation industry and measures that deliver the comprehensive hotel quarantine system the country so desperately needs.

--- Later in debate ---

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

I do not intend to detain the House for too long, but I have some questions, and I will explain to the Minister why I am raising them now. I think that they are in order. If I understand this correctly, the Government have indicated that, as of 17 May, more international travel may well be possible, subject to a review, and they have indicated that they will give people a week’s notice of those changes. Mr Deputy Speaker, you will have spotted that the date for that announcement to take place is when we are expecting the House to be prorogued before the state opening of Parliament, so this is probably the last opportunity—depending on whether we have Transport questions on Thursday—for Members to ask Ministers questions about the international travel regime before it might change. I happen to think it is important that those questions are asked in the House, rather than simply being left to be asked at a press conference.

Before I set out those questions, however, let me just follow up my question to the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds), who opened the debate for the Labour party. He answered one of my questions, when I could not quite work out why Labour had tabled a motion to revoke these regulations. He confirmed that Labour does not intend to press that to a vote, which makes sense, but he did not really deal with the other question I asked or with the companion question that my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) asked. I pressed the right hon. Gentleman on how long he felt a tougher regime should be in place, and in answer to me he indicated that it should be dependent on our vaccination roll-out, whereas in answer to my hon. Friend, he seemed to suggest that it would depend on what was going on around the world.

The reason that I am labouring this point—I am going to press the Minister on it as well—relates to what the regime is trying to deliver. If this is about worrying about what is going on in the rest of the world—given that it is entirely possible, even with a fair wind, that we will not have vaccinated the adult population around the world until the end of next year, 2022—this whole travel regime could be in place for the rest of this year and the whole of next year, which has very significant implications. If, however, the regime is to stay in place until we have vaccinated every adult in this country, that would have very different implications, as my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester pointed out, as we will have offered every adult a vaccination by July.

My question to the Minister is: will she set out for the House what the Government’s current thinking is? She has indicated that the regime should stay in place for little while, but I note that the explanatory memorandum to these regulations reminds us that the overall international travel regulations will cease to have effect on 8 June this year. That is not far into the future, so the Government will have to make a decision about whether to allow those regulations to lapse on 8 June, effectively resulting in no controls on international travel or, whether—as I suspect is more likely—to bring in further regulations, in which case they will need to be clear about how long they wish those regulations to remain in place.

The exchange between myself, my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester and the right hon. Member for Torfaen illustrated this question. Is this about how well we have rolled out vaccinations in the UK and therefore protected our population from covid? The Minister will know that we already have in place very good genomic sequencing, and as I understand it, all the manufacturers and developers are ready to tweak the vaccines they have already developed, if the genomic sequencing indicates any need to do so. At the moment, although these variants are called variants of concern, none of them evades the vaccine. My understanding is that the vaccines are effective against all of them, certainly in terms of preventing serious disease, hospitalisation and death. There is, I understand, a question mark about the extent to which the vaccines protect against the South African variant as far as mild disease is concerned, but if it enables mild disease to take hold then I am not sure that is something about which we need to be enormously concerned.

I press that point because if the Government are going to take the view that they are so worried about a potential variant that does not yet exist developing somewhere in the world and undermining the efficacy of our vaccine position, then it seems to me that that means we will have to keep the regulations in place at least until the whole of the world is vaccinated and the virus is driven down to a very low level globally. That may not be until the end of next year, on a best-case scenario. That has really quite dramatic consequences for the airline industry, the travel industry and the 3 million people who work in it, and the freedoms of our population, so if the Minister could say a little bit about that, that would be helpful.

[Steve Brine]

Perhaps it would be helpful if the Government were to say what level of reduced efficacy they would consider to be a cause for concern. Any flu vaccine that I ever purchased when I was doing the Minister’s job had about 60% efficacy. The three vaccines being used at the moment are way ahead of that, so even a reduction in efficacy of 10% would still significantly outpace the flu vaccine we currently roll out. Would it be helpful if the Government said at which level it would drop to where the indicators would flash red?

[Mr Harper]

That is a very good question. More widely, it would be helpful if the Government and their scientific advisers had a slightly better conversation with the public about variants and the impact they may have on vaccine efficacy, rather than this constant—I accept this is not always how they intend it, but it is the way it gets reported—conversation about scary variants or mutants.

Actually, at the moment—I am sure the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—all the variants we are aware of are dealt with by the existing vaccine portfolio to a greater or lesser degree. What we are concerned about is what may come along in the future, but we have a very good system in this country at least. My understanding is that none of the vaccine manufacturers yet feel they have to change the design of their vaccines to deal with any variant we are currently aware of anywhere in the world.

One further point I want to make is that how we name variants—the Kent variant, the South African variant, the Indian variant—is not actually terribly helpful. It gives the impression to the public that the variants only come from specific geographic parts of the world and if only we put in a sufficiently robust border arrangement, we could keep them out. The reality, of course, is that those variants could occur anywhere in the world, including here in the United Kingdom. I think I am right in saying that the best advice that exists is that even an incredibly tough border regime can, at best, only slow the transmission of viruses, rather than keep them out forever. At some point we will have to decide when we will allow travel to get back to normal, which is why I asked whether that would be about how the world is vaccinated or how the United Kingdom is vaccinated. I do not think that question has been sufficiently answered.

Specifically on the regulations, there is reference to the ports by which people are allowed to enter the United Kingdom. I want to ask one or two questions about ports of entry. The Minister answered some of this, in response to the concerns raised by the shadow Home Secretary, when talking about the efforts that Heathrow in particular has put in place to try to keep people separate. However, it is the case, having looked at pictures, and listened to the challenges faced by airport operators and the first-hand testimony of people travelling, that people from different countries, including red list countries and non-red list countries, are kept in airports for significant periods of time in a way that is not particularly well socially distanced. That is clearly a risk, if we then insist that they will have to spend time in quarantine, when they have just spent a considerable period of time next to people from completely different countries.

I mention that because I wonder what plans the Government have in place, as they think about increasing the volume of international travel, to automate the process. The Minister will be aware—I am, as a former Immigration Minister—that one of the ways in which we deal with the volumes going through airports is to have e-gates to automate the process of checking people’s travel documents. In order to deal with a significant increase in volume, the testing information on the passenger locator form will, I think, have to be put into some digital form, if airports are to have any hope of dealing with the volume of passengers. Given a significant increase in passenger volumes, even with an increase in the number of Border Force staff, in no way will airports be able to cope with checking all that information and dealing with the volume of flights without becoming absolutely overwhelmed. If the Government might change the position in just a couple of weeks’ time, will the Minister say how far forward those plans are?

My final point—you will be pleased to know, Mr Deputy Speaker—is about vaccine passports. I am not at all persuaded of domestic vaccine passports. They run a great risk of creating a two-tier society. Also, once we have vaccinated the adult population, in particular with the take-up rate among the groups so far of more than 95%, I am not at all sure what a domestic vaccine passport gets us once we have reached that level of vaccination coverage.

It seems to me that vaccine passports would be a big mistake. As the Paymaster General, who responded to the debate last Thursday, said to me, domestic vaccine passports and international ones are quite separate and should be treated separately, and it would be a mistake to run them together. I was heartened to hear that, and I hope that is the position the Government will stick to.

Internationally, however, some questions arise from the regime put in place here. I am much more relaxed about international vaccine passports than about domestic ones. We have already have precedents—people have to have yellow fever vaccinations to go to specific countries—and of course if a country requires people to be vaccinated to enter it, it is entirely up to it what rules are set for people who want to visit that country.

My first question for the Minister is because I understand that the World Health Organisation states in its most up-to-date policy paper of 5 February—the latest one on its website—that it does not recommend that countries have proof of covid vaccination to exist before they allow people to travel. The reason it sets that out is that it fears that that would in effect incentivise countries that had already had a good roll-out of vaccine to hog the global supplies for themselves, setting up some unfortunate sets of incentives. That is the organisation’s latest position. Will the Minister say whether the British Government will go along with that position?

I have two questions. First, if the UK Government ease up on the travel rules in May, is their position that they will require foreign nationals to be vaccinated before they come to the United Kingdom, or will the Government stick to the testing regime? Secondly, what steps have the Government put in place, working with the International Air Transport Association and other international bodies, for any kind of international vaccine passport? Perhaps the Minister will update the House on the Government’s plans.

I raise that because, if the Government announce a change to the international position in the next couple of weeks, knowing what plans are under way—and, I hope, this House being asked for its authorisation to implement such measures—would be very welcome. With those few questions, I conclude my remarks.

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.

Covid-19: Community Pharmacies

Steve Brine Excerpts

Thursday 11th March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con) [V]]

I am delighted that the Henley reveal is not on show today. It is always good to discuss community pharmacy in the House. In doing so, I declare my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and of course my experience as a former pharmacy Minister.

The Medicines and Medical Devices Act 2021 has received Royal Assent, which is a good thing, as it is an important piece of legislation. I remember its conception. The Minister is right to say, as she has done previously, that it has the patient at its heart, but the Bill, and certainly the discussion around it, has also advanced the idea of making what would be a pretty fundamental change to community pharmacies through a shift to what we call the hub and spoke model, which I want to touch on. The Minister is very familiar with the arguments. For those who are not, we are talking about a totally new way of working, whereby independent pharmacists have a hub pharmacy that dispenses medicines on a large scale for regular spoke pharmacies, which then supply them to the patient.

A consultation as far back as 2016 flew this flag, and it was confirmed in the long-term plan of January 2018. Fast-forward to life in the pandemic, and it is true that the combination of rising prescription volumes and reduced patient access to primary care services has put great pressure on community pharmacies to keep up the face-to-face contact that their customers want and need. Boy, have they done that. I am so glad that Ministers have consistently recognised the work of community pharmacists throughout, and I join colleagues in paying tribute to mine. They are a workforce who just get on with it.

Adding the rising volumes and access to primary care services to the Government’s requirement for greater value from pharmacy, it is clear why many people believe that a hub and spoke dispensing model is the way forward. On the flipside of the debate, many are understandably worried that centralised dispensing could drive down costs in pharmacy. Unless the pharmacy on the high street then acts as the spoke part by handling the prescription to the patient, we just end up with a bigger distance-selling pharmacy market and a lack of patient contact, which then puts opportunities for wider primary care contact out of reach. Put simply, the unintended consequence could be a total stitch-up that leaves community pharmacy not so much as “always the bridesmaid, never the bride”—as I have often heard—but more like “jilted at the altar,” and I do not want to see that happen. The truth is that, as with everything else, and especially the growth of distance-selling pharmacies, it is somewhere in between.

We can debate the pros and cons all we like, and I am really pleased that the Minister has committed to a full public consultation on hub and spoke, to ensure that we get the right model going forward, but let us be clear that it is already happening, with the technology embedded in the multiples and the large chains long ago. Can she give an indication of when she thinks it is likely that her Department will bring forward concrete proposals to consult on hub and spoke?

In closing, I return to an old theme of mine in respect of community pharmacy: whatever the future architecture of the NHS—obviously, the White Paper is being discussed—it must take its rightful place as part of pre-primary care, as I call it. That is why I have always been so positive about the potential that primary care networks have for this sector. PCNs are a great chance for community pharmacy, and the new integrated care systems set out in the White Paper are the chance to bake in primary care, in its widest sense, within the NHS family. Hub and spoke is a positive opportunity moment for community pharmacy post covid, but only if the income and the process of dispensing are replaced in a way that allows the sector finally to realise its potential as part of primary care.