Health and Care Bill

Tim Farron Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 14th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Sajid Javid]

If it is on this issue, yes I will.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. Just a reminder that interventions need to be short and to the point, because there is a lot of pressure on time in this debate.

[Tim Farron]

My point is about boundaries. Lancashire and south Cumbria have a perfectly reasonable boundary, but does the Secretary of State agree that there is concern that, because most rural communities are attached to bigger, more populated urban ones, that can lead to an imbalance in decisions? One of the proposals that our community faces is that the Preston and Lancaster hospitals could be replaced by a single super-hospital somewhere in the middle. HIP2—the health infrastructure plan 2—is a good thing, but that would be very bad thing, because it would mean that people in south Cumbria could have a two-hour round trip just to get to A&E. Will he intervene and ensure that any proposals under HIP2 that undermine access to healthcare in rural communities are taken off the table?

[Sajid Javid]

I listened carefully to what the hon. Gentleman said. As I have said, no final decisions have been made, but if he would like a meeting with a Health Minister, we can arrange that so that the matter can be discussed further.

I am also very grateful to another of my predecessors, my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt), first for his leadership of the Health Committee, whose valuable report and recommendations we have taken on board, and secondly for his tireless dedication to the cause of patient safety, which sees its culmination in the Bill’s creation of the Health Services Safety Investigations Body. We must continue, in his words, that quiet revolution in patient safety. I have asked my officials to consider whether the Care Quality Commission could look broadly across the integrated care systems in reviewing the way in which local authorities and providers of health, public health and social care services are working together to deliver safe, high-quality integrated care to the public.

Social Care Reform

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The proposals in the health and care Bill are just a step on the road to reform, but they are an important step. That step includes the joining up of health and social care in integrated care systems and putting those on a statutory footing, and the oversight arrangements for social care provided and commissioned by local authorities. We will be building on those plans in our long-term plan for social care reform.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I am sure the Minister will agree that the two conditions that people most fear getting at some point in their lives are probably cancer and dementia. Yet, if someone gets cancer, the NHS will take care of them and the taxpayer will fund their treatment; if they get dementia, broadly speaking that is not the case. As has been said already, surely the only way through this is a significant injection of money. That means being honest with the British people that, collectively, we will have to pay for it. Does she agree that we would be right to say to the British people that they should pay an extra penny on income tax for social care, so that people do not have to lose their home and their dignity if they lose their health?

[Helen Whately]

I would not want to upset the Chancellor by talking about tax policy at the Dispatch Box, but, as I have said to colleagues—and, in fact, as the Prime Minister has said—one of the things that we are committed to as part of our social care reforms is ensuring that nobody should have to sell their home to pay for their care.

Covid-19 Update

Tim Farron Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

This change is emphatically not for the purpose of protecting those who have chosen not to get vaccinated. It is emphatically to ensure that we have the time to offer the jab—both first jabs to all adults and second jabs for those who have had their first. To go through the data on that, currently, 93% of over-40s have had their first jab, but there are still 4.5 million who have not yet had the second jab. We can get through the majority of those over the next four weeks. Then, of course, we have been able to bring forward the date by which we will have offered a first jab to everybody. This is about the ability of the people who want to come forward to get jabbed to do so, and that is what we will achieve by 19 July to that degree. I hope that we end up with an uptake of almost 100% by the end of this; the uptake figures have been absolutely astonishing, so we will keep offering, we will keep encouraging people to come forward and we will keep trying to make the system and the vaccines as accessible as possible, but the thing that is in the direct control of the Government—subject to supply, of course—is the offering of the jab, and that is the commitment that we have made by 19 July.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

The Secretary of State will know that the hospitality and tourism industry has probably been hit more than any other part of our economy throughout this period. One of the challenges at the moment is that the ongoing restrictions mean that hospitality and tourism businesses need more staff than normal in order to cater for fewer customers than normal. Is he aware that the biggest single issue raised with me by hospitality and tourism industry bosses in the lakes and the dales is a lack of staff? This lack of staff is largely caused by the Government’s new visa rules. Would he agree to get his Immigration Minister friend to sit down with me and, more importantly, hospitality and tourism leaders from Cumbria and other rural areas—and other parts of the country involved in tourism—to discuss an emergency way of getting that vital boost to our hospitality and tourism industry just now?

Coronavirus

Tim Farron Excerpts

Thursday 25th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD) [V]]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) said a moment ago, Liberal Democrats will not support the proposals on the table today. We consider the request for extended powers for the period of time to be an overreach—these are powers the Government do not need, and certainly do not need for a period of six months, taking us right into the autumn.

My great concern is that the Government’s default, knee-jerk attempt to seek these draconian powers for a lengthier period is beginning to fit into a pattern. We saw the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill in this place just a week or so ago, under which the Government are seeking powers to incarcerate people for up to 10 years if they protest against the Government. We are also seeing reports of the Government wanting to force carers to be vaccinated, when they have done so by choice already. That shows a complete lack of respect and tenderness towards people who have put their lives on the line for this past 12 months and longer to support others in their deepest moment of need. Of course we now have pub landlords being asked to be, in effect, border guards in their own pubs and to check a vaccine passport.

All this seems to indicate that we have a Conservative party in government that loves talking about liberty until it has to do something about it in practice, and when it comes to dealing with these issues in practice, its instincts are authoritarian. As always, if you care about liberty, you need your Liberals—and so the Liberals are guaranteed to be voting against this draconian set of powers on the table today. It is also worth bearing in mind that I do not think the police are crying out for additional extensions to their powers. What they want is two things: resources and clarity in the guidelines and laws that they do seek to enforce.

Throughout this pandemic the strictness of the laws has not been the issue; it has been the clarity of the guidance. The Government have very often been contradicting themselves, mixing messages and sending out the wrong messages, as well as not keeping the guidance themselves as individuals and therefore setting a terrifyingly awful lead.

I want to make just one suggestion. On the road map out of this difficult time that clearly we are all experiencing as a national community, outdoor education has no place whatever. We know when nightclubs are going to open, but outdoor education facilities in my constituency in the lakes and dales, and across the rest of the country, have no date for reopening. The Government are killing off a vital industry that is there to support our young people. Its skills are especially needed at a time like this, when we want to reconnect young people with a love of learning.

The lack of a date and of bespoke funding is killing off outdoor education. My friend Kirsty Williams, the Minister for Education in Wales, announced just the other day a particular package for outdoor education centres in Wales. There is a package in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Why is there not a bespoke package for outdoor education centres in England today? Today is surely the day for them to do just that.

It is also worth bearing in mind that as people become able to move in significant numbers, as of next Monday, to beautiful places such as the Lake District, we need—and have needed for some months now—investment in popularising the countryside code. That is so that people know how to behave in beautiful places, how to treat the local residents with respect and how to look after the environment that they have come to enjoy. I am pleased that the Government are, as of the Easter weekend, putting resources into the countryside code. They should have done it nine months ago when we asked them to.

My final point is about hospitality and tourism businesses beginning to reopen. They will not all be able to open at capacity when they are allowed to. That is why financial support for them must continue until the autumn.

Health and Social Care Update

Tim Farron Excerpts

Thursday 18th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I am currently working with the NHS to answer that question, which is a characteristically acute one from my hon. Friend. We are not yet able to answer it simply because the pace at which we can return activity to full, normal levels is not yet clear because the main barrier to that recovery is a combination of infection, prevention and control and the need for staff to get some R and R. We will know more in the coming weeks and months.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD) [V]]

There was no mention of cancer in the Secretary of State’s statement, nor a single penny in the Budget to boost cancer services, despite the fact that Macmillan Cancer Support’s figures show the need to increase all cancer services by 10% for a solid 15 months, starting now, to clear the cancer backlog.

Macmillan also says that there are 37,000 people with cancer who are not even in the system yet. Given the scale of this crisis, will the Secretary of State agree to set out an urgent, ambitious and funded plan to catch up with cancer, so that tens of thousands of people do not unnecessarily lose their lives?

[Matt Hancock]

The need to catch up on the backlog is there across all elective operations and of course that includes those for cancer. The good news is that the NHS has worked incredibly hard, especially in this second peak, to make sure that cancer services have remained working and effective as much as possible. Some cancer services have in fact delivered more than their normal pre-pandemic levels of care. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that we have to make sure that any backlog is reduced—that is a critical part of what I have been talking about today.

Covid-19

Tim Farron Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD) [V]]

My constituency has the highest proportion of its workforce on furlough of any constituency in the entire United Kingdom. There has been a sixfold increase in unemployment, and it is obvious why. It is because hospitality and tourism is comfortably our biggest employer. We have the Lake district, the Yorkshire dales and vast swathes of Cumbria so beautiful that they could not find a national park to put them in. For the people working in those sectors, the reality is that many businesses have gone to the wall already. Many, many more have survived, and they have done so because of the support that they have received. That was a wise decision that the Government took 10 months or so ago as we entered the first lockdown.

I encourage the Government not to throw away that investment now by penny-pinching towards the end of this pandemic crisis. The simple reality is that, yes, furlough is of vast importance for so many businesses to be able to keep their heads above water, but perhaps a quarter to a third or even more of their outgoings is nothing to do with staff; it is other overheads that they simply have no income or savings left to fund. Those are the businesses that are going to the wall by the week now in Cumbria and other tourist hotspots around the country.

I urge the Government to do four things: first, to extend the business rates holiday; secondly, to extend the VAT cut; thirdly, to extend furlough and to say they are going to do it right now, not delaying it until the Budget next week, because that confidence is what businesses lack, and that is what is pushing so many of them to the wall; and fourthly and finally, a specific grant package to deal with the simple fact that without any income or any savings now many businesses, though they can see the light at the end of the tunnel, might not make it to the end of the tunnel.

I must also make a further plea. After 11 months, what is preventing the Chancellor of the Exchequer from investing something to support the 4,000 people in my constituency—and perhaps 3 million people around the country—who have been excluded from any kind of support whatever, and who now face destitution as they seek to pay the rent or the mortgage and to feed their kids? I am talking about those people who are self-employed, but have been so for less than two years, those who are directors of small limited companies, taxi drivers, hairdressers, personal trainers and the like. Why will the Government not support the excluded? It is not too late for them to do so.

Let me make a final, very local point. As we pay tribute to all those people doing everything they can to serve our communities at times like this, I think about people working in social care and public health as well as the wider NHS, people working in schools, and people dealing with those who face housing need or who are looked after by our local authorities. Today Cumbria’s local government has announced a plunge into a top-down restructuring; what a witless waste of everybody’s time.

Covid-19 Vaccine Update

Tim Farron Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I will certainly join my hon. Friend in congratulating the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, the GPs and their teams and the many volunteers. I can confirm that Wales and the Welsh NHS will have received the allocation for groups 1 to 4 by mid-February for them to be able to do that, and I commend them for the work they are doing.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD) [V]]

Unpaid carers provide a huge service to our community in South Lakeland, especially for the people they care for directly. If they get ill, that is a huge welfare risk for the people they care for. There has been confusion over whether unpaid carers will be prioritised for the vaccine, because although the Government said that they would be in priority group 6, they are missing from other communications, including the summary list in the vaccine delivery plan. Will the Minister clarify once and for all that unpaid carers rightly will be on the priority list?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

We are absolutely looking to make sure that unpaid carers are on the priority list.

Covid-19

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley). Careless talk costs lives. We need to be absolutely clear about the science and be behind it.

On a personal level, I do not care whether the Prime Minister did or did not take a seven-mile bike ride yesterday. What I do care about is the lack of clarity. Clarity ensures that people know what is legitimate and what is not. I say that particularly as a Member of Parliament for the Lake district and the Yorkshire dales. I have no problem with people taking short trips to exercise—I think that is what is intended in the advice. I do have a problem with people packing up their car and making 100-mile or 150-mile journeys to exercise in the Lakes, or indeed anywhere else, at this time.

I want to focus my remarks on the hospitality industry. Tourism and hospitality is the fourth biggest employer in the country and the biggest employer in Cumbria by some distance. Undoubtedly, it has been the worst hit industry in this country during the pandemic. In my constituency, we have seen a sixfold increase in unemployment. At one stage, more than 40% of the entire workforce in my constituency was on furlough, largely because of the reliance on that remarkably important industry.

I make some calls for what the Government should do. I have listened to Cumbria tourism businesses over the last few days. First, the Government were right to defer business rates; I ask them to defer business rates for a further year. They were right to cut VAT; I ask them to extend the VAT cut for a further year. They have been right to extend furlough, but even if we ease restrictions in hospitality and tourism after March, they need to consider the continuation of some form of wage support beyond that period. I say that because we have otherwise healthy businesses that will be at the forefront of leading the fightback in our economy once we begin to move out of this crisis period. If we do not back those businesses now, they will be in no state to be part of the fightback. It is the cash that is going to be the problem. It is great for businesses to have the furlough and therefore have staff wages largely covered, but if a third or a quarter of their overheads are not staff-related, even furlough will not save those businesses from going under in the end.

The cash grants that have been made available to businesses at this time are far lower than those given in the spring. We need equivalent levels of investment in cash flow and grant support for hospitality and tourism businesses to those that we had back in the spring. We also need to stop overlooking the 4,000 people in my constituency who would be counted among the excluded. Many are self-employed or running their own companies, and they are the backbone of any recovery; we need them if we are to get out of this mess after the virus is defeated.

Covid-19 Vaccination Roll-out

Tim Farron Excerpts

Monday 11th January 2021 Westminster Hall

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I thank the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) for her great introduction to the debate. I also thank the hundreds of thousands of people who signed the petition, demonstrating the interaction between the people of this country and the Parliament that seeks to represent them. As many hon. Members have said, vaccination is a light at the end of the tunnel that gives us all a sense of hope, but of course the danger is that that tunnel will be longer for some than for others.

The main topic of the petition is education. People talk about the reopening of schools, but they are open: far more children are being taught in our schools and in school settings today than during the April-May phase of the earliest lockdown, for lots of very good reasons. One reason why schools have been otherwise closed as part of the lockdown is that we recognise that the science shows that although children do not get badly affected by the disease, they clearly spread it.

We are asking teachers, teaching assistants and other school staff to put themselves in harm’s way for good reason, so it is right that they be considered as part of the priority vaccination list alongside others. No one wants to muscle their way to the front of the queue, but we recognise that these are people who are doing an immense service for our children and our country, and who are putting themselves at risk at the same time.

As a Member of Parliament for a very rural constituency, I am aware that delivering a vaccine in a place such as my constituency, which is bigger than Greater London, is a challenge. I am concerned that there are parts of my community where we have yet to get the vaccine rolled out; I ask for the Minister’s intervention, through the CCGs, to ensure that we fast-track site approval. We and the local primary care network particularly want to see delivery of the vaccine at the surgery in Windermere. The primary care network is already delivering it in Grange and in many care homes, but can we get it delivered from the surgery in Windermere as soon as possible? I would like to say the same for the Yorkshire dales end of my constituency: people in Sedbergh in the western dales are having to travel to Kirkby Lonsdale or further to get the vaccine.

It is important, particularly for older people and people who rely on public transport, that we do not overlook rural communities such as ours and that we ensure that the vaccine is delivered close to where people live. Many hon. Members have talked about the importance of community pharmacists; involving them would allow the Government to roll out the vaccine really close to where people live and get it done more quickly.

Although I agree that 24/7 delivery of the vaccine is something that we should be doing, I am deeply concerned because I have talked to health professionals from right across my county and it is clear from the number of sites and the staff that we have that the capacity to deliver the vaccine far exceeds the amount of the vaccine. I would like to hear from the Minister what his strategy is for procuring sufficient vaccines so that we can meet those targets.

I also want to emphasise the importance of data, which people have talked about, so that we can hold the Government to account. For example, I and the whole of the local community would like to know what percentage of over-80s in the LA9 postcode, for instance, have been vaccinated once or even twice. That would ensure that there is healthy competition and would also allow us to hold the Government to account and know whether we will meet the targets. We know that that data exists: NHS England has it, but is not sharing it.

I have talked to local providers of the vaccine through our primary care networks, and they tell me that they could ask a secondary question themselves. They could double-report, but that takes two minutes per patient. That is time when they could be vaccinating patients, so they think that is a waste of time and a duplication. We know that that data exists because it is being collected, so why is it not being shared? Will the Minister guarantee that that information will be made public this week, district by district—indeed, postcode by postcode?

There is a light at the end of the tunnel for all of us, but the tunnel is longer for some than for others. What a great disappointment that the nearly 3 million people who are excluded from financial support through the coronavirus crisis continue to be excluded today. For them, the tunnel is impossibly long. They face deep debt and find it hard to abide by the rules and regulations, because to do so very often means not being able to pay their rent or look after and feed their children. I would like answers to the questions that I have put to the Minister when he makes his concluding remarks.

Public Health

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 6th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

The proposed restrictions are right. There is no greater freedom than the right to life and we are willing to suspend many freedoms to protect especially those who are vulnerable, and those who work night and day in the NHS and our care settings to protect us. They deserve and require us to abide by the regulations and rules—we owe it to them—not least because we can now see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Given that the vaccination programme is beginning, it is all the more urgent that the Government recognise the importance of supporting the economy and everybody within it throughout the coming months. We know that it is not an ill-defined and possibly indefinite period, but that this will be over at some point in the coming months. That is a source of great joy and should focus the Chancellor’s mind on the support that he needs to give those who are missing out. There are many of them: people who have been self-employed for less than two years; directors of very small limited companies, such as taxi drivers; people who have been on maternity leave. They have been excluded from support. It is an outrage that those people have been left to get into deeper and deeper debt because the Government have yet to devise a mechanism for supporting them. They must do so now. We need those people to build our economy back once we are out of this situation. To let them flounder in poverty now is outrageous and unacceptable.

I would also like the Government to pay attention to the needs and the plight of our outdoor education centres, which are in serious danger of closure. Many have already lost more than a third of their workforce in the past few months. There needs to be a Scotland-style direct grant support payment for those centres so that we can keep them going and they can contribute for years to come.

I also want the Government to come up with a specific and properly funded strategy for dealing with the backlog in cancer treatment. We estimate that 60,000 years of life will be lost to cancer due to the coronavirus pandemic, and it could get worse.

The vaccine is the light at the end of the tunnel. It is wonderful and I pay tribute to everyone involved in making that come to be and in administering the vaccines as we speak. However, the Government are making that tunnel a little bit longer than they need to. It is clear that supply of vaccine to places in South Cumbria is not as good as it might be. Places such as Sedbergh and Windermere have not yet got vaccination centres. Those sites need to be approved.

Finally, given that our teachers are teaching the children of key workers, they should also be vaccinated as a priority.