PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Covid-19 Update - 19 October 2020 (Commons/Commons Chamber)
Debate Detail
While the disease is dangerous for all adults, especially with growing evidence of the debilitating consequences of long covid, we know it is especially dangerous for older people. Cases continue to rise among the over-60s, who are most likely to end up in hospital or worse. I am very worried that the cases per 100,000 among the over 60s is 401 in the Liverpool city region, 241 in Lancashire, and in Greater Manchester has risen over the past week from 171 to 283. That is why the Government have been working so hard to act, and I am very glad that we have been able to agree, across party lines, the necessary measures in Liverpool and Lancashire, and we are working hard to reach such an agreement in Greater Manchester.
We are doing everything in our power to suppress the virus, support the economy, support education and support the NHS until a vaccine is available. That is the right strategy, charting a path that allows for the greatest economic and social freedom while protecting life. The director general of the World Health Organisation said last week:
“Allowing a dangerous virus that we don’t fully understand to run free is simply unethical.”
I agree. I know that this is difficult and I know that it is relentless, but we must have resolve, see this through and never stop striving to support the science that will one day make us safe.
I was at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital this morning meeting NHS colleagues who are caring for patients with such dedication, as they always do. I heard from them how important it is for everyone to support the NHS by keeping the virus down so that the NHS is not overwhelmed by covid patients and it can deliver all the essential non-covid care that people need. I am glad to report that the number of people experiencing a long wait for cancer treatment has been brought down by 63% since its peak in July. I want to thank all the cancer teams who are working so hard to ensure people get the cancer screening, diagnostics and treatment that they need, even in these difficult circumstances, but the best way to protect cancer treatment and all the other treatments in the NHS is to keep the prevalence of coronavirus down.
In doing this, of course, we are taking as localised and targeted a way as possible. Our local code alert level system means that we can have different rules in places such as Cornwall, where transmission is low, and Liverpool, where transmission is high and rising. On Thursday, I updated the House about several areas of the country that we are moving into the high alert level and today I would like to inform the House at the earliest possible opportunity that Lancashire has now moved into the very high alert level. Infection rates in Lancashire are among the highest in the country and are continuing to rise rapidly, including in the over-60s as I mentioned. Both the number of cases and the number of hospital admissions are doubling almost every fortnight, and the number of covid patients in intensive care beds in Lancashire has already reached nearly half the number seen at the height of the pandemic earlier this year. So we knew we had to take rapid action to suppress the epidemic in Lancashire.
We have always said that we stand side by side with any local area that agreed to move into this third tier and offer substantial support to local authorities, including for testing, tracing, enforcement and business support. I would like to thank local leaders in Lancashire who have been working with us so constructively, and I am sure that their willingness to put politics aside in the national interest, and in the interests of the people whom we serve, will save lives and protect livelihoods at this difficult time.
Following the successful introduction of measures in Liverpool and Lancashire, talks continue this afternoon with Greater Manchester, led by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government. This week, further discussions are planned with South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, the north-east and Teesside.
Sadly, over the weekend, we have seen very directly the impact of this disease. I was shocked to learn on Saturday of the sad death from coronavirus of Bill Anderson, the brother of Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson. My heart and, I am sure, the sympathies of the whole House go out to the Anderson family and the people of Liverpool, who have lost a brother. All our thoughts are with our colleague, the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), who is in hospital with pneumonia after testing positive for covid-19. We wish her a speedy recovery and send all our support to the NHS in Greater Manchester, which is caring for her and so many others.
I would also like to provide an update on testing—another vital line of defence. We are testing more people than any other country in Europe. We are now doing over 300,000 tests a day, up from 2,000 a day in February, and we have opened over 500 test sites, including new walk-in centres in Dundee on Friday, in Edinburgh on Saturday and in Newcastle this morning.
Alongside that important work, we are working hard to discover and evaluate new testing technologies that are simpler, faster and cheaper. Some of these tests can produce a result as quickly as in 15 minutes, and we will make them available to local directors of public health as part of our strategy for local action, starting with areas in the very high alert level. We are rolling them out across hospitals and care homes, to test patients and residents yet more regularly and keep people safe, and for schools and universities, so that we can keep education open safely through the winter. These tests have shown real promise, and we are both buying them now and ramping up our ability to produce them at scale here in the UK. We will stop at nothing to support this extraordinary scientific and logistical endeavour, which can give us hope on the path back to normal life.
Finally, I would like to inform the House that on Friday we laid regulations to support the roll-out of both the flu vaccination and any covid vaccination. While, of course, no vaccine technology is certain, we must be prepared to deploy a vaccine as soon as one is safely available. The new regulations provide for a wider range of clinically qualified people to administer vaccines and for the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency to grant a UK licence for a vaccine before the end of the transition period, should that be necessary. We wish all our scientists well in this vital work, and we will give them all the support they need.
We are once again at a decisive moment in our fight against coronavirus. While our scientists work round the clock on the solutions that will finally bring this crisis to an end, we must all play our part, come together and work together to keep people safe, suppress the virus and save both livelihoods and lives. I commend this statement to the House.
As always, I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. The virus continues to grow nationwide. The R rate is between 1.3 and 1.5. An increasing number of care homes across the country have seen outbreaks, with 214 in the last week. Admissions to critical care continue to rise nationwide—yes, at a slower rate than in the first wave, but at this stage in the first wave, critical care admissions were starting to fall because of the lockdown. They currently continue to rise.
We welcome the progress that is being made on saliva testing and LAMP—loop-mediated isothermal amplification —testing. It will allow us to introduce wider mass testing, which is a vital tool in taking on this virus. I pay tribute to the universities that are developing great testing innovations, such as Southampton University, and Leicester University in my constituency. What is the timescale for the advances in testing that the Secretary of State is talking about? Is the plan still for millions of tests a day? There was speculation back in September that his plan was for 10 million tests a day by February, so can he tell us what the daily testing capacity will be by the end of the year? We have seen delays in the pilots. Salford was supposed to be testing 250 people a day using saliva testing, but that has now been refocused. It is vital that testing of all frontline healthcare workers is now introduced to help the NHS get through the winter, so will the Secretary of State urgently speed up the validation of pooled polymerase chain reaction testing in the Lighthouse labs? It is not yet happening in those labs, and we really need it to be.
This virus spreads with speed, so testing must be quick, yet results are still not turned around in 24 hours. Again, when will they be turned around in 24 hours? Contacts must be traced quickly, and those who are traced must be given support to isolate, yet we have—to be frank—a badly designed system that is failing to trace sufficient contacts, costing £12 billion and paying consultants £7,000 a day. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) justified these failings yesterday on “The Andrew Marr Show”, saying that when the virus is accelerating,
“any test and trace system of whatever kind has less utility”.
After spending £12 billion, Ministers now just shrug their shoulders and say, “Well, the virus is accelerating, so contact tracing is less useful.” It is simply not good enough. The country is facing further restrictions because test and trace failed, so again, I urge the Secretary of State to fund local public health teams to do contact tracing everywhere and follow international best practice, such as Japan’s, where they focus on investigating clusters using retrospective contact tracing. We need that backward contact tracing everywhere, not just in the places that are hotspots.
This virus exploits clustering and social interaction, and I have always accepted that socialising in closed spaces, especially with poor ventilation, is a driver of transmission. However, for interventions to be effective, the consent of local people is needed and economic support is vital, yet we are now in a situation where the Bishop of Manchester—a bishop, for goodness’ sake—describes Liverpool as “feeling cheated”, Lancashire as “feeling bullied”, and Manchester as “angrily determined”. If the Secretary of State is seeking to impose greater restrictions on Greater Manchester, surely it needs financial support so that people’s livelihoods are not put at risk, so can he tell the Chancellor to spend less time admiring himself on Instagram and instead deliver a financial package to safeguard jobs across Greater Manchester?
The Prime Minister has promoted the tier 3 restrictions because they mean that, in his words, “there is a chance” to bring the R number down, but how do these restrictions in the north arrest growth in the virus across the rest of the country? The R number across the south-east is 1.3 to 1.5; across the south-west, it is 1.3 to 1.6; and across the east of England, it is 1.3 to 1.5. Cornwall, Devon, Suffolk, Somerset and Ipswich have recorded covid rates per 100,000 in recent days that are higher than the average rates across Greater Manchester when it went into lockdown in the summer, so to get the national R number below 1, more intervention will be needed than is currently proposed. Is it not in the national interest to now follow the advice of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, and adopt a two to three-week circuit break?
Last week, when asked about a circuit break, the Prime Minister said, “I rule out nothing”. He also said that he “stands ready” to apply those measures if necessary. However, the Minister for the Cabinet Office yesterday ruled out a circuit break, so for clarity, have the Government now completely ruled out a circuit break in all circumstances? The cost of delay could be a deeper, longer, fuller lockdown. Is the Secretary of State now ruling that out?
I say to the Secretary of State that we have a window of opportunity. For much of the country, it is half term next week. If it is politically easier for him, he does not have to call it a circuit break: he can call it a firewall or a national moment of reset. Whatever he calls it, we need something, because the longer the Prime Minister dithers, the harder it becomes to take back control of this virus, protect the NHS and save lives. We urge him to act before it is too late.
The hon. Gentleman asked us to fund local contact tracing everywhere. We have put those funds into each local authority, but of course we put the most support into the areas that need it most. The Government’s approach of targeting the support and measures on the areas where they are needed most is at the core of how we—as he put it—retain the consent of people while we go through these difficult actions.
To be truthful, the hon. Gentleman is far closer to and more supportive of the Government’s position than he feels able to express at the Dispatch Box, not least because he asked for economic support. Let me just leap to the Chancellor’s aid and defence. The Government have put in unprecedented economic support to help people through these difficult times—billions of pounds of aid and further aid forthcoming. The hon. Gentleman asked in particular for economic support when an area goes into tier 3, which is exactly what I announced in respect of Lancashire. That is of course part of the discussions that we have with local authorities when further actions are needed.
So, there absolutely will be more economic support from the Government, yes; more work with local authorities to deliver the local approach that is needed, yes; and more testing capacity, yes. These are all the things that the Government are delivering and it behoves the hon. Gentleman to acknowledge and support them, as clearly we are all trying to deliver the same thing, which is to suppress the virus and save lives.
Given the dangers of conflicting public health messages when local leaders and national leaders say different things, is it not time to consider aligning incentives by saying that local leaders have the responsibility to bring down the R rate and giving them the powers and resources to do that if necessary, but also saying that if they fail to do that, they will be stripped of those powers to allow the Government to—to coin a phrase—take back control?
I would merely point out that over the past week in Greater Manchester the rate of infection among those aged over 60, which is the group most likely to end up in hospital, has risen from 171 per 100,000 to 283, so it is absolutely vital, from a public health perspective, that we act.
On the specific point that my hon. Friend makes, absolutely we must ensure, just as places have to go into level 3 restrictions when we are concerned about the ability of the NHS to cope if things get further out of hand, that so too will we reduce those restrictions as soon as we can safely. We will do that not necessarily across a whole county, but on a district-by-district level if that is what the data says should be done. That is something we are constantly looking at. For now, the single most important message to everybody in Hyndburn and across Lancashire is: let’s pull together, follow the rules and get this under control.
I understand that SAGE highlighted that the impact of further potential restrictions will be felt very differently by different communities. SAGE suggests the need for immediate planning to refine measures to minimise potential harms and to mitigate impacts on vulnerable groups. Given the Government’s commitment to the levelling-up agenda, what are the Government’s plans to reduce the real risk that measures taken to respond to covid will continue to increase inequality and worsening levels of poverty and deprivation? In the north-east, we are not out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination, but can I urge the people of the north-east to carry on doing the right things?
On the testing, we are rolling out the tests as fast as we can. The use case is one of ensuring that more NHS staff are tested on an asymptomatic basis; there is more testing in care homes, where it is important to protect the most vulnerable; there is more support in education, to make sure we can keep education as open as effectively possible; and there is asymptomatic testing in areas where there is a big outbreak. All of that will be there to support outbreak control and get this virus under control.
“the short-term economic costs of lockdowns could be compensated by stronger medium-term growth, possibly leading to positive overall effects on the economy.”
The Government clearly disagree with the IMF’s assessment, but can the Secretary of State tell me whether he or his colleagues have carried out any analysis of the economic impact of a national circuit break?
The second point is that that must be, in the right hon. Gentleman’s words, handed over to local authorities. No, no, no; there has got to be teamwork with local authorities. It is teamwork that will help us get through this, not this attempt to separate people and say, “One side’s good, one side’s bad.” We are all on the same side in this fight against the virus.
I echo the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) about London. Many of my constituents have businesses across the border in south-west London, where it is not the case that the rate is over 100 per 100,000. There are large swathes of south-west London where it is well below that. Can the Secretary of State make sure that it is possible, as quickly as possible, to disaggregate those areas of London where the problems are less and to move back to a situation where those businesses can operate normally?
“we are now acting to simplify and standardise the rules at a local level.”—[Official Report, 13 October 2020; Vol. 682, c. 198.]
At that point, Liverpool was put into tier 3, and the gyms were closed in Merseyside and Halton, but when Lancashire went into tier 3 on Friday, gyms there were allowed to remain open. What is the reason for that difference? He should straightaway authorise the reopening of gyms in Merseyside and Halton. There is no evidence to support keeping them closed.
In Liverpool, the Government’s Test and Trace system is reaching only 59% of contacts and in Knowsley, 57%—both well below the 80% target. The percentage of contacts reached has fallen over the last month by 3.5% in Liverpool and 9% in Knowsley, just as both areas have been placed under the very high tier 3 restrictions. Why are those figures so low, why are they declining and what will the Secretary of State do to improve that performance, because we really need it to be better?
The specific geography of Chester means that many of our businesses, which were viable until only a couple of weeks ago, are now being damaged on one side by the restrictions and the lockdown on the other side of the river—the Welsh border—which runs through Chester, and on the other side by the imposition of tier 3 in Merseyside. Chester is being crushed from both sides, but both Wales and Merseyside are being heavily supported financially, whereas that support is not available to businesses in the middle in Chester. Will the Secretary of State consider that effect and provide financial support so that we do not get crushed between two lockdowns?
I wish to ask the Secretary of State about support for businesses. Viable businesses in Lancashire are now knocking on the doors of our district councils to ask for financial support, but those district councils have not been told under what criteria they will be able to distribute that support and have not had the cash released from Government. When will the Secretary of State get a grip on this situation?
Virtual participation in proceedings concluded (Order, 4 June).
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),
Question agreed to.
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