Organ Tourism and Cadavers on Display Bill [HL]

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I join in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, on presenting this excellent Bill, which will give the United Kingdom confidence that no one having a transplant with an organ from abroad will have received an organ donated without consent, and which will prevent the display of cadavers where that consent has also not been obtained. The noble Lord’s role in taking the opt-out organ donation Bill through Parliament was much welcomed at the time, and the change in legislation has worked, with public opinion very much supporting opt-out. Transplants are a wonderful medical advance, when the organs have been donated with the consent of the individual. They are a real gift of life to those who knew that they had run out of treatments.

This Bill tackles a very specific problem that has emerged in recent years and is a very helpful clarification of the law in two areas. First, I suspect that members of the public who visited the Imagine Exhibitions tour would have been horrified to discover that the plastinated cadavers on display came from China and were the bodies of those executed by Chinese authorities—and, possibly worse, that some of their organs had been harvested. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, along with other noble Lords, is right to say that the treatment of the Uighur Muslims by the Chinese authorities, as reported to the United Nations by the expert China Tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice, is extremely worrying.

The Chinese may, as with their treatment of the Falun Gong, deny their involvement in the use of people’s organs or bodies without their explicit consent. They say that forced organ transplanting stopped in 2015. We may choose, as we do, to listen to the evidence to the contrary presented to the United Nations. The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, made an important point about the lack of Chinese explanation about evidence presented to the United Nations; their silence on this does not confirm their innocence.

We on these Benches note that the NHS Blood and Transplant organisation has reported that between 2010 and July 2020

“there are 29 cases on the UK Transplant Registry of patients being followed up in the UK after receiving a transplant in the People’s Republic of China”.

We know that UK citizens are going to China to receive transplants. I wonder how many of them know exactly where those organs came from.

It is vital that the UK, whether its citizens or its NHS in treating people after transplants, is protected from the possible lack of consent from individuals into the use of their bodies for organ transplant or bodies on display. We are now behind the curve compared to many other countries that have legislated already against these practices, and that needs to be remedied as a matter of urgency. The noble Lord, Lord Ribeiro, with his expertise through his role in the Royal College of Surgeons, and the chairing role of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, on ethics, both spoke with authority on the medical practice of transplants and true consent. The experience of the noble Lord, Lord McColl, as a kidney transplant surgeon, of various nefarious practices in gaining consents for transplant, was very helpful. His last comments at the end about the development of plastic lenses for cataracts just shows how slowly and carefully this country has taken the progression of transplantation.

Along with the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, my thoughts turn to Burke and Hare, and their appalling supply of bodies for profit. Our own shameful history in this area means that we must ensure that standards of consent are of the highest calibre, which is why we need absolute clarity on consent for any practice involving organ transplants and cadaver display. The noble Baroness is right to say that this Bill prevents double standards. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans confirms the view of all speakers in this debate so far that we in the UK must be robust in ensuring that we have those right standards in our country and that we continue to push for an examination of the treatment of persecuted minorities in China. I hope that the Government, who are now taking very seriously the issue of China’s treatment of Uighur Muslims, will smooth the rapid progress of this small but vital Bill through Parliament and into legislation as soon as possible.

Elderly Social Care (Insurance) Bill [HL]

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and a vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Adult Social Care.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, for securing this early slot to present his Bill, although these Benches have serious issues about the principles and details of his proposals for creating an insurance scheme for elder social care. In March, I read the noble Lord’s paper on his scheme, which was published by Civitas. It is right that policymakers on all sides of the political spectrum think through the series of complex problems our social care sector currently faces. I thank him for continuing that debate in your Lordships’ House through the Bill, even if we do not believe that it is the solution.

The noble Lord referred to a live rail running alongside the funding reforms for elder social care. As many other noble Lords have said, these proposals miss the point. We need to devise a comprehensive elder social care system for everyone, whether home owners or not, and regardless of the value of their property if they are. We agree with many speakers today who have talked about having that universal social care system for everyone regardless of assets or income. I also echo the comments made by other noble Lords about the excellent report on this issue by the committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, and the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, is right to say that this House needs to debate that report as soon as possible. It is a disgrace that we have not had the chance to do so. It is very overdue.

In 2011, Andrew Dilnot’s report on the funding of elder social care was published and, for a while, all three major parties worked together to make it happen. Dilnot proposed a neat solution, using facts about average stay in a care home, percentage of people needing it and average costs. All three parties were on the point of agreeing it, when, I am sorry to say, the Conservatives walked away. Ten years on from the publication of the Dilnot report, it looks, if the leaks to the Times and the Telegraph are right, as if it is back on the agenda. I hope that is correct. It was a fair and equitable proposal that merited serious consideration.

We await the Government’s long-overdue proposals. It is two years since the Prime Minister announced it as an absolute priority and well over 18 months since he stood at the door of No. 10. However, the devil will be in the detail. The current funding system for elder social care is a disgrace, and we must remove the fault line, as the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, called it, between health and social care at the source. The problem with this Bill is that it tries to create an insurance system which the insurance sector does not want to provide for, so the noble Lord proposes that the Government go into the insurance industry themselves, an industry where they have no experience or track record of success. That way disaster lies.

What we need is a system that sets a cap on costs that individuals have to pay, in the style of Dilnot, but underlying that there must be a mechanism for funding social care properly, on a par with health and, as we said in our manifesto in 2019, to be funded beyond that Dilnot cap through taxation. That means that those who do not own their own homes or have homes of low value will have access to the same social care as those who have houses of high value. It would also stop the current inevitable but wrong practice of private social care patients funding the publicly funded ones because local authorities are not given enough funding by central government to cover that public funding duty.

Our social care sector needs a much more fundamental review, and I hope that the Government will provide that root-and-branch review beyond funding. The noble Baroness, Lady Verma, is right: until there is parity of esteem with the health sector, it will always be treated like the Cinderella service it feels it is. This Government’s callous discharging of patients with Covid into care homes last year in order to protect the NHS epitomises that, and I am glad they stopped that practice. Pay structures, career pathways and the treatment of staff are always compromised by the amount of funding coming into the social care system, which is why we are in this mess.

We also need to fund care support that is not based around care homes, which gives older adults the protection and support they need to keep them independent to avoid the need to go into care homes, which is vital with a rapidly ageing population. This Bill would not cover that critical part of the multidisciplinary services, including, for example, encouraging post-retirement, part-time working, whether paid or in the voluntary sector, to keep minds active, or including a healthcare system that considers prevention as a priority—for example, of fractures, rather than always just having to repair them, which often leaves people much less independent than they were before. It should also include investment in social activities in communities, which many local councils can no longer afford to do with their squeezed funding following government cuts.

We on these Benches do not support the Bill. I hope that proposals from the Government, whenever they finally appear, will present a root-and-branch reform of social care and not just the funding mechanism for home owners. Can the Minister say when they will be published and whether they will be the comprehensive reforms that all Members have highlighted in today’s debate?

Covid-19

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Thursday 15th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for taking this Statement, although I have to say—and I know this is not in his gift—that Monday to Thursday is probably too long a gap, but taking the Statement today might in this case prove useful because we have seen the reaction to the nearing of so-called freedom day, nationally and internationally. We have also seen the Government becoming progressively more cautious. That is not surprising because in England 42,000 Covid infections and 49 more deaths were recorded yesterday, hospital admissions have increased to more than 500 a day, up 50% on last week, and we now see routine operations being postponed and cancelled.

The NHS is rightly focused on waiting lists, which are at their highest level over the past decade at 5.3 million, and 336,733 people have been waiting more than a year, more than 76,000 have waited for at least 18 months and more than 7,000 have been waiting for two years. Emergency care is grappling with some of the highest summer demand ever, and this is in the context of NHS staff being exhausted and facing burnout. The NHS is also losing a significant number of staff to self-isolation, which has led to much reduced capacity due to infection control. As infection rates get worse and increase, what is the Government’s plan to deal with this situation?

Since Monday we have seen an increasing number of announcements and questions about how to safeguard against further increases in infection and the impact it is having on our NHS, schools, businesses and communities. Indeed, our own Lord Speaker wrote:

“Members are still expected to wear a face covering both in the Chamber, in indoor crowded spaces and when moving around the Estate, in line with general advice from Public Health England and the Chief Medical Officer. Members are strongly encouraged to use the testing facilities provided.”


On these Benches we intend to follow that advice, and I regret that some Members have already abandoned their masks when moving around the building and in the Chamber. We have staff to look after us who may not yet be fully vaccinated and, anyway, have no choice but to be here and who will continue to wear their masks to protect us. We should afford them the same consideration. Does the Minister agree?

On the “Today” programme a few days ago Professor Graham Medley, the chief modeller for the SAGE committee said: “Wearing face masks is worth it but only if everyone does it, not just 70%. I understand the Government’s reluctance to actually mandate it. On the other hand, if it is not mandated, it probably won’t do any good.” In other words, my understanding is that unless more than 70% wear masks, the protection for those who are still vulnerable will not work.

I fear we have been here before, with the Government back-pedalling and, in doing so, creating confusion and ambiguity—exactly the circumstances for the virus to thrive and mutate. The guidance issued by Ministers yesterday was stronger than businesses expected, many of which feel that they have been led astray, given the Government’s repeated characterisation of 19 July as “freedom day” and the end of most restrictions. The truth is that the guidance is hardly different from the current rules, except that businesses are now “encouraged” to keep many of their Covid adaptations rather than required to do so. Businesses now have just five days to decide how to implement the rules and how to communicate that to their customers. Does the Minister accept that the Government’s mixed messages have left many in legal limbo?

The new guidance gives little clarity to the 3.8 million extremely vulnerable people who are being told to avoid all unvaccinated people. How are they supposed to know whether or not someone is vaccinated? Does the Minister share the concerns raised by charities and patient groups that guidance has effectively told the extremely vulnerable to shield, without backing that up with any formal support from the Government for working or food shopping? Government advice to the clinically extremely vulnerable is to go to the shops at quieter times of the day after 19 July. I am not sure if that can be dignified as “support” for those most at risk of serious illness from Covid-19.

Is it true that the Government have not had anyone in post to deal with the clinically extremely vulnerable for three months, since Dr Jenny Harries was appointed chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency? If that is true, it is deeply concerning and it may explain why the Government have failed to prioritise support for these 3.8 million people.

What are the contingency plans for surging hospital admissions, which may remain high until the end of August, as called for by members of SAGE? The new guidance also says that businesses should encourage customers to check-in using the NHS app or otherwise leave their contact details. Can the Minister confirm reports that plans to reduce the sensitivity of NHS contact tracing have been reduced because of the surge in cases? What assessment have the Government made of the effectiveness of the app as an infection control tool, given reports that more than 20% of adults and a significantly greater proportion of young people have actually now deleted the app and many more are ignoring the advice to self-isolate?

I turn to those working from home. Despite the lifting of guidance to work from home, the Government say they expect and recommend a gradual return to offices. This is very confusing. What protection is proposed for those who are vulnerable, and for whom “freedom day” is not freedom day but a further lockdown day? If their employers demand that they return to work, even if they are immunosuppressed, for example, travel and enclosed places pose a threat to them. Under these circumstances, we need to be grateful for the good sense of the Mayor of London in following the science. Sadiq Khan has said that Transport for London will continue to enforce the wearing of face masks on services in the capital beyond 19 July.

While industry bodies said on Tuesday that no domestic train operators or major bus and coach firms will require customers to wear masks, the city mayors and others are calling for mask wearing on all public transport. Does the Minister agree with them? If Tracy Brabin, Andy Burnham and the other mayors had the power to enforce mask wearing to protect drivers and passengers, they would do so. They are doing the Government’s job for them.

What support are the Government going to give those areas with the lowest vaccination rates? Local authorities in London have, variously, 35%, 36% and 42% of their populations vaccinated. Does the Minister support the leaders of those authorities who say that they wish mask wearing to continue until they have got their populations caught up with vaccination?

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, the Prime Minister told us 10 days ago that we were heading for “freedom day” and that all the data was going in the right direction; all restrictions would be lifted, and now was the time to take personal responsibility for our behaviour and for the Government essentially to step back. The Secretary of State’s Statement on Monday confirmed that, although with a marginally more cautious note about taking care. I echo particularly the comments made just now by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, about the mixed messaging in the new guidance for business and on returning to work, which conflicts with what was said both in the Statement and by the Prime Minister.

However, since the Prime Minister’s and Mr Javid’s confident assertions on Monday, there has been an outpouring of disbelief from senior scientists and doctors. Cases are currently doubling every nine days, and yesterday there were 42,000 new daily cases—a level last seen at the beginning of the January total lockdown. If there is no slowing of that doubling rate, we will have hit 100,000 new daily cases by the beginning of August. And that is before the Government’s expected extra cases as a result of “freedom day” on Monday.

Ministers constantly say that there are fewer people in hospital, that fewer people need ventilation and there are fewer deaths, but what they do not mention is that those numbers are a matter of ratios, and that with the current level of cases our hospitals are already reporting A&Es with the equivalent of a winter surge and more wards being turned into Covid wards for patients. A letter published a few days ago in the BMJ, initially signed by 1,000 doctors, is at over 7,000 signatures and still rising. The data is already clear that the surge in new cases from three weeks ago is increasing hospital admissions right now. So what are the Government doing to support and protect our NHS from this sharp increase and pressure on doctors, nurses and hospitals right now?

While many people are being responsible, still following the guidance and using their face masks, sadly there are many who are not. I was talking to a young security guard who told me that, this week, she is finding it impossible to persuade people to put masks on in their local shopping mall, despite the fact that the rules are still in place. Yesterday, my local community pharmacist told me in despair that two people arrived separately asking him for PCR tests as they each had Covid symptoms and thought all the previous rules had just finished. Not for the first time, much of this is about the Prime Minister’s muddled communication style. In the light of the fact that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are going to retain the face mask mandate, and that the metro mayors, including Sadiq Khan and Andy Street, would like to do so, will the Government please reverse the lifting of the face mask mandate immediately, so that it remains in place, especially on public transport?

I turn to the new guidance for the clinically extremely vulnerable. I have to say that I have never read such an inconsistent and contradictory formal guidance note from the Government—and I have read a few. You should stay at home to be safe but if you cannot work from home, go in; you must remain socially distanced from everyone outside your bubble, even if they do not have to; you must not mix with unvaccinated people, outside or inside. I ask the Minister to tell me how on earth you know who is unvaccinated. As one of the CEV, do I stand in the doorway at opening time at my local greengrocer’s—a quiet time—and shout out to any customers and staff, “Anyone not vaccinated in here”? Of course not. The inevitable logic of this is the restart of shielding but without any of the previous support.

Worst of all, on Friday evening Public Health England put out a press release in which it mixed up advice to the clinically vulnerable and the clinically extremely vulnerable by citing vaccine efficiency research relating to the former in advice to the latter. That paragraph has been repeated in the formal guidance published on Monday. It is plain wrong. In a total administrative muddle, no one has gone through the nine pages of this guidance and updated it, so it is littered with references to the need to follow other rules and guidance for the general public in place at 17 May and 21 June, all of which goes next Monday. Please will the Minister ensure that the guidance is reviewed immediately to remove these anomalies?

All this, and the lack of answers to my questions last week about who the clinical lead is on the clinically extremely vulnerable, tells us 3.8 million former shielders that we have been not just forgotten but thrown to the wolves. Please will the Government actually review the guidance to keep the CEV group safe and provide the support that they need?

I also gave the Minister notice of the following two questions, as they both concern urgent and slightly unusual elements of lifting restrictions. First, for a couple of weeks now, Malta has said that it will not accept UK citizens who have received particular batches of the AZ vaccine manufactured in India, about 5 million doses of which have been given in the UK. Earlier this month, the Prime Minister reassured the press, saying:

“I am very confident that it will not prove to be a problem.”


However, holidaymakers are being turned away from Malta right now. When will the Government resolve this problem?

Secondly, those thousands of wonderful people who came forward to take part in the AstraZeneca clinical trials have been told that their vaccine status cannot be put on the NHS app, which means that they cannot go abroad, either to work or on holiday, or do certain jobs in the NHS that require this evidence. In early June, there was a blog on the BMJ website that set out these problems, but three months on from this issue being initially raised, there is still no resolution. It is utterly wrong that these publicly-minded people have now been left in limbo. Can the Minister say when this problem will be resolved and their vaccine details uploaded?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Bethell) (Con)]

My Lords, I am enormously grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Thornton and Lady Brinton, for their thoughtful questions. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, put it extremely well: we are at a delicate inflection point. It is a moment when the whole country needs to be cautious about rushing into change, but it is also a moment when the vaccine is having an enormous impact and change is therefore appropriate.

Infection rates are rising dramatically, but we cannot avoid the fact that hospitalisations and deaths are holding relatively steady. Today, there are 2,970 Covid patients in beds and 470 on ventilators. This is a massively smaller proportion than in the pre-vaccination spikes, when the connection between infection, hospitalisation and death was much firmer and more profound. At the same time, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, rightly pointed out, waiting lists are huge and the gap for diagnostics for severe diseases, such as cancer, is extremely concerning. It is our responsibility to step up to that deficit and not be wholly distracted by Covid. This is therefore a moment when we have to balance competing demands on our healthcare; we are trying to hit the right balance.

On masks, I pay tribute to the Lord Speaker for his leadership in this area and on asymptomatic testing. I saw his Twitter post where he was being swabbed for his LFD test—a commendable sign of leadership. He and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, are entirely right: we should wear masks out of consideration for others, including others who may not have had the vaccine or may not be able to have the vaccine. However, it is also entirely right that central government cannot mandate every aspect of human behaviour for months and years to come. I take great pleasure in the sight of local leaders using their influence to inspire the public in this matter. I remind the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, that DPHs are able to bring in mandatory measures where there are areas of outbreak. People need to know that the wearing of masks has an impact, and we are hopeful that they will go along with that. Although legal restrictions are being removed, the guidance will recommend that masks continue to be worn in certain situations, and businesses will be encouraged to support staff and customers who continue to wear masks.

In line with businesses, public services have always been free to set their own entry policies as long as they meet their existing obligations, including under the Equality Act. Public services must continue to protect workers and others from risks to their health and safety, including from Covid. That is only right and fair.

On the very important question of the immuno- suppressed and the immunocompromised, both noble Baronesses made extremely powerful points. I want to express in very clear terms my personal sympathy for all those who have concerns about the impact of the vaccine and for whom the rise in infections presents a very real threat to their health. However, I flag the Public Health England report on the clinically extremely vulnerable group as a whole. It makes it clear that there is little reduction in vaccine effectiveness for them compared to those who are not in high-risk groups, with between 76% and 93% effectiveness after a second dose. The PHE data also suggests reduced effectiveness for the immunocompromised and the immunosuppressed, particularly after one dose, but effectiveness after two doses is much higher. These general figures mask substantial variations, which we have discussed before—we would expect this between one set of compromised systems and another—but future studies will provide much more granularity on that. It is not right, however, to suggest that all those with compromised immunities are left unprotected by the vaccine.

The guidance for those who are clinically extremely vulnerable was updated and published on 12 July, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, pointed out. This confirms that changes to social distancing rules in step 4 will also apply to the CEV, who are advised to continue considering additional precautions that they may wish to take on board. I hear very clearly the noble Baroness’s points about anomalies in the guidance; I will take those back to the department and try to tidy up the documentation as she advises.

I can inform the House that we are writing to NHS clinicians to update them on them on the latest position regarding vaccine effectiveness for these groups and provide information on potential treatment options currently under development, such as monoclonal antibody therapies and novel antivirals, as well as access to antibody testing. This guidance will support clinicians in their conversations with patients. This is such a variegated group that that kind of personalised advice is critical.

The interim JCVI advice is that all clinically extremely vulnerable people, including immunosuppressed individuals and their household contacts, should be prioritised for a booster vaccine in the autumn. We are continuing to invest in the OCTAVE study, which will provide further data on patients with suppressed immune response. Interim results for the immediate response to the vaccine will be available from the middle of July.

We are absolutely focused on ensuring that the population is given clear guidance. The NHS app is undoubtedly an area that needs to evolve. Its effectiveness as a technological tool in giving people counsel and advice when they have been in close proximity to someone with the infection is extremely valuable. We are looking at ways in which that value can be enhanced.

On the specific question of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, about Malta, it is for member states to determine what they accept at their borders regarding vaccines. Foreign travel advice recently published for Malta misleadingly reported that it would not accept the specific batches received from the Serum Institute of India in the UK. This has now been resolved with agreement from the Maltese Government, and Malta is now accepting proof of vaccination from any Covid vaccine administered in the UK.

Turning to those who, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, rightly pointed out, stepped forward for the critical AstraZeneca vaccine clinical trials, being on a vaccine trial absolutely should not disadvantage them. The Government intend to take any action available to ensure that that is the case. We are working with clinical research sites to add participant information of vaccine clinical trials to the national immunisation management service—NIMS—to allow participants to access their NHS Covid pass for both domestic and international travel purposes.

Medical Devices (Northern Ireland Protocol) Regulations 2021

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Monday 12th July 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for a non-urgent statutory instrument that was tabled on 16 June and is being debated at an appropriate time, after MPs and Peers have had the opportunity to look at it in detail. I am sure I am not alone in looking forward to more of these in future. I also thank him for his helpful explanation at the start of this debate.

These regulations set out the mechanism to adjust legislation to ensure that the use of medical devices complies with both the EU’s and Great Britain’s regulations. As the noble Lord, Lord McColl, said, most people in Northern Ireland are likely to need to use one of these devices during their lives, so it is important that we get it right. He also referred to the problems with certain devices covered in the Cumberlege review. Can I further refine his question to the Minister? Which Minister will be responsible for the delivery of the Cumberlege review in Northern Ireland? Will it be the Minister in Stormont or the Minister in Westminster?

Even though it has been made necessary by the Northern Ireland protocol, this SI appears to have been come to sensibly, solving the problem without the noble Lord, Lord Frost, or the Prime Minister immediately blaming the EU. That has to be encouraging because an enormous amount of detail has to be sorted out. The noble Lords, Lord Empey and Lord Dodds, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Hoey and Lady Ritchie, set out their frustrations with these regulations as an inevitable necessity resulting from the Northern Ireland protocol. From these Benches—over the past three years, at least—we have warned about the problems of what became the Northern Ireland protocol and the position that it would leave Northern Ireland in, which we deplore. However, given that this Government pushed through the Northern Ireland protocol with the withdrawal Act, we believe that the issues with the implementation of the protocol will be solved only by the EU and the UK working together to find a solution.

It appears that this SI might be one of the first to take that route. This is at least better than the noble Lord, Lord Frost, and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Brandon Lewis, going to the Irish press just after 21 June to accuse the EU of adopting a theological approach to the protocol that is frozen in time, only a few days after the European Commission had announced its proposals for, among other things, medicines entering NI to be exceptionally regulated by the UK. That is a step forward, despite the concerns raised by the Northern Ireland Peers.

This SI lays the pathway for current legislation to be amended, including the creation of a criminal offence. Can the Minister say what scrutiny there will be by Parliament of this specific offence nearer the time? The Explanatory Memorandum makes it plain that this is not

“to address a deficiency in retained EU law”

but because of the withdrawal Act, as has been mentioned. It is good to have that confirmed, although some detail is about the UK elements of its parallel regulation. We are just going to have to become used to this, but I have some questions about the fees for applications and inspections.

Paragraph 12.4 of the Explanatory Memorandum says that “fees for services” will be

“kept on par with those charged in Great Britain, despite there being additional resource requirements to carry out the work under the EU MDR. The fees … will therefore be below the cost recovery level.”

Which Government will bear the cost of that extra work if it cannot be recovered from the manufacturers? Will it be the UK Government or the Northern Ireland Assembly? I hope the answer is the UK Government because the Northern Ireland Assembly should not have its budget penalised because of the Prime Minister’s decision to support the Northern Ireland protocol. In Regulation 12(1)(a) of the SI, in relation to “Prior authorisation of clinical investigations by the Secretary of State”, will the Secretary of State have these powers elsewhere in the UK or does this relate only to Northern Ireland?

Covid-19 Update

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for the Statement today, which takes us further into the discussion that we were having on Tuesday and allows him to address some of the questions that perhaps he was not able to on Tuesday.

We all want our economy to open and get back to normal. The question is whether we do it in a controlled way or a chaotic way. The Health Secretary told the Commons on Tuesday that, under the Government’s plan, infections could go to as high as 100,000 a day. There are some huge issues that the Minister and the Government have failed to address with information and clarity about the massive change in policy contained in the announcements on Monday and Tuesday. The first of these is surely the potential 100,000 infections a day in a few weeks’ time. When I asked on Tuesday about the scientific advice, the Minister gave me what can be described only as a pick-and-mix answer, one in which he said SAGE’s advice was “interesting”. I am sure that SAGE’s advice is always interesting, but is it being taken into account in decision-making as it used to be? I specifically refer him to the most recent SAGE papers, which made it clear that with high infection rates there would be a greater chance of new variants emerging and greater pressure on the NHS. More people will get long Covid and test and trace will be less effective. As NHS Providers said today,

“current pressures on the NHS mean that the predicted rising infection rates for COVID-19 will inevitably affect the speed at which trusts can recover care backlogs.”

I quote Chris Hopson:

“Trust leaders can see the strong logic of ‘if not now, when?’ and they recognise that, as a nation, we must learn to live with COVID-19. But they want the Government to be clear about the risks of relaxing restrictions. This includes the inevitability of higher hospitalisations and mortality, albeit at lower levels than previous waves and the risk of new and more dangerous variants emerging. They are also worried about the impact of long COVID. It’s important these trade offs are clearly set out, including the impact on the NHS’s ability to bear down on the backlog.”


Indeed, a letter from 100 experts in the BMJ today raises the same issues. That is why the impact assessment is so crucial. The Prime Minister seemed to find this impossible to address yesterday, so I would like to see if the Minister with his much greater and closer knowledge of these issues could be more enlightening to the House today. Have the Government undertaken an impact assessment of the projected rate of infection? Yes or no would probably suffice. If it is yes, when will it be shared with Parliament and the public? If it is no, the Minister must explain why this has not happened and tell the House when it might. We need to know what is the number of hospitalisations and deaths; what is the number of people with long Covid, which will be the outcome of 100,000 infections a day; and what is the impact on the NHS, will it slow down the catch-up for diagnostics and treatment and by how much? I am very happy if the Minister wants to email the details of the answers to me, if he does not have them to hand–although he ought and they need to be in the public domain.

We know that the link between infection rates and deaths has been weakened, but it has not been broken. All the experts seem to agree on that. Let us be clear why infection rates are so high: it is because the Prime Minister let in the delta variant. I agree with my right honourable friend Keir Starmer that we might now change its name to the “Johnson variant”. Let us be clear why the number of cases will surge so quickly: it is because the Government are taking all protections off in one go. As my right honourable friends Sir Keir Starmer and Jonathan Ashworth have said, this is reckless.

The next obvious question is the one about the dreaded ping and the huge number of people who will be asked to isolate. If there are 100,000 infections a day, that means hundreds of thousands—perhaps millions —of people are going to be pinged to isolate. The Financial Times estimates that it could be 2 million people and the Daily Mail says it could be 3.5 million people. Either way, it is a massive number. How many people do the Government expect will be asked to isolate if infection rates continue to rise at this rate? Again, this question was asked of the Prime Minister yesterday and he clearly did not know the answer or refused to say, so I will repeat it again: how many people are going to be asked to self-isolate if there are 100,000 or more infections a day?

Does the Minister appreciate that those who are immunocompromised or for whom the vaccine is less effective will have their freedoms curtailed by ditching masks on public transport? Blood Cancer UK warned yesterday that people with blood cancer will feel that their freedoms have been taken away from them. It is quite possible that the 19th will not be freedom day. It might be the day when a record number of people will switch off their NHS app, because they will see coming down the track isolating and cancelling holidays. It is already beginning to happen. Has the Minister seen those stories? We on these Benches do not support that course of action, but does he realise that this could seriously undermine the expensive track and trace system, on which so much depends?

I have to repeat again that the biggest barrier to an effective isolation policy has been not the inconvenience but the lack of financial incentive to stay at home. If we are to live with this virus, the days of people soldiering on when unwell are over. Sick pay is vital to infection control. Will the Government please now fix it?

Business leaders are expressing very serious concerns about the loss of staff and customers. There are now 700,000 children off school per week. At my grand- daughter’s school this morning, two classes were sent home due to two teachers being pinged. After-school sports were cancelled and she is very disappointed. It is happening everywhere, as our amazing head teachers and school staff limp towards the end of term doing everything they can to deliver teaching, joy and normality to our children under the most difficult and often underappreciated circumstances.

The question I want to ask for clarity from the Minister is about the ubiquitous ping. Is the ping advisory for self-isolation or mandatory? If you get an email or phone call, does that trigger mandatory self-isolation? Finally, I ask about data in the last 24 hours or so from Israel’s Ministry of Health, which points to the Pfizer vaccine being just 64% effective at stopping symptomatic and asymptomatic transmission of the delta variant. Can the Minister tell the House about this?

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, one year ago when lockdown was lifted, we had around 1,000 new cases a day. Yesterday it was 32,000 new cases. Equally concerning, cases are doubling every nine days; hospitalisations are going up; ventilation bed occupation is going up; NHS Providers, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, has said, is talking about hospitals moving back into created-Covid wards and managing safe areas. GPs and hospitals are all reporting a worrying large increase in young people with long Covid, putting further pressure on their services, let alone the worries of an epidemic of long-term illness in the working population. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some hospitals are now considering cancelling some staff summer leave. Wonderful as yesterday’s England victory was, the sight of 60,000 fans walking down Wembley Way in very close proximity with hardly a mask in sight was concerning. As with the England-Scotland match, we must expect a surge in cases. Yesterday, the BBC asked Dr Mike Ryan of the World Health Organization about the UK proposals to lift all restrictions on 19 July. He replied:

“The logic of more people being infected is better is, I think, logic that has proven its moral emptiness and epidemiological stupidity”.


The letter in today’s Lancet from 100 senior medics and scientists echoes the WHO view. What are the Government doing to explain to the experts why their strategy is safe?

I will return to the substance of the Statement later, but I start by thanking the Minister for the meeting yesterday with other Peers, Blood Cancer UK and the Anthony Nolan trust to discuss the immunocompromised and the clinically extremely vulnerable. There are over 2 million CEV who had to shield—that is 3% of the population. So, arising from questions I have asked the Minister many times before in your Lordships’ House, I will ask the following. The CEV, of whom I am one, are worried at the total silence to them over recent weeks since shielding ended formally but, with stay-at-home advice still in place, with cases rocketing daily and all restrictions easing, can the Minister explain how advice to them is being co-ordinated publicly by government? One blood cancer patient said today to an APPG of parliamentarians that the dissonance of their safety versus everyone else’s freedom was hard to bear, especially with no advice. In particular, who has clinical responsibility for drawing together the different issues of therapies, responses to vaccines and continuing care for underlying diseases, and which Minister has overall responsibility?

Overnight, there have been some suggestions from journalists that shielding might even return. If so, that needs to be communicated very urgently to those at high risk, who have not been told about their low vaccine antibody rate. They may be planning to mix with people, or perhaps even go on holiday. Will benefit support for the CEV who have to stay at home but cannot work from home be reintroduced? If the Government are serious about the irreversibility of the lifting of all restrictions, some of the CEV will not be able to return to work for weeks, or even months.

I turn to testing. There are reports today that the Government plan to charge for the lateral flow tests from the end of this month. As LFTs are supposed to be the great self-regulators that the Government are relying on, how much are people going to be charged? You do not pay the Government for a blood test to see whether you have picked up any other infection. The level of charging for PCR tests for people returning from abroad also remains a big issue. Last week in your Lordships’ House the noble Baroness, Lady Vere, told my noble friend Lady Ludford that PCR tests could be obtained at a price of £85 for two. My noble friend’s local pharmacy is charging £398 for a test on the same day, or £240 for the next day for two tests. I know other members of the public have reported similar problems. Can the Minister say how the pricing of PCR tests is being managed and, perhaps more importantly, where one can find the “£85 for two” tests?

On Tuesday, I set out what we from these Benches seek in a return to normal life. We want people to return to work as soon as possible, to be able to mix with family and friends and for our children to be able to have consistent access to education without interruption. We also agree that now is the time to start to do some of that but—and it is a big “but”—we cannot get rid of all the safeguards that protect people mixing together while the virus is still live. An effective test, trace and isolate system is essential. This Statement makes it clear that that is being dismantled. Can the Minister explain why that makes any sense?

Last night, Sebastian Payne of the Financial Times reported the re-election of Sir Graham Brady MP as chairman of the 1922 committee, and tweeted:

“Brady’s re-election is … a reminder of why Johnson is dropping masks and nearly all other … restrictions on July 19: ministers privately say the government no longer had the … votes to keep the measures in place. Relying on Labour would have been … difficult for the PM.”


Are the Prime Minister and the so-called Covid Recovery Group now putting health and lives at risk for their own principles?

Finally, with the threat of 100,000 cases by the end of the month, with hospitals saying they are already worried about the increase in patients and with the threat of the new lambda variant and new north-east variant under investigation, please will the Minister confirm that these changes are not irreversible and that the protection of the NHS, and the safety of all the people in this country, remain the Government’s priority?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Bethell) (Con)]

My Lords, I am enormously thankful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Thornton and Lady Brinton, for such thoughtful questions. I will certainly try to address as many of them as I can.

In reply to the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, on the advice we get, I am afraid, as I said last time, that we of course draw on lots of advice from lots of people. I completely acknowledge, as she rightly pointed out, that no decision in this pandemic is risk-free. She set out the list of possible risks very well. There is always the possibility that there will be new variants. We are extremely concerned about the existing 1 million people who have self-diagnosed with long-Covid symptoms; the possibility that that number may rise is very much on our minds, and we are putting in place NHS provision to assist in diagnosis and treatment of that.

We are extremely concerned that test and trace resources will be stretched. We are therefore looking extremely closely at the policy around testing and isolation, while providing test and trace with the resources it needs to get through any increase in the infection rate. I also completely acknowledge the concerns of the NHS Confederation on hospital beds and hospitalisations —although the statistics on those today are extremely encouraging.

Those are all acknowledged concerns that we keep close track of, while putting in place measures to mitigate and minimise their impact. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, half-answered her own question, because she is entirely right: we need to focus on getting the NHS back to speed in order to address the very long waiting lists and to get elective surgery back on track. It is very difficult to find an answer to the question, “If not now, when?” That has been tackled by the CMO and a great number of people. It must surely be right that we take the inevitable risks of restarting the economy and getting people back to their normal lives at the moment of minimum risk from the virus, which has to be in the middle of summer. Assessing those risks precisely is incredibly complex. Impact assessments of the kind that we would normally associate with legislation are the product of months of analysis. They often identify one relatively straightforward and simple policy measure. We are talking here about a machine of a great many moving parts.

I cannot guarantee that any model anywhere could give us accurate projections of the exact impact of what is going to happen this summer. We are, to a certain extent, walking into the unknown: the Prime Minister made that extremely clear in his Statement. As such, we are ready to change and tweak our policy wherever necessary in reaction to events. However, what we know very well now on the basis of our assessment of the data, and because of the pause we put in place to give ourselves breathing time to assess and additional time to roll out the vaccinations, is that that direct correlation between the infection rate and severe disease, hospitalisation and death has massively diminished. There is a relationship, but it is a fraction of what it used to be.

We can therefore look at a period where those who are at extremely low risk of any severe disease may see an increase in the infection rate, because we know that those in the highest-risk groups have been protected by two doses of the vaccine, and two weeks, and because we are working incredibly hard to get as many in the high-risk groups vaccinated as possible—half a million a day—and to roll out the vaccine to younger cohorts. That is the balance. I cannot deal in certainty here, because certainty does not exist. Balance is key, and I believe the balance we have here is the right one.

The noble Baroness asked specifically about the NHS Covid app. It is in some ways emblematic of the kind of decisions we are making at the moment. She is entirely right: the anecdotes are loud and clear. The app is pinging loudly around the country as the infection rate moves up. To clarify the legal point, as noble Lords probably know, the app protects privacy. We do not know the identity of the person who has the app. In fact, we have no information about people who have the app at all because it has such rigorous privacy protection. As such, the ping from the app is advisory but a telephone call from test and trace is mandatory. That has a legal status and a breach of that advice could lead to an FPN or a knock on the door. It has a different status in that respect.

Given the large number of infections and the large number of pings, we clearly need to review the way in which the app works. The Prime Minister talked about this earlier today. He talked about moving from a quarantine-and-isolation approach to more of a test-and-release approach. We are not quite there yet but we are clearly well on the way. Therefore, I would be glad to clarify how we have made those decisions once they have been announced.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, talked about the plight of the immunosuppressed. I am grateful to her and to Anthony Nolan, Cancer UK and others who were on the call yesterday. I express complete sympathy with the point made by the noble Baroness. If you are at home and your immune system does not work as well as other people’s, and you see the rest of the country opening up, you will feel extremely uncomfortable, as though the world has moved on and that you have perhaps been left behind. Those were the feelings described to me by the experts I met yesterday. On an emotional level, I completely sympathise with that. There are some people in this country whose immune systems do not protect them from flu and contagious diseases that would have no impact on those with a fully functioning immune system. We have complete sympathy for those people.

I acknowledge the noble Baroness’s point that there is a need for clear advice because the immunosuppressed are a highly diverse group. There may be people recovering in hospital with a completely flatlined antibody system, compared to someone who has rheumatoid arthritis but is otherwise living at home and is mobile. It must be right that that communication is done on a tailored basis through the healthcare system. We will look at ways in which we can ensure that GPs are informed and have the right information in order to give that bespoke advice.

The dissonance is hard to bear. I recognise the noble Baroness’s point but I do not necessarily have a suite of answers for absolutely everyone in this condition. We have large investments in antivirals and in therapeutic drugs, including some of the monoclonal antibodies that may offer some protection to some people in this situation, but it is not going to be a blanket measure. As a result, we are putting a huge amount of investment in the OCTAVE study, which looks specifically at ways in which vaccines, boosters or therapeutics can be used to protect those whose immune systems are not right. Ultimately, it is going to be down to the vaccine. The vaccination of a large proportion of the population, including the carers who look after the immunosuppressed, is how we will offer protection to these people.

On the noble Baroness’ question about the LFT system being dismantled, I do not recognise those press reports. On the provision of PCRs by the private sector, she asked how prices are determined. The answer to that is through the market. The marketplace introduces competition and innovation. I am pleased to say that the price for tests is coming down and will come down further. The one provided by Chronomics for TUI is now £30; that is a very encouraging sign that there is more to go.

Women’s Health Outcomes

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I echo the thanks of the Chamber to the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, for securing this important debate. Along with the noble Baronesses, Lady Jenkin, Lady Massey of Darwen and Lady Walmsley, I was trustee of UNICEF. Its work to help educate and protect girls and young women in dangerous countries across the world—of which the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, spoke so movingly, when talking of the horror of rape for girls and women in war-torn communities—demonstrates that we absolutely need to support United Nations projects to protect girls and women throughout the world. The noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, is right: we need worldwide action to eliminate this scourge.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, was so right to set this debate in the lifecycle of a woman. She gave us a female equivalent of Shakespeare’s seven ages of man and, while it may not have been in iambic pentameters, it was striking in its arguments.

The noble Baroness, Lady Penn, faces the glorious arrival of a baby. I want to offer, as other noble Lords have done, best wishes for a safe arrival and a hope that, if the baby is a girl, her daughter’s experience of health will be very different from her mother’s and her grandmother’s. Predominantly male medics told us what they thought we had and wanted but, too often, I am afraid, had not listened to us before they spoke. Much has improved over the years, but there is still room for improvement, as this debate has shown.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bull, talked about the incidence of eating disorders, and how important it is that young women are listened to and supported—and, of equal importance, have access to specialist medical help early on.

The noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, focused on the problems that many women face with mental health today. The Royal College of Psychologists is right to set out the need for an extra £500 million of funding to ensure that they get the tailored support they need, when they need it. There are too many long delays in CAMHS.

My noble friend Lady Walmsley and the noble Baronesses, Lady Bottomley and Lady Bennett, were spot on to remember the failures that fell to the women with valproate and vaginal mesh problems, investigated by the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, in her excellent report. When will the Government implement the key recommendations from that report, particularly the patient safety commissioner?

My noble friend Lady Walmsley also referred to domestic violence. There is no doubt that the healthcare providers can help to spot signs of concern early on. But the BMA has reminded us that healthcare professionals need training early on and support from other agencies to make that happen. That most women wait until in excess of 30 incidents before they go to the police is shocking, but GPs, nurses and midwives are often able to assist women in recognising that they are facing problems early on, and help them to deal with that.

It is extraordinary that women have a much higher level of autoimmune diseases than men. With some diseases, it is 80% higher. Researchers are still trying to understand why, but serious autoimmune diseases can still significantly reduce lifespan, or the patient has to face many years on immune suppressants to prevent the disease progressing. In this year of Covid, that has of course given them further problems. Endometriosis, which happens to be my second autoimmune disease, introduced me as a young woman to the indignity of the mostly male doctors managing my condition and its consequences for fertility, high miscarriage risk and a life of severe pain, which hardly any medics understand. That GPs think it is just like a bad period pain completely misses the point.

The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, referred to contraceptive services and their supply during the pandemic. She was right to say that women need to be able to access those services all year round, and throughout the United Kingdom, because failures can have serious consequences for young women.

The noble Lord, Lord McColl, ably set out a range of women’s services where other countries are setting us good examples of how we can improve the lives of women, including respite care for the many unpaid carers, mainly women. His point was echoed by the noble Baronesses, Lady Eaton, Lady Fraser and Lady Ritchie. The noble Baroness, Lady Fraser, also gave us an excellent example of combining data to cross-reference women with epilepsy and their medicines. She said, “If you’re not counted, you don’t count”. I am reminded here that the suffragists scrawled “Votes for women” across the 1911 census and are visible to history, whereas the suffragettes chose just to boycott the census, so their contribution is invisible to history.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, talked about women’s cancer diagnoses coming significantly later than men’s. I know that other Members of your Lordships’ House have faced this, but we have a close family member whose 34 year- old daughter missed her cervical smear test last year because of the pandemic and now is facing terminal cancer. That is really shocking. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, rightly reminded us of shocking failures at some maternity hospitals. While it is good that reports are now highlighting these failures, is there also a systematic review of the funding and staffing of maternity services across the country, as most of the reports refer to staff shortages as well as problems with the culture?

The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, vitally reminded us of the Marmot report and how it set out the problems that women face in society today, especially in Northern Ireland. One of the topics in the Government’s consultation paper was on using data to improve women’s experiences. How is this sort of data shared and used to understand the disparity between the four nations?

The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bryan, talked about the male-female inequality league and how the UK should do better. How do the Government plan to address some of the clear health disparities?

The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, also talked about continence services. Twenty years ago, discussion of periods in public was pretty taboo. Endometriosis and the menopause have recently become more acceptable issues to discuss but, frankly, continence services remain taboo for many. Women who often face long-term problems after difficult childbirth are unable to seek the help they need when their bladders start to fail in the later years. I hope that this debate will help to start that discussion and encourage women to seek help from their GPs at an early stage.

Recently, I had some discussion with young doctors working with the elderly—mainly women—who fell and broke limbs, imperilling their independence and ability to stay at home. These doctors are looking at best practice on early intervention with these patients, after minor falls, that supports and trains the patient. This has already significantly reduced the serious falls that too many women have later on. It is also saving the NHS a vast amount of money and keeping these women independent for much longer.

The noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, and the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, raised the problems of unconscious bias and the stereotyping of black and Asian women. I am sorry to say that this is also true of LGBT women. My noble friend Lady Barker has often spoken of the need for specialist geriatric services for them. Those who claim to object to the woke agenda need to understand that these biases—conscious or not—are the root of women’s health inequality. The contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, pointed at how the voices of, and services for, women were invisible in the Budget. Today’s debate has shown that this House is keen to see the eradication of all health inequalities affecting women, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

Covid-19 Update

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, on the 73rd birthday of the NHS yesterday we supported and echoed the thanks to everyone in the NHS and the care sector for their extraordinary and humbling response to the pandemic, which continues to this day. We are far from being an NHS back to normal, whether through increased Covid cases, the backlog of hospital appointments and life-threatening delayed diagnosis, all the way through to the more routine but also vital services. So, our best present to the NHS will be to lift restrictions and return to normal in the safest way possible for them, for patients and the wider health of our country.

For months, the Prime Minister has talked of “data, not dates”. The data shows cases running at over 25,000 per day and predicted to rise to 50,000 per day by the end of the month. Hospitalisations are up and even ventilator bed use is up, which, while not as bad as in the previous two waves, is putting pressure on the hospitals dealing with them.

There is a large surge of cases in the north-east, and there are concerns that a new variant may exist there. Cases in the UK of the lambda variant from Peru are now being investigated as it appears more transmissible and possibly more resistant to vaccines. If the UK is following the route out of the pandemic used by Israel and the USA, we should note that both those countries are now finding that that system is not working for them: Israel’s proportions are picking up again and Florida is struggling to cope with a very large surge in cases.

Yesterday’s Statement was a case of ideology over science. It says that the vaccine is a “wall of defence”, but it is a wall with holes in it. First, one-third of adults have not yet had their second jab; nor have any children. That is a reservoir of millions—not just thousands, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton said—who are at risk of catching Covid, whether seriously or not, and passing it on to others. Secondly, double-jabbers are not conferred with magical total immunity and protection, and we know that they can transmit it too.

We on these Benches want to start with a return to normal and to lift restrictions. We desperately need to kick-start the economy, to start to socialise again and, as my noble friend Lord Scriven said last month, to live with Covid as it is now endemic and will be with us for some years to come. However, that means providing the safety net needed to ensure that people are as safe as possible. Asian countries that managed their pandemic well learned from SARS. The use of face masks became routine and a matter of personal and wider social responsibility, allowing life to continue in the flu season and in the pandemic. They also maintain strong and effective test, trace and isolate systems all the time. We will be discussing test, trace and isolate in detail following the Statement that is due to come to your Lordships’ House on Thursday, but the proposed reductions in test, trace and isolate will remove the UK’s ability to manage outbreaks swiftly, during which time others will catch and pass on Covid.

When we drive into our towns and cities, we rely on local authorities to set up traffic systems, including traffic lights, to help to guide us on safe journeys, regulate movement and reduce harm and damage. But it is as if “freedom day” is getting rid of all our traffic lights.

Proportionate responses are needed, and these include face masks. Early last year, even the WHO was equivocal on the use of face masks but, as the world became aware that this is a respiratory disease passed on through droplets, most countries moved to face mask mandates. On 19 July we switch to rules that make it only the responsibility of individuals. Thankfully, most people have taken that responsibility seriously, but not everyone has. That is important because, despite what the Minister said in response to my question yesterday about the clinically extremely vulnerable, there is no direct reference to the CEV in this Statement—unless he meant the passing reference to them being part of the priority group that will get the third jab. They need to know where they stand. There is no new advice, just the burning of the remaining rules that keep them safe.

Last night the Government published the Health Protection (Coronavirus, International Travel and Operator Liability) (England) (Amendment) (No. 5) Regulations 2021 and brought them into force at 6 am this morning. This amendment allows supporters of foreign teams with tickets for the final stages of the Euros to travel. Tens of thousands of foreign fans will be waved in, despite the high number of daily cases and despite 1,300 cases among Scottish fans after they travelled to Wembley to play England last month. I am not surprised: it is a crowd-pleaser. But as a legislator I find it extraordinary and unacceptable that the Explanatory Memorandum states this amendment is needed “to protect public health”. Frankly, that is in complete contradiction to the regulations themselves. Such inconsistent behaviour from the Government typifies a desire to please people, rather than think ahead and manage scenarios.

What we need is careful planning when lifting restrictions that keeps people safe by having effective measures in place: face masks in risky environments; test, track, trace and self-isolate rules that protect people; and funding for those who have to self-isolate. That is the way we can move to a new normal, to an economy that can work again, with health traffic lights around us to manage and minimise Covid.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Bethell) (Con)]

My Lords, I am enormously grateful for the thoughtful questions from the noble Baronesses, Lady Thornton and Lady Brinton. I will address the first question from the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, on where we get our advice from and will try to explain a little bit about how these decisions are made.

We get advice from a wide variety of inputs. They include the NHS, and we look very carefully at NHS capacity and projections for trying to catch up with the very large waiting lists that we have for electives. We get advice from schools about the prevalence of infection and attendance at schools. We look to Parliament for guidance, scrutiny and challenge. We have talked to GPs about the front-line picture that they see. We look to the JVCI for epidemiological advice. SAGE provides an important challenge and interesting support, particularly in terms of modelling, but it is not the sole repository of all the evidence for our decision-making. We are extremely grateful for its input but we have to take on board a very large set of perspectives when we make these decisions. We cannot rely on just one data set from one group. It is a holistic situation, and we have to balance a lot of different and competing needs at the same time.

That is why the decisions made in the Statement yesterday and in the Statement made by the Secretary of State an hour ago are proportionate and have, I hope, the caution, care and clarity that the noble Baroness quite rightly referred to. She is right that some infections will, very sadly, lead to severe disease, hospitalisation and, in some cases, death. But the proportion of those infections is much smaller than it was before the vaccine arrived. We have successfully vaccinated a huge proportion of those who are the most vulnerable to this disease. As a result, although infections are rising, the impact on hospitalisation and death is a very small fraction of what it once was.

We need to proceed with caution, keeping a very close eye on those relative relationships, but the picture that we see at the moment is relatively straightforward: the vaccine works. The statistics for both the BioNTech and the AstraZeneca vaccines are incredibly impressive in terms of both hospitalisation and transmission.

The noble Baroness challenged me to explain what I thought might be an acceptable level of deaths. I do not wish to split words with her, but the honest truth is that I do not accept any deaths as acceptable. I am not just trying to be smart with the language. It is our mission, particularly in the Department of Health but in the Government as a whole, to try to tackle all deaths as well as we possibly can.

All health decisions are always based on a balance of risk, whether it is a GP taking your blood pressure in his or her surgery or whether it is for big demographic interventions of the kind that we are debating today. Balance is the essence of public health decisions, and we are trying to make the best possible decisions around this. They have to take into account the huge challenge that the NHS faces in tackling business-as-usual disease. Millions of people have not turned up for the diagnostics that they should have taken or to have examinations of the lumps and bumps that they are worried about. There is a huge catch-up in terms of the waiting lists, and those have an impact on illness, long life and death. We have to balance the priorities of the pandemic and those of our existing healthcare system, and also the usual life of our communities. That is why we are taking the route that we are.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, raised public transport. That is not only a practical and very important context for this discussion; it is iconic of the decision to move from mandation to a voluntary principle on behalf of a large amount of the public for a large number of the measures that we did, at one point, put into law. We are trying to seek a new covenant with the country based on consideration for each other. The noble Baroness put it extremely well, and I entirely share her scruples. I have four children—who are vectors of infection, to put it politely—and I attend a large number of business meetings, including here in the House, and I regard myself as a high-risk candidate for carrying the disease. I have never caught it myself and I have been vaccinated but when I sit on a Tube train I wear my mask, not to protect myself but to protect the person next to me. That is my personal assessment and my personal decision. That is the spirit in which we are inviting people to step forward and make their own decisions and to be considerate to each other.

We cannot have laws on all these matters for the rest of time. At some point we have to ask the country to step up and take responsibility and to have personal agency in these decisions. If we do not put that challenge to the country in the summer months, when our hospitals are relatively safe and the virus has the right conditions, when will we be able to make those decisions?

I agree with the noble Baroness about the position that many workers find themselves in. She is right that PHE data is very daunting when you look at the low-paid, front-line workers who drive taxis and buses or are in all sorts of other front-line positions. They have been hard hit by the pandemic, partly because of their living conditions, partly because of their environment and partly because of the prevalence of comorbidities, but also because of the risk that they personally put themselves at. I call on everyone to be considerate on that point. We need to think about the kind of risk that people are putting themselves at when they go about their normal day-to-day work. I ask people to be thoughtful about infectious respiratory diseases and, in fact, all diseases. That is why the Prime Minister has talked in the terms that he has.

In the meantime, we are making changes to the way we are doing things. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, asked me about children. To be clear: the Secretary of State said in his Statement that anyone under 18 who is a close contact of a positive case will no longer need to self-isolate after 16 August. Instead, children will be given advice about whether they should get tested, dependent on their age, and will need to self-isolate if they test positive. These measures will come into force on 16 August, ahead of the autumn school term. That is a proportionate response to the changed situation we find ourselves in, with the massive rollout of the vaccine and the evidence that we can see in front of our eyes of the impact of the disease on those who are under 18.

In reply to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, I spoke about the Secretary of State’s speech yesterday, in which he said very clearly, on the clinically extremely vulnerable, that guidelines will be published, and that remains the case. We are extremely sympathetic to those whose immune system does not allow the vaccine to have an impact. What use is a vaccine that supports your immune system if your immune system does not work very well? That is a challenge that more than a million people in the country face, and we are working extremely hard to address that issue. That work includes a huge amount of research through the OCTAVE study and a massive investment in the antivirals task force and the therapeutics task force. Those who are clinically extremely vulnerable, particularly those who are immunosuppressed, have not been forgotten and are very much the focus of our efforts, but it is an extremely difficult challenge to meet.

Health Security (EU Exit) Regulations 2021

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Monday 5th July 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. It is essential that, when dealing with future health risks, the UK is equipped to effectively share knowledge, data and skills within our borders and internationally. I support the calls from the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, for clarity over the role of the WHO’s regions—in our case, Europe. I also support his calls for WHO reform, but hope that we and the other member nations will remember that it is the members of the WHO, not the WHO itself, who maintain its power and direction. Too often, the WHO has been the whipping boy, as though the members have no role at all.

The past 18 months have shown how global health threats can shut down the entire world. By leaving the EU, the UK has lost unconditional access to the EU’s Early Warning and Response System. The trade and co-operation agreement states that the UK may be granted access to EWRS on an ad hoc basis via written request. Can the Minister clarify how these requests will be overseen and managed? Are there any plans to negotiate a more consistent and collaborative relationship? It is important that Parliament and public health professionals more widely can see the detail of how this will work before it comes into force.

This SI creates a new body within the health protection committee. How have these plans and new structures been influenced by the learning process of the past 18 months, during which we have been exposed to be woefully unprepared for the health threat that the pandemic has given us? We have had huge issues with data sharing. How will this new framework and committee help us not to repeat those same mistakes?

The Minister said it is vital that the UK has excellent surveillance provisions, and we on these Benches agree, so it is good news that the four nations that make up the United Kingdom are working together on this. It is self-evident that this co-operation is vital to make it work. As we know from Covid, viruses do not recognise boundaries, whether those of devolved states or European countries. I echo the questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, about Northern Ireland, given the sensitivities of the Northern Ireland protocol. There seems to be something of a war of words on other matters; it would be awful if there was a war of words on these important health issues.

Our directors of public health are the unsung heroes of the pandemic, yet there has been confusion regarding the structural change of the UK Health Security Agency. It is not clear how much influence directors of public health will have. What they need now is clarity of communication and leadership around the new roles and responsibilities. That is vital as we shift into the endemic phase of Covid-19 management, when we are likely to be very reliant on these directors of public health and their small teams in local authority areas. Alongside this legislation, we need long-term funding boosts for health protection capacity in local councils and our public health budgets, so that our directors of public health are supported in the wonderful but often invisible work they do.

It certainly felt as though their work was invisible to Ministers and Public Health England during the first half of the pandemic—and this is not just about the pandemic. I am reminded of the Salisbury poisonings and how the exceptional director of public health in that area worked locally and nationally to try to resolve a really difficult and unpleasant situation; the BBC’s drama was able to show people on the ground exactly the work that public health colleagues do. Can the Minister confirm that we will be seeing a proper increase in their budgets in this year’s spending review? Otherwise, we will once again have to say that this Government’s words and figures do not agree. It would be awful if large numbers of expensive consultants again had to be contracted at the centre to manage a crisis when we have teams of experts on the ground in our local communities. They cannot magic essential resources to be available 365 days of the year out of thin air.

Finally, contact tracing will continue to be a vital part of public health work in the future. Can the Minister confirm that the Government are still committed to ensuring that we have an effective test and trace system to manage outbreaks of this disease as well as other incidents to do with environmental health locally and to prepare for the possibility of malign forces at work, as with the Salisbury poisonings? Given reports last week that care providers are still failing to get the data that they need, what action are the Government taking to improve this? How will the UK Health Security Agency provide the overarching leadership that is so desperately needed to strengthen partnership at a local, regional, and national level?

Health: Dementia

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Monday 5th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, guidance to help enhance best practice in dementia assessment and diagnosis was recently updated and published to support a personalised approach and choice in the delivery of remote consultation or face-to-face diagnosis. The guidance was developed in collaboration with stakeholders, including those with lived experience, and through the Dementia Change Action Network. I completely acknowledge the point that the noble Baroness makes. We are working as hard as we can to get the kind of face-to-face assessments she describes. They play an essential role in what we do.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, the 2019 national memory service audit carried out by NHS London reported that a quarter of English dementia services were unable to provide or refer on for carer psychoeducation. Knowing the struggles that my stepmother had over a decade ago getting recognition, let alone support, as my father’s dementia worsened, these figures remained stubbornly low. Can the Minister say when early support will automatically be available for all carers of those diagnosed with dementia?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the role of carers in the kinds of situations the noble Baroness describes. We are doing an enormous amount to supply training for carers in all facets of their delivery, including support in caring for those with dementia. I am not sure that I can make the guarantee that she seeks right now, but I reassure her that this is one area of our investment in carers that we take extremely seriously.

Coronavirus Act 2020 (Early Expiry) Regulations 2021

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Monday 5th July 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, at the one-year review of the Act, we pushed for it not to be reviewed. It would have been really useful to understand why there has been such a delay. I remind the Minister that we were concerned over some of the civil liberties issues in the Act, such as on policing, protests and fines—we know the fines did not hold up when applied in practice—and over transparencies. We have raised repeated concerns about the transparency on the dashboard. We were also concerned about people not understanding the rules. Famously, where guidance versus the law happened, it was interesting to watch the Government having to retreat very fast when they realised that they were telling people in Greater Manchester that something was covered by the law, yet the people in Greater Manchester were clearly able to show that it was guidance.

There are also concerns about the enormous blank-cheque powers that this legislation has provided. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, for saying earlier that the expiry of these provisions was announced on 25 March. His exact words then were:

“We made a promise to Parliament that we would not keep any provision in place for longer than was necessary, and we have made good on that promise.”—[Official Report, 25/3/21; col. 985.]


It has been 14 weeks since the Government decided that they did not need the provisions, and they have not yet removed them. They are still in place until this SI comes into force.

We also had particular concerns about the provision of social care. Part 1 of Schedule 12 and Section 15 enabled local authorities to divert resources to care and support from other duties. This was used eight times and not since 29 June 2020. We were really concerned about this provision because those who needed support for care suddenly found it was removed. The parents of disabled children who needed 24-hour care had found that their entire support mechanisms were removed from them. On the Disabled Children’s Partnership website today, one mother has been saying that the lack of that support has meant that she and her husband have had no more than two hours of consecutive sleep in over a year, because they have had to try to manage it. They are both utterly exhausted and extremely concerned that they might be making mistakes. That is because of the loss of this diversion support. What is particularly worrying is that most local authorities have not yet reinstated it.

Because we still do not know when this SI will come in, it is a little difficult to approve it until we also know the exact details about the level of Covid in our communities and its effect on the NHS. The Prime Minister famously talked about “data, not dates”, but the dialogue in recent weeks has become entirely the other way around, with cheery communications about the mask mandate being about to go. It is very noticeable that people have taken that as a signal that they can stop wearing masks already. Yet just over a year ago in June, when we lifted that first lockdown, cases were down to around 1,000 a day. This last week, it was around 25,000 new cases per day with hospitalizations increasing, even if at a lower rate, and certainly—thank goodness—ICU occupancy at a lower rate. However, GPs, doctors and nurses in hospitals all report that the NHS is nowhere near going back to being normal.

Today on LBC, a member of ICU staff at a hospital called in to say: “They can keep the medal and just get everyone to keep wearing masks, if they truly care about NHS staff”. I am with her on that one. Also today Chloe Smith, the Constitution Minister, said that some people more susceptible to infection than others may wish to carry on using a face mask. She cited her recent cancer, saying that she sympathises with those who want to carry on taking precautions.

As the Minister knows from my repeated raising of this issue, for some people this is not a matter of choice. That is so for at least 1 million people in the country: the clinically extremely vulnerable. Current government guidance to the CEV, which came out on 21 June, says:

“We are also advising clinically extremely vulnerable people to … follow the practical steps described below to minimise your risk of exposure … close contact with friends and family will be a personal choice, but you are encouraged to exercise caution”.


They were advised to work from home but, if they could not, to get their employer to make their workspace Covid-safe—I am paraphrasing because the guidance goes on at some length—and otherwise to get advice from professionals. It also says that the furlough scheme will end in September.

In addition, from 1 April there was no longer any SSP for clinically extremely vulnerable people who could not work from home. It is really important that provision is made to avoid clinically extremely vulnerable people having to go to work. Will the Government now take this up? Losing the mask mandate and lifting regulations mean that this group in our society and their immediate carers are put at risk.

I also note that the clinically extremely vulnerable advice says that pupils should be back in schools but the Department for Education lifted the mask mandate for schools some time ago. These children are still at high risk of Covid, which could indeed—

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I remind the noble Baroness that the speaking limit for Back-Benchers is five minutes.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

Thank you. I have finished.