NHS: Pay

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Tuesday 9th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I am not sure that retention is necessarily the challenge that the noble Baroness suggests. There has in fact been a 26% increase in acceptances to nursing and midwifery courses when compared to last year, and 1,290 more applications were made in 2020 compared to 2019. The truth is that nursing is a challenging job but one that many people want to take up. There is a long queue of people who want these positions because they are rewarding in many different ways. We appreciate the contribution made by nurses and the whole healthcare sector, but there is no disguising the fact that these are attractive jobs, which many people wish to take up.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

Does the Minister accept that it was not a 2.1% increase but a 2.1% addition to the bill, which included a number of emoluments that are added each year? It was not 2.1% for everybody; it was a whole package. The Government need to get their case across a bit better, particularly with what the Minister just said about recruitment. I suggest that the Government pay attention to getting their case across. As the Minister said, nursing, with its lifetime pension, is a very attractive proposition at the moment.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, the percentages are unbelievably complicated. It is difficult to stand by one single number to represent pay that goes to hundreds of thousands of different nurses under different circumstances. However, I agree completely with my noble friend. What is at stake here is not just one pay rise in one year but the entire package of circumstances in which nurses do their job. We are determined to ensure that that workplace package is as good as it can possibly be. We acknowledge that there are cultural challenges of working in the NHS, which we are fighting hard to improve. We recognise that training opportunities for nurses should be better and we are working hard to improve those. We recognise that nurses have little capacity for holidays, which is why we are recruiting a very large number of new nurses. It is the entire package that we are focused on, which is why we have put forward the affordability argument as we have.

Covid-19: Brazilian Variant

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, we seem to be devoting a huge amount of state resources to chasing one person with a mutating virus at a time when the National Health Service is on the point of collapse. Waiting lists are going up and we are in a terrible mess. Will the Government accept that viruses mutate and that we need a strategy to deal with that? Constantly locking people up and extending the list of countries so that you can put more and more people into hotels is a self-defeating policy.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

The vaccine is absolutely central to our strategy. It is an approach that has proved enormously popular, and I think I speak for a large number of people when I say that defending the vaccine has to be our number one priority. If there were a highly transmissible vaccine-escaping mutation, it would take us back to the beginning of this whole pandemic. That is why we have put in place red list countries and managed quarantine. That is why we are committed to Operation Eagle and the efforts to track down those bringing variants of concern into this country.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers and Self-Isolation) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Monday 1st March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I want to take up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, and ask the Minister when we will see the MoU. On 17 February, the Minister wrote that it

“is currently being updated to reflect amendments to the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Self-Isolation) (England) Regulations 2020 on 29 January and feedback from the Information Commissioner’s Office.”

He added that the MoU would be published

“as soon as practically possible.”

That was two weeks ago. Where is it? When will we see it?

I will make some general observations. This has become very much a middle-class debate. A lot of people in this country are not paying much attention to these regulations. Many of them do not understand what they are for—although they understand that they want to get round them. They see an increasingly authoritarian Government increasing the penalties but the police not implementing the law. There is not a single sign of the law being aggressively implemented in the city of Cambridge, where I live. I do not think the police would like to invade the middle-class enclave and I am not sure they would feel that confident going on to the council estates.

So we can keep on giving the police powers to fine and so on, but we need to understand that what is perceived as a hostile environment, backed up by an authoritarian Government, is not working. Threatening people with a criminal conviction that could stop them being employed for ever is an incentive to get around the law as much as it is to obey it, and we have not really followed that up. People will say, “Why should I take the test? I might be found to be infected. Then I would lose my income. I would have to stay at home.” It is a directive incentive not to take a test, and we do not seem to be able to face up to that.

This was made very clear by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, when she said:

“Crippling fines and a police record will only disincentivise people to seek testing and disclose their contacts.”—[Official Report, 22/10/20; col. 1668.]


That is absolutely true.

My final point is that I have been abroad fairly regularly during this, because I have a job that takes me to Brussels. I have regularly handed in my test and trace form. It has always been accepted but has not on a single occasion been checked.

Covid-19

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

While I acknowledge the Green Party’s views on this matter, the JCVI has been clear about what prioritisation levels 1 to 4 are. As I said earlier, we will be looking at the other prioritisation lists in time. I am in no way signalling a change in government policy, because that, I am afraid to say, is not in my gift.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, we seem always to be talking about holidaymakers. There is a small amount of legitimate business still being carried out in Europe. A few days ago, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe met in Strasbourg under suitable conditions, with no Covid cases reported at the end of that meeting. NATO and the European institutions are also holding a limited number of meetings. Could the Government at least accept that some legitimate business has to go on across frontiers, even at this time? Or are we going to be like the late Markus Wolf of the Stasi and try to do the impossible by closing down the country—and, in the end, discovering it will not work?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My noble friend of all people should know that it is an unfortunate comparison to make between the quite legitimate efforts of the Government to keep out killer viruses with those of a nasty East German regime for which I have no sympathy whatever. We have seen that a large amount of business that we previously thought required travel does not require travel. I must admit I am extremely surprised by the news that the Council of Europe thought it was a great idea to get together for a meeting. It is a decision I am querying, and when I get back to the department I will chat to my Foreign Office colleagues to see if that really was a sensible thing to happen.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Self-Isolation and Linked Households) (England) Regulations 2020

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 7th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I have two points and a question. On the borders issue, we do not need to get too worked up about the crossing of borders because, after all, people cross the border from London to Nottingham and places such as that. We need to make sure that the test-and-trace mechanism works.

From time to time in the past year, I have been on the Eurostar. One is not allowed on to the train to come back unless one has filled in the form and it has been registered by the border people. They take a copy of the form and register it. That is a condition of getting on the train. We probably need to tighten up there.

My second point is on vaccines. It is obvious that we should have pharmacies administering them. Do we have enough vaccines? Is the Minister satisfied that the amount being produced will be sufficient to get things done? If he wants to give some encouragement to the Prime Minister, he could say to him that if Britain can manage to vaccinate its people faster than the rest of the EU, he will certainly have seen a result of getting Brexit done because it will make him popular.

My third point is a question. Will the Minister tell me, or write, about the position of dentists and dental surgeries? I read the guidance issued at the end of last year and the priority groups included doctors, dentists and nurses, but are dental nurses included? What is the position of staff in dental surgeries? If they are being left to get their own vaccines, that is not satisfactory.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers) (England) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2020

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Wednesday 30th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, we keep on hearing about the end of this tunnel, at which there is some light. It is an extraordinary long tunnel, and the pinprick of light seems to be very small. In the past I have asked the Minister whether he still stands by Professor Ferguson’s prediction of 4,000 deaths a day, which has never been withdrawn and never got near, and whether he is willing to widen the pool of experts that the Government rely on. Many experts are casting doubt on the figures and their interpretation, not on a one-off basis, but very regularly. I would like to see those people inside the government tent that is producing the projections we are asked to live with.

In particular, will the department publish an updated table showing deaths by age and previous condition? Are we still dealing with people aged on average 84.4 years-old with underlying conditions, or is the disease spreading to a lower cohort? We need to know more what its impact is and a bit less about the numbers, as has been agreed. The numbers have gone up because the number of tests has gone up, among other things.

The second thing is: can we have some idea of hard plans for vaccinations, not just that they are there or that they will be used? What are the plans, and when is it expected that all the over-80s, the health staff, and the over-75s will be vaccinated? Can we have a plan for each area and something that we can hold the Government to account against?

Covid-19 Update

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con) [V]]

If I have heard the question correctly, that is exactly how the test release scheme works. Travellers are invited to sign the appropriate forms and after some days they can be released from isolation early by taking tests. That scheme has been signed off by the Chief Medical Officer and data from the test is transmitted to Public Health England. We currently have a UK-only testing regime and we do not take tests from overseas, but we are keeping the scheme under review.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, it appears that it is among younger people where the spread is now concentrated. What is the severity of the infection? It has been put to me that it is not that severe and that, indeed, many younger people are saying that they have to learn to live with it. I do not think that things are helped by the harsh rhetoric of “4,000 deaths a day” and so on. It just goes over people’s heads. They are saying, “This is not believable. They are going on about it, but it doesn’t matter.” Instead of using punitive terms, could the Minister go for more of a nudge theory, as put forward by David Cameron, and try to persuade people that it is in the interests of everyone to do certain things, rather than terrify them all the time—because that is not working?

[Lord Bethell (Con) [V]]

My noble friend Lord Balfe is entirely right to say that the symptoms in young people are zero in many cases. There are issues of both saliency and believability among many young people who think that this is a disease that simply does not touch their lives. It is understandable that they may think it implausible that they could be carrying the disease. However, the statistics are crystal clear. When looking at the heat maps, you can see easily how infections grow among the young and then graduate through the demographics until they hit older people, and then hospital admissions rise. I am extremely sympathetic to young people and why they find this idea a challenge to believe in, but we have to hit home with this message—otherwise, we will not be able to contain the disease.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers) (England) Regulations 2020

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

This has been a fascinating evening, has it not? I wonder whether the Minister has any support. I also wonder what the Labour Party is up to, because they do not seem to be taking part at any level at all. We have had precisely two Labour speakers, and no more, one of whom is yet to speak and will undoubtedly tell us what is what.

I have a lot of sympathy for my noble friends Lord Robathan, Lady Neville-Rolfe and Lord Cormack, and I will support whichever of their proposals goes to the vote. I am sorry but this is becoming a complete shambles. We had a little family debate at the weekend about whether we should put granny by the window or whether we did not want her to get pneumonia. We decided that we wanted her not to get pneumonia, because who on earth would end up doing the washing up? When you have senior officials in the Government talking about putting granny by the window, you really know that you have lost something.

At the same time, there is a serious point here. There is a catalogue of misery within the health service of people who cannot see their relatives, of the disabled who are stranded and lonely in homes, and the NHS does not appear to care. Why do we have a Minister for vaccinating people but no Minister for sorting out the NHS—for opening hospitals, opening surgeries, and getting visitors back into homes where people have been isolated, often for months? They are not a compassionate Government; they are in the grip of a handful of so-called experts, one of whom I remember had the distinction some years ago of having half of the cattle in Britain slaughtered quite needlessly. I hope that he does not turn those latter abilities to the general population.

Last Saturday, the shroud-waver in chief, the Cabinet Minister Mr Michael Gove, told us that we would be physically overwhelmed, with

“Every bed, every ward occupied”,

and all the capacity built into the Nightingales and requisitioned from the public sector too. Let me ask this of the Minister: as of today, how many Nightingale beds are full, both as a number and as a percentage? How many of the private sector beds are full, and how many are sitting there, not taking in private sector patients because they are getting big dollops of public money—I speak from some knowledge because I have a number of friends in the medical profession—for leaving the beds empty and not taking in patients? This is the rather sad state that we are in.

What do I propose, apart from what I have said already? We need a wider view among the people who make the decisions. Why are people like Professor Heneghan and Professor Gupta voices in the wilderness? With all their scientific abilities, why are they not at least in the room where the decisions are made? They would be a small minority, but at least they would be able to put forward their views. Why are we not listening to the Chancellor and to industry? We are bankrupting the country. We are running it into debts that it will take years to pay off because we are obsessed with a handful of supposed experts—I say “supposed” because I do not think they are. I also do not think that we can continue to bankrupt the country, which is what we are doing.

I am sorry for those in the Labour Party, but their answer is always, “Give us a chequebook”, and never, “Let us sort out how to get back to normal.” That is what I want to see. I also want to see something that has been alluded to many times in the debate, which is an end to the withdrawal of civil liberties and the chip-chipping away at everything that we stand for. Let me say this: half of the people of the city I live in, which is Cambridge, do not understand the regulations. The other half who do are interpreting them in their own way—and that does not necessarily mean that they are obeying them, because many are not doing so. The Army is now involved in vaccinating people. We are beginning to look like Poland in the 1980s and we need to step back from this. Will the Minister please take tonight’s debate as a serious contribution?

Also, and finally, we must stop persecuting people. Some 45 years ago, I first met Mr Piers Corbyn. When Labour had a leader called Jeremy, people used to say, “What do you think of him?” I would always reply, “You should meet his brother.” What I will say is this: you cannot conduct society on the basis of persecuting a handful of loonies who run around demonstrating. Please stand back, think about it, calm it down, and start all over again.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, and the noble Lords, Lord Shinkwin and Lord Moylan, have withdrawn so I now call the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly.

Personal Protective Equipment: Procurement

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Haskel) (Lab)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Balfe.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, the report does not make for happy reading, to put it mildly. There is a perception that the reality is some way away from where the Minister thinks it is. That may be fanned by the press, but the image of a tawdry chumocracy is to the fore in many newspaper reports. There were five recommendations in this report, all of which would benefit from the disinfectant of sunlight. My question to the Minister is quite simple: will the Government accept, implement and investigate the five recommendations?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I encourage my noble friend to look beyond newspaper reports. The reality is—

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

No, it is in the report.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

I ask my noble friend to look beyond newspapers for his analysis of the report. I take the five recommendations very seriously. They are encouraging and ally absolutely with the Government’s values. We will look at how to implement them in due course.

Face-to-Face Medical Appointments

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Balfe]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they have made towards the return to face to face appointments on demand for medical patients.

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

My Lords, face-to-face GP appointments increased from 10 million in August to 15 million in September. I should like to take this moment to thank those who have worked hard to restart primary care and serve patients in difficult circumstances. But I should also flag that the proportion of consultations by phone and video is currently running at around 40% and, for many people, this represents a safe, convenient, low-stress, low-cost and hygienic way to get the clinical engagement they need.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response and note that public trust in the Government is not rising at the moment, and that many people feel that the absence of effort to get medical practice back to normal is a contributory factor in this. Will the department make it a priority to get face-to-face appointments back to the level that they were before? If it cannot, the Government will find that trust declines even further.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his comments and reassure him that the Government are absolutely focused on the restart programme. The chief executive of the NHS has written to GPs, emphasising the absolute and primary importance of face-to-face appointments, for exactly the reasons that my noble friend knows full well. I also emphasise the enormous response that we have had from the public, and that we are meeting exacting targets for those face-to-face meetings. I also emphasise that new technologies and techniques have been very much welcomed by the public. Telemedicine, and telephone and video consultations, have proved to be extremely popular and helped to increase the number of appointments last month compared with this time last year.