Covid-19 Update
Bambos Charalambous Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Matt Hancock
Yes, of course. My hon. Friend makes the point well. We are putting more localised testing in and making sure that it is as accessible as possible. Of course, the challenge is to ensure that those tests get to the right people, prioritised appropriately, and I look forward to working with my hon. Friend to deliver that across Kent.
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
At least six care homes in my borough of Enfield have seen the return of covid-19 cases. At the same time, they are experiencing delays in receiving pillar 1 and pillar 2 test kits, and results are taking more than a week to arrive, potentially leading to a rise in the spread of the virus. What steps is the Minister taking to ensure that testing is not taking as long? What does he intend to do to fix this mess?
Matt Hancock
Making sure that test kits get returned rapidly is incredibly important, including in social care. I am glad to say that the backlog has come down over the past week. At its core, our response to the problems in social care, because so many people who live in care homes are older and therefore vulnerable, is to protect the amount of test kits. The weekly testing of staff and the monthly testing of residents has been delivered and is being protected, even despite all the other pressures on testing capacity.
Covid-19 Update
Bambos Charalambous Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Matt Hancock
Yes. My hon. Friend, who speaks so clearly for his constituents and for the young people who enjoy those facilities, will I am sure be pleased to know that youth groups are exempt from the rule of six, because they have their own covid-secure guidelines, in the same way that schools do and in the same way that organised sport is exempt.
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
In his statement yesterday, the Prime Minister said he would introduce an army of covid marshals to help ensure social distancing in town centres. Can the Secretary of State tell me how these covid marshals will be recruited, how much they will be paid, how they will be paid for and what powers they will have?
Matt Hancock
This programme will be rolled out by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, because we will be working very closely with local authorities to make it happen, and we will publish the details in due course.
Oral Answers to Questions
Bambos Charalambous Excerpts(3 years, 8 months ago)
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The Minister for Patient Safety, Mental Health and Suicide Prevention (Ms Nadine Dorries)
We welcomed the Cumberlege report and we are looking into the recommendations made, but the hon. Lady knows that, as a result of live litigation, I am not able to comment further.
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Jo Churchill)
Guidance to explain the Government’s policy on face coverings continues to be updated and fully takes into account groups with protected characteristics. This guidance makes it clear that there are exemptions for people who are unable, for a variety of reasons, to wear face coverings. We have also run a proactive communications campaign to ensure that people are aware that some people are unable to wear a face covering in certain circumstances.
Bambos Charalambous
Georgina Fallows is a rape survivor who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder when her mouth is covered. Georgina and others like her have been challenged for not wearing a mask in shops and on public transport, and this causes further stress and anxiety. Does the Minister support Georgina’s campaign for a badge to identify people who legitimately cannot wear a mask, and will she consider raising awareness of this issue via a public information campaign?
Jo Churchill
I was incredibly sorry to hear what Georgina has been through, and fully understand that she and others who have undergone traumatic experiences cannot wear a face covering without distress. That is why our guidance and public messaging have been very clear that there may be people who should be exempt from wearing a covering for a variety of reasons. It is also clear that people do not need to prove it when challenged. We are actively engaging with stakeholders and charities to ensure that these messages sensitively get across, and we will continue to do so, but I would welcome a fuller discussion with the hon. Member about anything we can do further to help individuals such as Georgina.
Covid-19
Bambos Charalambous Excerpts(3 years, 8 months ago)
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Matt Hancock
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise these issues, which are very important. I acknowledge and can see the challenges that mental health services face. Some cautiously positive news announced today by the Office for National Statistics shows that the number of suicides during the peak of the pandemic was down from 10.3 per 100,000 to 6.9 per 100,000, but of course we have to ensure that mental health services are there for people as we come out of lockdown, so that they can access them again more easily, and that we do all we can to support those who need them.
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
Following on from the Secretary of State’s answer to the question that my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) asked about cancer, obviously winter is a time of huge pressures on NHS services, with pressures on acute beds in recent years. Can he tell us more about his plan to tackle the backlog and deal with cancer patients, and about the treatments they will receive in the wintertime?
Matt Hancock
Yes; the hon. Gentleman is right to raise exactly this point. Now is the time to get through as much of the backlog as possible. At the same time, we have introduced changes to the way that the NHS operates so that it is more risk-based, so that infection control procedures, which are important, can also be more risk-based, to try to increase the amount of surgery that can happen, essentially splitting the NHS into areas that are deemed “covid green”, which are secure from covid, and “covid blue”, which means the areas where there may be covid, to allow the throughput of surgery to increase. Of course, cancer services have continued all the way through, but obviously they were diminished during the peak. With winter coming, we want to put the extra funds into the NHS to try to ensure that those services can continue all the way through, as much as is possible. The flu vaccination programme is also an important part of protecting the NHS from higher demand this winter.
Oral Answers to Questions
Bambos Charalambous Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Matt Hancock
Yes. David Rosser is a great leader of a very, very impressive trust. I was speaking to him only last week. There is an important lesson from covid, which is that many of the NHS central rules and much of the bureaucracy was lifted to allow local systems to respond as a health system. That has worked well. We need to learn from that. We need to not only make that permanent, but see where we can go further in that sort of system working.
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
Matt Hancock
We were scrupulously fair in the allocation of funding to local authorities, ensuring, for instance, that the support for social care went according to the number of beds. We have taken a great deal of care to make sure we get this right.
Covid-19: BAME Communities
Bambos Charalambous Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) on securing this important and timely debate, and on her excellent speech.
Some 16% of the population in my constituency come from a black and minority ethnic background, and even before we knew the hard data about covid-19 deaths, the BAME community could sense that it was disproportionately affected. My local community joined in mourning the tragic death of 26-year-old care worker, Sonya Kaygan. Sonya died from covid-19 in mid-April after being exposed to coronavirus in the care home where she worked. Sonya leaves behind a three-year-old daughter, who is now growing up without a mother.
Sadly, Sonya is one of thousands of people from the BAME community who worked in frontline services and have lost their lives. As we watched the news and heard about the disproportionate number of BAME lives being lost, people rightly asked, “Why is this happening to our community?” Although some of it can be put down to social gatherings between different communities, that is by no means the only explanation.
Two weeks ago Public Health England published its first report on the disparities in the risks and outcomes of covid-19, but although it showed the bare facts it provided no explanations, which led to more questions than answers. Why were BAME Britons who contracted coronavirus twice as likely to die as white Britons? Why do black and Asian groups have the highest death rates from coronavirus? Why was race and ethnicity such a prevalent factor in the death stats?
Last week, we learned of the existence of Public Health England’s second report “Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on BAME groups”, which had not been released. It made for shocking reading. The report stated that structural racism had significantly impacted the effect of covid-19 on the BAME community, and that historical racism had made BAME NHS staff less likely to speak up about a lack of personal protective equipment or the increased risks they faced. Dr Chaand Nagpaul, who chairs the British Medical Association, said in response to the report that more than 90% of doctors who died during the pandemic were from BAME backgrounds, and that BAME staff were three times as likely to say that they felt pressured to work without sufficient PPE.
The PHE report echoed those comments and stated:
“Historic racism and poorer experiences of healthcare or at work mean that BAME individuals are less likely to seek care when they needed it”
and they are also less likely to speak up if they have concerns about risks in the workplace. The report further states:
“The unequal impact of covid-19…may be explained by a number of factors ranging from social and economic inequalities, racism, discrimination and stigma,”
as well as differing risks at work and underlying health conditions.
Data published in the Health Service Journal on BAME deaths from covid-19 highlighted that BAME groups accounted for 21% of NHS staff, but 63% of covid-19 deaths. Among medical staff, those from BAME backgrounds accounted for 44% of the staff, but 95% of the covid-19 deaths. These figures are truly shocking, and we cannot shy away from the fact that underlying racism is a key factor in these covid-19 deaths.
During the course of this debate, other colleagues have made the point that the BAME community is also over-represented in other frontline services, leading to more public interaction and exposure to covid-19. I shall not dwell on that now, but we must also remember those public transport workers, such as Belly Mujinga, who contracted the virus and died.
The Government’s failure to release the second report on time does not inspire confidence that they are serious about taking action. Action is needed to tackle the inequality among health workers. Viewed together with the failure of the Government to implement the recommendations of the Lammy review, the Wendy Williams Windrush review and Baroness McGregor-Smith’s review on race in the workplace, we have to wonder whether they have any intention on tackling structural racism at all. I challenge the Government to prove me wrong. Implementing the recommendations of the reports in full would be a start, but if the Government truly believe that black lives matter then they will be judged on their actions.