Covid-19 Update

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 29th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

We are very confident about the supply that we have, including accommodating the new advice that I have accepted from the JCVI. I join my hon. Friend in thanking the many thousands of GPs across the country who have been crucial to our vaccine programme.

May I take a moment to address the question that my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) asked about the timing of laying the regulations? I want to clarify that the regulations setting out the new measures have been made by the Minister for public health and vaccines—the Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup)—and are in the process of being registered with the National Archives. They will then be laid before Parliament and should be available to review online at around 5 pm.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It does not feel as if the pandemic will be over any time soon; we have only got to omicron so far, not omega. May I urge the Secretary of State to look at two things? The first is the deliberate campaign of disinformation that is going on around the country. Some of these people are dangerous—their views are certainly dangerous. I hope that the Secretary of State will work with the Home Secretary to make sure that we check on all these campaigns about “new Nuremberg laws” and that nobody does damage to people working in the health service.

Secondly, will the Secretary of State tackle the problem of profiteering? Frankly, some companies are now charging completely disproportionate prices for PCR tests. There should surely be a fixed price across the whole UK.

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point about how the danger of disinformation is costing lives, not just here in the UK, but across the world. Rightly, we have talked a lot about South Africa today. He will know that there is very low take-up of vaccines in South Africa even when they are available; that is partly due to disinformation campaigns. I assure him that we are working across Government with the Home Office, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and other Departments to counter such disinformation as best we can.

On PCR tests, I refer the hon. Gentleman to the remarks that I made a moment ago.

Covid-19 Update

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

First, my hon. Friend is right to talk about the demand on GP services, which is one reason why I announced, just a few weeks ago, the winter access programme, with a record amount of support, which will undoubtedly help. On the vaccination programme, GPs across the country are doing phenomenal work, but I want to make sure it is working in every part of the country. If there is more we can do in his area, we will, and I would be happy to meet him.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I am delighted to say that I have been boosted, so I am grateful. I am not sure everybody is grateful, but I want to ask about long covid, because there is lots of evidence now that people who suffer from it have had long-term neurological changes and that is sapping the provision of services for other people with neurological conditions. Is it not time we had a strategy for brain injury across the whole of government, including every Department, not just his own?

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Gentleman speaks with great experience on this issue and has talked about it many times in this House. He is right to link this to long covid. I hope I can reassure him. Work is going on in the NHS, in the Department and in some of the research institutes on long covid, which the Government are supporting with millions of pounds, and the NHS is working with people who are suffering from long covid, listening to them about what more we can do.

NHS England Funding: Announcement to Media

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 25th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

I always listen with great care to my right hon. Friend. He is right that we in this House, on behalf of taxpayers, provide the resources to the NHS and others to deliver the outcomes that we want for all of our constituents, but it is absolutely right that the NHS and others set out their plans for doing so, and that we hold the NHS to account for delivery against those plans. Ministers will draw up those plans in tandem with the NHS because, quite rightly, just as I will hold the NHS to account, I know that my right hon. Friend will hold me to account in this House. A key element of those plans for tackling the backlog must also be reform and innovation rather than simply more of the same.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I honestly despair. This announcement will not make the blindest bit of difference to the backlog. There will not be the kit in place anywhere near in time to make sure that people get their biopsies back in the next 18 months or two years. There will not be enough staff, because we are not training enough this year even to backfill the number of people who are leaving all of these professions this year. The problem will get worse, not better, unless the Government can tell us how they will make sure that more doctors, oncologists, pathologists and dermatologists stay in the profession and that more of them do more additional sessions a week, for instance, by increasing their overtime payments. The Government might want to sort out the pension problems, which mean that many people are leaving. They might want to provide some kind of golden staying-on bonus for people and make sure that they have a few extra days’ holidays. Most of them are not desperate for money; they are desperate for just a moment to be able to draw breath so that they can do a decent job. However, if we do not have the people, this is all a waste of money.

[Edward Argar]

I know that the hon. Gentleman genuinely feels strongly about this issue. He and I discussed it in a recent debate in Westminster Hall, and I think I am due to meet him to discuss the 10 points that he flagged up then as genuinely practical suggestions to help improve both retention and recruitment in the NHS workforce. He knows that I am always happy to do that. Hopefully, my office will have been in touch with him. If it has not been in touch, it will be, because I want to have that conversation with him.

On the hon. Gentleman’s key point, there are number of things. This is about not only tackling the urgent backlogs now, but building a system that is resilient for the future and that can actually tackle the broader challenges that we as a society face. That means more diagnostic capacity and more diagnostic capacity at an earlier stage, as some other countries have. I am quite happy to acknowledge that, under Governments of both political complexions, we could have done more, and that is why we are doing more now, and I say that to him gently. He talks about urgency; he is right. He also makes a very important point, which I tried to allude to in my earlier answer. If I did not land it clearly, I will attempt to do so now. He is absolutely right to highlight the risk of burn out and exhaustion, for want of a better way of putting it. As I said, it is very easy for people to say that X specialty was not working during the pandemic because that surgery was not happening, but you can bet your bottom dollar that the people involved were probably helping out—the anaesthetists and theatre nurses were—so we do need to address that point. I will be happy to see the hon. Gentleman.

Future of the National Health Service

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) on securing this important debate, especially at the moment.

In essence, the NHS is about people. It is about its workforce. There can be as many hospitals and clinics as we want, but without any staff in them, they will not make anyone’s health any better. I am painfully aware that after covid, so many of the people who work in the NHS are—I think the medical term is—knackered. They are completely and utterly exhausted. I know of dermatologists and pathologists who ended up helping out in intensive care units in addition to doing their ordinary day job. They were doing hours and hours every week and have got to the end of the year and are completely and utterly exhausted.

There is a phenomenal backlog; we all know about the numbers of people on waiting lists. That is partly because lots of people did not to present to their doctors because they did not want to bother them or were frightened of getting covid. There are lots of terrible stories of people who are presenting very late, particularly with cancers. I had a stage 3B melanoma, and I am painfully aware that if I had left it a few more months, I might not be here today. At the time, I was given a 40% chance of living a year. I know what it is like for all those families who feel desperate that someone has been delaying, and then get terrible news. It is also a phenomenal additional cost to the NHS if somebody presents later, because the surgery and the treatment will be far more complicated.

There are all the cancelled operations for elective surgeries that are not necessarily life threatening but life enhancing, such as knees and hips. When I was first elected in 2001, we still had the waiting list hangover from the previous Government, with people waiting five years for a new hip or knee. That is where we are now. That leads me to a real concern that the Government, with their new healthcare levy, are frankly putting the cart before the horse. If we do not have the people to deliver, throwing money at the NHS will not make the blindest bit of difference to health outcomes.

In the UK, we have roughly three doctors per thousand head of population. The rest of the EU, including countries that have many, many fewer than us, have 4.2. We are 1,939 consultant radiologists short. That is one of the things that will make a difference to whether people with late-stage cancer live or die. In oncology, 189 more clinical oncologists are needed in the UK now, and that is without considering the increase required to deal with the backlog, as well as the new presentations. We have roughly 650 consultant dermatologists in the country; we need roughly another 200. Skin cancer is one of the fastest-growing areas of cancer death in the UK. Only 3% of diagnostic laboratories in the UK are fully staffed at the moment. That means delays in getting results, in particular from histopathology, to doctors to be able to start the necessary treatment.

I have some quick-fix answers, and I hope the Minister will implement all 11 of them. First, reward staying on in the profession, because lots of people are retiring early. Secondly, reward coming back into the profession, because getting more retirees back in would really help with the workforce problem.

Thirdly, sort the gender pay gap. That is one of the problems that is making it much more difficult for lots of women to stay in the profession.

Think about providing sabbaticals to people. Sometimes burnout can be prevented just by allowing somebody to have a three-month or six-month sabbatical, knowing they will come back in.

Sort out the pension problem. I know the Government think they have done that, but it is still an issue and is why lots of people are not carrying on.

We have to deal with the fact that overtime is now paid less than it was five years ago. Lots of people are saying, “I don’t really want to do an extra clinic on a Saturday morning or a Sunday afternoon.”

We have to deal with pay erosion—a point that was made earlier. If we keep on not paying doctors enough in the NHS, in the end they will choose to go to Australia, Canada or New Zealand.

We have to sort out the issue of private sector capacity sucking far too many consultants out of their NHS work, day in, day out. That simply means that people, including in very poor constituencies such as mine, will say, “You know what? I’m going to find the £5,000, £6,000 or £7,000 to have that hip or knee operation for my Auntie Val, because it is about the quality of her life.”

We have to train more people. I do not know why we are still lagging behind what we know we need. We should have more places for training, and we should be encouraging other disciplines, such as pathology, dermatology, emergency care and so on.

We have to sort out the immigration factors, which play into all this and mean that so many doctors who have worked here for some time are going back to the countries they were born in because they do not feel that they have a place here in the UK. Finally, please stop putting the workforce last in deciding what we do about the NHS. We cannot run an NHS permanently at 95% or 98% capacity, because then when there is a crisis, such as the one we have had over the past two years, the whole thing is—and this is a technical term—buggered.

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[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to speak and listen in this debate. I thank the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) for setting the scene and all those who have made contributions. Every one of us is definitely agreed on one thing: the importance of the NHS, what it does and what it has done over time. If we needed further reinforcement of that, what we have seen in the past year has told us. In my family, I lost my mother-in-law to covid, so I do understand. During those difficult times for families, health service workers are there, masked up and doing their best to try to preserve life.

As my party’s health spokesperson, I must emphasise the importance of the NHS and highlight the issues of concern for my constituents, to ensure that the future of the NHS is maintained and provides hope to those who currently feel that it is not being maintained in the way that it should. It is a devolved matter, as the Minister knows. During the 18 months of the pandemic, we might have taken our NHS for granted in a way. We did not take the staff for granted; that is not the point I am making. The point is, the NHS was there, we depended on it and it was important to have it in place to help out. I put my thanks on record to all those healthcare workers across the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

I know we clapped the NHS staff. I live out in the countryside but, believe it or not, I could hear the clapping starting three miles up the road. I could hear the clapping in the midnight air from people in the village of Greyabbey down the road. People were out in numbers creating that crescendo of noise. We need to galvanise public compassion and our sense of community and wartime spirit to restore to the NHS the pride we have. I look to the Minister to do that.

This is a debate about the NHS, but the Northern Ireland protocol is preventing 910 medicines from getting into Northern Ireland. That will have an impact on the NHS. It is not the Minister’s responsibility, but would he convey to the relevant Minister the importance of our having medications that are available in the rest of the United Kingdom? They are available on the mainland, but we cannot get them in Northern Ireland. It is terribly frustrating, and a further 2,400 medicines may be at risk. It is an important issue, and it is an NHS issue. It needs to be on record.

I feel that the prioritisation of treatments and services are at the forefront of the future of the NHS. Too many people are awaiting cancer treatment. I am pleased that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) is here. His story is a personal one. I remember speaking to him in the Chamber. I did not quite know what was happening, but I had not seen him for a while, and I did notice that there was a scar on the back of his head.

[Chris Bryant]

A scar?

[Jim Shannon]

Well, I noticed it after the surgery. Our NHS saved our honourable Friend’s life. It is good to hear his personal story as well.

Health reconfiguration is crucial to ensure that our NHS is held to its highest standard. By the same token, these changes must be assessed to ensure that they benefit the future of the NHS. We want the correct funding. I hope that the Minister will reaffirm that he will encourage the Secretary of State to undertake discussions with his counterparts in the devolved institutions to weigh up how this will impact on other parts of the United Kingdom. People are waiting for life-saving cancer treatment, and people are waiting years for a consultation. Unfortunately, some of my constituents waited and did not get the surgery. They did not get their diagnosis early on and some of them are not here today. That is the reality of the waiting times that we all worry about.

The King’s Fund states that

“even under the most optimistic circumstances outlined in the NHS Five Year Forward View, an additional eight billion a year in funding was to be needed by 2020.”

We are already a year behind. If we want to protect and maintain our NHS, we must ensure that the correct funds are in place to secure its future in the United Kingdom. I urge the Minister to listen to NHS workers and focus on what they are telling us. The Minister needs to protect their jobs and livelihoods and the NHS.

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[Edward Argar]

I appreciate why Opposition Members might not want to hear what Labour Governments did in the past, given the extent to which they massively accelerated the privatisation of our NHS. To address the hon. Lady’s point directly, we do believe that there is a role for private providers, the independent sector, voluntary organisations and others in providing healthcare services in this country.

Workforce is an issue that a number of colleagues have rightly raised. I am afraid I cannot say to the hon. Member for Tooting and others that, among other things, I am taking on responsibility for mental health in my new portfolio. However, following the departure of my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) to the Treasury, as of about three days ago, I will be assuming responsibility for workforce alongside the other responsibilities in my portfolio. I look forward to working with her and the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), who I believe is the shadow Minister, as well as meeting with Opposition Members who take a close interest.

The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) spoke with typical wisdom on that matter and made a number of very powerful points. At the risk of a negative impact on my career prospects—although the reshuffle has just happened, so hopefully I can get away with it now—I agree with a lot of what he said. He highlighted that, were it not for a prompt diagnosis, he would not be here. For what it is worth, I think I speak for everyone in the Chamber—if not on all points, then certainly on this one—when I say we are all extremely pleased that he is still with us. He is a man of great integrity and strong beliefs, and I look forward to working with him. We meet on a number of things. I am happy to meet with him to talk about his suggestions and how they might factor in to how we move forward, in the spirit of bipartisan and constructive discussion.

[Chris Bryant]

Get on with it.

[Edward Argar]

With the meeting or the job, or both? A number of hon. Members have raised “Agenda for Change” and pay and conditions. I hope I can reassure them, as I sought to do with the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell). It is not our intention that integrated care boards depart from “Agenda for Change”. The Bill is drafted in such a way as to seek to replicate what is currently there. On Second Reading, I offered to have a meeting with her. I would be very happy to have that meeting, if she gets in touch.

On funding, this Government have passed legislation increasing NHS funding by £33.9 billion by 2023-24 and put £2 billion into elective recovery. In addition, the Prime Minister announced a massive cash injection into our NHS a couple of weeks ago.

I want to give the hon. Member for Leeds East a little time at the end, so I will just make a couple of quick points. The hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) is right: we are always happy to learn from our Scottish friends. In response to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), that is a matter of medicine supply which I discuss regularly with the Northern Ireland Health Minister, and it is absolutely vital that we seek a resolution. I believe that the previous approach by Lord Frost is the right one to find a sustainable way forward.

Covid Vaccine Passports

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Wednesday 8th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I agree with my hon. Friend that there is a very strong libertarian argument and not one with which I would disagree. This is a difficult and important decision. As he says, we are still not in a place where I can stand here and say, hand on heart, that we have transitioned this virus and that it is no longer a pandemic. That is why we are having to take this decision. I slightly disagree with his latter point; public buildings should obviously remain accessible and open to all without these passports, because there are relative measures that we can take to allow us the additional protection as we head towards the booster programme.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Mr Speaker, I am feeling sheepish about earlier; my apologies—touché.

This is just nonsense. I am 100% in favour of vaccination and 100% opposed to vaccine passports. There is no legal definition of what a nightclub is, as opposed to a place where other people might be bouncing up and down, and shouting at one another across a Chamber in a room of 500 people. There is no legal definition that the Minister is going to be able to rely on. The Government will effectively be turning bouncers on the door into legal officers, who will be deciding whether somebody has had a placebo or not. This is for the birds. We can relieve the Minister of all his pain; he just has to say that he has thought again and he is not going to do it.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for his question. Bouncers will not have to decide if someone has had a placebo or not, because anyone who has been on a trial will be deemed to be vaccinated and will receive their certificate.

[Chris Bryant]

Even though they’re not?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I said this at the Dispatch Box before recess. Actually, the Secretary of State took to the World Health Organisation a plea to the rest of the world that people in trials should be considered fully vaccinated, whether they have had the placebo or otherwise, in order to encourage them to come forward for vaccine trials. I repeated that today. It will not be an issue for nightclub bouncers.

Health and Social Care

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2021 Ministerial Corrections

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The vaccination programme could in no way have delivered the extraordinary uptake without the backbone being NHS doctors, nurses and pharmacists, working with our armed forces, local government and the private sector to deliver it.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

And the police.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

And volunteers and the police. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) reminds us all of the role that policemen and women played in ensuring that the vaccination roll-out worked well. The very clear guideline is that we should take both personal and corporate responsibility. It is great to see Transport for London, other transport systems and the M10 of metro Mayors, which I speak to regularly, taking that corporate responsibility. We all have our part to play, as we have done by coming together and vaccinating the country at scale. This is the most infectious respiratory disease that is aerosol-transmitted.

[Official Report, 19 July 2021, Vol. 699, c. 695.]

Letter of correction from the Minister for Covid Vaccine Deployment, the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi).

An error has been identified in my response to the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams).

The correct response should have been:

Covid-19 Update

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 19th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The vaccination programme could in no way have delivered the extraordinary uptake without the backbone being NHS doctors, nurses and pharmacists, working with our armed forces, local government and the private sector to deliver it.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

And the police.

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[Nadhim Zahawi]

I thank my hon. Friend for his excellent question; I agree. I remember that when I took on the role of vaccines Minister in November, I explained to the House and the country that the reason we began by vaccinating phase 1—the most vulnerable cohorts, as set out to us by the JCVI—was that categories 1 to 9 were where 99% of the virus’s mortality was coming from. That work has gone incredibly well: in all those categories we have uptake of more than 90%, in some of them it is at 95% or 96%, and in one it is even at 100%. There is very high uptake of the second dose as well. I think that it is right that we now take this step, pragmatically but cautiously, as we transition from pandemic to endemic status and help the rest of the world to do the same.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Because of the pandemic, nearly 5 million people in the UK are now waiting for hospital treatment of some kind or other. In many cases, they are waiting for really important operations, from eye operations that could save or improve their eyesight to hip or knee operations. Everybody gets that the NHS has been really stretched, but the problem is that thousands of people are now saying, “You know what? If I pay £3,000, £5,000, £10,000 or £20,000, I can get that new hip or that new knee done with exactly the same doctor that I would see in the NHS, but in the private sector.” Surely that is unfair. Surely we must say that the NHS will buy up every single piece of spare capacity in the UK to get the backlog down as fast as possible, including for cancer care and for things that might seem minor but that make a dramatic difference to quality of life, such as hips and knees.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I thank the hon. Member for that thoughtful question. He is absolutely right: there are about 5.3 million people waiting for treatment. He is also right that we have to make sure that the NHS has the resources to do it, which is why two things have happened: the Secretary of State has made it a priority to deal with the pandemic, and he has made it an equal priority to deal with the backlog. He has made £1 billion available for the NHS to do that work.

Coronavirus

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

No—on the contrary, that is our view of how far through the vaccination programme we need to get. We are not aiming to eradicate the virus in this country because that is not possible. Indeed, in the parts of the country where it has been tried, it has been found to be not possible. We are aiming to live with this virus like we do with flu. I can give my right hon. Friend an update: as of midnight last night, 1.2 million over-50s and 4.4 million over-40s have had their first jab, but not their second. We seek to get a second jab into a majority—not all, but a majority—of them by 19 July. The estimate is that by taking that pause in this step, we can save thousands of lives. I can tell my right hon. Friend that taking further time and pausing for longer is not estimated to save many more lives, because of the level of protection especially among the over-50s, who are, as we all know, the most likely to die from this disease.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State knows that I broadly agree with what he is doing today. He referred just now to us having to live with the virus as we do with flu. With flu, we do not require people to self-isolate, and we do not ask them to test and trace. My understanding is that the Government intend to keep test and trace on a mandatory, statutory basis all the way through the rest of this year and possibly until the end of March—or am I wrong?

[Matt Hancock]

With flu, of course, if people have symptomatic flu and are ill, they do tend to stay at home. Of course we have not done that on a mandatory basis before, but it is advisable that if people have symptoms of flu, they stay at home. For contacts, as the hon. Gentleman probably knows, we are already piloting an approach whereby instead of having to isolate as contacts, vaccinated people go into a testing regime. That is an approach that I am very attracted to for the future, especially as more and more people get vaccinated, because we know that the risk once vaccinated is so much lower.

We are accelerating the second doses, and we are reducing from 12 weeks to eight weeks the time from first to second jab for all those aged 40 and above. In fact, since I came to this House on Monday, I have rearranged my second jab to be eight weeks rather than 12 weeks after my first.

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[Matt Hancock]

Yes we will, for exactly the reason that the hon. Gentleman sets out.

[Chris Bryant]

On someone proving that they are double vaccinated, there is still an issue between England and Wales and other parts of the UK. I wonder when that will be solved, because obviously everybody does not live in a hermetically sealed unit.

[Matt Hancock]

As somebody who grew up right on the Welsh border, I entirely understand that. I am working with Baroness Morgan, the new Health Minister in the Welsh Government, to ensure that we have the interoperability that the hon. Gentleman calls for. That is a significant piece of work that is under way. We need to sort this for vaccine data flows, and frankly all health data flows, across the border, and use this particularly acute need to change the policy and practices, to sort this out once and for all.

The regulations before the House today are there in order to pursue our goal, as throughout, to work to protect lives and get us out of the pandemic as soon as is safely possible. I commend the motion to the House.

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[Jonathan Ashworth]

Of course I want to see terminus day on the 19th, although I am not sure if we are going to see terminus day on the 19th. The hon. Gentleman, who is always well-informed, will no doubt have read the explanatory notes, which indicate that this four-week period is to assess the data, and the four tests will be applied at the end of that four-week period. That is not quite the terminus day that the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State have indicated.

[Chris Bryant]

It is wholly misleading to call it a terminus date anyway. Even if we were to implement cessation of some of the measures on 19 July, there will still be lots of other measures that will exist, including test and trace, maybe for quite proper reasons. To mislead the nation by constantly going on about freedom days and terminus days is just a mistake.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Of course I want to see terminus day. I want to see freedom; I want to get back to doing the things that I enjoy—although I am quite happy to sit in a group of six in a pub; I am not sure that I have more than six friends, Mr Deputy Speaker, so it has suited me in many ways. But more generally—[Interruption.] I see you have one less friend today, Secretary of State.

I am keen to see terminus day. But interestingly, although the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the Secretary of State have tried to hint that restrictions are coming to an end by using the new phrase, “We have to learn to live with the virus like we live with flu,” the Secretary of State or the Prime Minister have not outlined to us what that means. They are trying to suggest to us that it is all going to go back to normal, but actually we put in place mitigations to deal with flu year by year. The hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) was a Public Health Minister. He was very much involved in the flu vaccination campaign. We vaccinate children to deal with flu. We put infection control measures into care homes when there is a flu outbreak. There will have to be mitigations in place when we go back to living with this virus, but the Secretary of State must explain to us what those mitigations are. Will we continue wearing masks?

Covid-19 Update

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I want to get rid of all the restrictions that have been put in place to manage this pandemic, and we will get there. My hon. Friend will have noticed that the link we have explicitly made is to the rate of vaccination and getting the vaccines done over these four weeks to come. Of course it is my duty to recommend to the Prime Minister the actions I think are necessary to keep people safe—as a Health Secretary, that is my duty—but I am also a parliamentarian who represents constituents who want these restrictions removed as soon as safely possible. That is our goal, and this is a difficult balance. I think we have got the balance right, unfortunately, today—I say “unfortunately” because I wish it was easier. It is not, but we are able to make some progress and I very much hope we can make the full degree of progress that my hon. Friend wants to see in the not-too-distant future.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I want to ask about the Test and Trace app, because this relates to freedom as well. As I understand it, the Government intend to keep the legislation in place on Test and Trace all the way through until next March. At the moment, tens of thousands of people every day are pinged by the app. The app does not tell them when the infection might possibly have taken place. I know of schools where four whole classes were sent home because a single teacher had been pinged over the weekend. I have known of construction businesses where every single person has had to be sent home. If we keep on doing this, particularly in some parts of the country where there are high levels of infection, we are going to have large parts of the economy constantly being closed down. I know that there are some measures in place, but the financial problems are still very difficult, especially for middle-class families. They may have the financial freedom but they still find it very difficult to stay in work and be able to do their work when the rules are all changing. If we really want freedom, we are going to have to turn this blunderbuss into something more precise, are we not?

[Matt Hancock]

Of course the purpose of the app is to identify people who have been in close contact with somebody who has tested positive and let them know that, and therefore ask them to self-isolate—that is what it is there for. The hon. Gentleman asks me to get more data so that it can be more targeted. He will know from last summer’s debate that the restrictions on the amount of data we can gather through that app are put in place by the companies rather than by us, so we cannot be more targeted. I am very happy to arrange a briefing for him on the details of that. But the goal is to ensure, in time, especially for those who have been vaccinated, that we follow through on the pilots we have done under which people who are contacts—not the “cases” themselves—are able to go into a testing regime, rather than having to isolate. There are pilots under way to check clinically that that works, and I look forward to seeing their results.

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[Matt Hancock]

The best thing that I can point my hon. Friend to is the slides that were presented by the chief medical officer today. I will see whether there is anything further that we can publish, but as a general rule, we publish all the data on which these judgments are made. Central to the judgment today is the fact that we are seeing a rise in hospitalisations, especially over the past week, and especially among those who are unvaccinated or have just had a single jab. Those people are not largely those who are unvaccinated out of choice; it is those who are unvaccinated because they have not yet had the opportunity because they are younger.

Until about a week ago, hospitalisations were basically flat. We thought that the link might have been completely broken between cases and hospitalisations or that it might be a lag. Sadly, hospitalisations then started to rise. For deaths, we have not yet seen that rise, which I am very pleased about; hopefully they will never rise, in which case the future will be much easier. It may still be that there is an element of it that is a lag, and we will be looking out for that very carefully over the couple of weeks ahead, but nevertheless our goal is to get those vaccines done in the five weeks between now and 19 July in order to make sure that this country is safe. I will commit to publishing anything further that we can that underpinned the decision, but I can honestly say to my hon. Friend that most of it is already in the public domain.

[Chris Bryant]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I completely agree with every single word of your statement earlier, as I guess you knew I would. I want to ask, however, about the provisions for our business from next week. As you know, these things were all timed to change at the same time as the national situation, which has now been changed.

I presume that there will be a knock-on effect on parliamentary business: whether Select Committees will meet in hybrid form or virtually, how we will conduct our parliamentary business in the Chamber and the Division Lobbies, and so on. I know that some of that is your responsibility solely, Mr Speaker, but some of it is the responsibility of the Government and might need changes to the Standing Orders. I wonder whether you have had any notification from the Government that they intend to bring such changes forward or of when we will debate them, when we will ensure we get them right, whether there will be proper debate and whether there will be a business statement to tell us when all that will happen.

[Mr Harper]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Listening to the Secretary of State, I was struck by what he said about the need to get people vaccinated and about the very important difference that that makes to the level of risk. In the House’s decision making about how we conduct our affairs, would it be relevant to look at the proportion of Members who have been single or double-vaccinated? My judgment would be that if the vast majority of us have been vaccinated, this level of social distancing is simply not necessary and the House could get back to what I know you want, Mr Speaker: much more effective holding of the Government to account.

A Plan for the NHS and Social Care

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Wednesday 19th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I inform the House that Mr Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition, which will be moved at the start of the debate, and amendments (j) and (g), which will be moved at the end.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Not amendment (e)?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

No. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that his amendment was not selected.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move an amendment, at the end of the Question to add:

“but respectfully regret that the Government has provided insufficient information for its proposals properly to be scrutinised; and therefore beg leave that she will be graciously pleased to give directions that the following papers be laid before Parliament: the DHSC internal review of their operation during the pandemic as referenced by the Prime Minister’s official spokesman on 12 May.”

May I take this opportunity to note that although amendment (e) in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) has not been selected, its contents, which relate to brain injury, are important and welcome? I hope that Ministers take on board its recommendations.

[Chris Bryant]

It is all too tempting to intervene; I have never objected to temptation. On brain injury, I just want to say that I really want us to think about legislation now. The United States of America has made dramatic changes—it has introduced legislation four times now—and I think it is time we went down that route.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I completely agree. I hope that Ministers on the Treasury Bench have listened carefully. If they are prepared to bring forward legislation, we would work constructively across the House to ensure its speedy passage. May I thank my hon. Friend for the reference in his amendment to the impact of alcohol abuse on children? He knows that it is a subject very close to my heart; on behalf of the children of alcoholics community, I am grateful that he referred to it in his amendment.

Although we have often said this in the House, I still think that the whole House will want to remember today the 127,691 people so far who have lost their lives to covid-19, this awful disease, including the 850 health and care workers. Although repeating the numbers has become almost routine in this House, that does not make the scale or gravity of the loss any less shocking. We grieve as a nation and we all pay tribute to our healthcare workers, our social care workers and our public sector workers.

I am sure that the whole House will want to dedicate itself in good faith to learning lessons for the future. Sadly, we are in an era when, according to the experts, pandemics are becoming more predictable and will become more regular because of climate change and biodiversity loss, so learning lessons is about preparing better for the future rather than settling scores.

We know that the B1617.2 variant is spreading. From the data that I have seen, it appears to have a growth rate advantage of about 13% over the B1117 variant. It could well become the dominant strain in the United Kingdom. Although vaccination should mean that many are much safer and ought to avoid hospitalisation, the Government still have a responsibility to do all they can to contain its spread, minimise sickness and ensure that the 21 June target is not disrupted, if at all possible.

That is why I said on Monday that we need more surge vaccination in hotspot areas. We know that with vaccination there are always pockets where rates are lower than necessary, and we need to drive those rates that up. We have seen that throughout history—with measles, for example. So we urge the Government again to do all they can to drive up vaccination rates in Bolton, Bedford, Blackburn and other areas where we know there is an issue. We also need the Government to do more to contain the virus through test, trace and isolate. We need more surge testing. We need more enhanced contact tracing locally, with local authorities given the resources to carry it out. We need sick pay and isolation support fixed as well.

For those who are going in to work, or for those who are now socialising in premises, those buildings and premises need proper air filtration systems. There are experts now who can easily fix filtration systems in buildings to make them much more covid secure, and we should be inspecting workplaces in all these areas to ensure that every workplace is covid secure.

We need transparency in decision making as well. For the first time in my life, I think, I find myself agreeing with Mr Dominic Cummings. I know the Secretary of State does not often agree with Mr Dominic Cummings, but I find myself agreeing with Mr Dominic Cummings, who tweeted yesterday:

“With something as critical as variants escaping vaccines, there is *no* justification for secrecy, public interest unarguably is *open scrutiny of the plans*”.

Mr Cummings, on this occasion, is correct. [Interruption.] A wry laugh from the Secretary of State. Mr Cummings may well have been saying something different when he was in government; I do not know, but at least his public statement yesterday is correct. That is why our amendment calls for the publication of a Government lessons-learned review; not so that we can try to undermine the Government or find some hole to use across the Dispatch Box, but so that we can learn the lessons in our efforts to contain variants, and ensure that we are better prepared for the future. I hope the Secretary of State looks sympathetically upon that request, and perhaps joins us in the Division Lobby this evening.

I now turn to the contents of the Gracious Speech more generally. This should have been the Queen’s Speech that unveiled a new NHS plan to bring down the elective waiting list, which now stands at 5 million. This should have been a Queen’s Speech that outlined proposals to tackle the backlog of 436,000 people waiting over 12 months for treatment—many of them waiting in pain and anxiety, many of them facing permanent disability as a consequence of those waits.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Matt Hancock)]

I start by thanking the right hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) for his comradely advice, and I just correct the record because, thanks to his steadfast support for the Government’s action through the pandemic and the very grown-up approach he takes to these exchanges, Her Majesty the Queen was pleased to invite him to join the Privy Council, which we on the Government Benches welcome.

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for describing the bond that has grown between us. It is true that, even while challenging each other from time to time in times of pandemic, sometimes relationships are strengthened in the heat of responding to something so serious. That is absolutely true. I think he is a wonderful man. I know that occasionally he has to criticise, because he has to please his Back Benchers, but I know he does not really mean it.

Throughout these great challenges and these difficult months, we have protected the NHS and protected and supported the amazing people who work in it, and we are determined to give the NHS all it needs as we emerge from this pandemic. The Queen’s Speech underlines that commitment, first, with a total focus on beating covid through our unprecedented vaccination programme, and then through an ambitious programme of support for our whole health and care system to tackle the backlogs caused by the pandemic, which the right hon. Gentleman rightly described, and a health and care Bill to set the NHS fair for the future—a Bill whose ideas and central propositions come from the NHS itself—alongside social care reforms to tackle injustices that have remained for far too long, public health reforms to learn the lessons of the pandemic and to promote the health of the nation, mental health reforms to bring that legislation into the 21st century and digital health reforms to harness all the opportunities that modern technology provides. That is our mission, a mission to ensure that, in support of all this, we also turn our nation into a life sciences superpower.

The last year has proved beyond measure the value of the NHS across Britain, the importance of social care and the strength of feeling that people rightly have for these cherished institutions. Our task in this Parliament is to help them further strengthen and build back better, and that is what this Queen’s Speech will allow us to do.

I turn first to the immediate task of tackling covid. With more than 70% of adults now having had a first dose and almost two fifths already double vaccinated, we have much to celebrate. Vaccination underpins our road map, which means we can now have pints in pubs and hugs in homes. Yet, as I updated the House on Monday, the race between the virus and the vaccine has got a whole lot closer. I can tell the House that 2,967 cases of covid-19 with the B1617.2 variant have now been identified. We are protecting the progress we have made and the progress that everybody has worked so hard to achieve, with the biggest surge in local resources of this pandemic so far. That means surging vaccines and testing. In the last week across Bolton and Blackburn with Darwen, we have given 26,094 jabs, as well as delivering 75,000 extra tests.

But this challenge is not restricted to Bolton and Blackburn. We have used the extensive biosecurity surveillance system that we have built and new techniques to identify the areas we are most concerned about, where we will now surge testing and vaccinations further. We, of course, look at the data on cases, variants and hospitalisations, all of which we publish, but we are now able to use further tools. Mobility data shows how often people travel from one area to another, and we look at that in deciding where the virus is likely to spread. We now analyse waste water in 70% of the country, and we can spot the virus and the variants in the water to identify communities where there is spread.

As a result of all that analysis, I can tell the House that we will now surge testing and vaccinations in Bedford, Burnley, Hounslow, Kirklees, Leicester and North Tyneside, and we are supporting the Scottish Government, who are taking similar action in Glasgow and Moray. In practice, this means that we are putting in place more testing and more testing sites, and we are making more vaccinations available to everyone who is eligible. We are not yet opening up vaccinations to those who are 35 and younger, because across the whole country, the message is crystal clear. This episode shows just how important it is that every single person who is vulnerable to covid-19 gets not just one but two doses, because the vaccine offers the best possible protection against this disease.

Turning to our programme for the future, we must learn from the success of this vaccine roll-out, which shows how we can deliver huge projects with huge flexibility at huge pace. We must apply these lessons to how we tackle the backlog, and I want to set out clearly to the House the sheer scale of the challenge left by the pandemic. I agree very much with the analysis that the right hon. Member for Leicester South set out in respect of the scale of the challenge.

We now have 4.7 million people in England waiting for care and more in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Before the pandemic, we had succeeded in getting the 12-month waiting list down from 18,700 in 2010 to just 1,600 in the months leading up to the pandemic. Now, 380,000 have waited more than a year for care, but these figures do not yet include the returning demand of those people who have a problem but have not yet come forward during the pandemic, often because they have been trying to reduce the burden on the NHS, but are now rightly regaining the confidence to approach the NHS. So the real waiting list is far larger than those figures, and as people re-present with problems that they might not have wanted to bother the NHS with in the past year, we will see the waiting lists go up.

We know that, during the pandemic, 6.9 million fewer patients were added to the waiting list for diagnosis and treatment. The scale of the pent-up demand that will come forward is unknowable, but to give the House a sense of the scale of the challenge, since the start of the pandemic, the NHS performed 70% fewer electives than in a normal year. Some of those will have been resolved without the need for hospital treatment, and that is fine, but some will return. We do not yet know how many will present themselves and add to the waiting lists, but we do know that the NHS needs to operate at a scale never seen before across the whole United Kingdom to clear the backlog, so we are working hard to support the NHS to accelerate the recovery of services.

[Chris Bryant]

The Secretary of State will know that people with traumatic brain injury might well have been treated because they have been in a car crash or something like that over the last year, but then the ongoing neurorehabilitation simply will not have been made available to them. On top of that, we have a new set of people who have neurocognitive problems because of covid. May I urge him to think of putting a single person in charge of the whole sphere of neurorehabilitation and brain injury, to try to get this back on course?

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Hancock]

My hon. Friend has enormous expertise and wisdom in this area. He is right to make the argument that we need to support everybody’s mental wellbeing, but that we also need a specific focus on very serious mental ill health, much of which has been, in many cases, exacerbated by the privations that have been necessary during the pandemic. He says that this is a process that happens once every 20 years, but it is almost 40 years since we had a new mental health Act. We want to do this with stakeholders on a consensual basis—I am very glad to hear the reiteration of cross-party support just now from the right hon. Member for Leicester South. Our goal is to bring forward a draft Bill in this Session and a Bill potentially in the next Session, so that we ensure it is legislated for during this Parliament. That is a timetable on which we have worked with the many experts who have informed the process, led by Sir Simon Wessley, of course, whose report sparked off this work. I look forward to working on that with him and the Minister with responsibility for mental health, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries).

[Chris Bryant]

I think the Secretary of State just said that we have not had a mental health Act for 40 years, but I remember sitting on the Public Bill Committee for the Mental Health Act 2007. I know that everybody is against lobbying, but my experience as a member of that Committee was that the lobbyists from the mental health charities, the British Medical Association and the pharmaceutical companies were absolutely invaluable in ensuring that we got the legislation right. Will he make sure that is available again this time?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, I am absolutely happy to stress that point. This is a consensual process taking into account all the expertise from those who rightly want to influence. The hon. Gentleman almost made a joke about lobbying. The truth is that listening to people who have an expertise and an interest is absolutely critical to getting such a sensitive piece of legislation right. The legislation that this will replace was introduced in the early ’80s, so it is essentially 40 years old. There have been some updates, but there are still some extraordinarily antiquated things in our current mental health legislation. For instance, if someone does not declare then it is automatically assumed, if they are unmarried, that their father should take decisions on their behalf, rather than them choosing who might take those decisions—not their mother and not just one of their parents, but their father. That is just one example of the antiquated practices in this area that we need to address.

Finally, turning to our digital reforms, the pandemic has shown that one of the greatest allies we have in our battle for the nation’s health is data and technology. Digital health has truly come of age over the past year. There is no doubt about it: data saves lives. As we reshape health and social care, we will do it underpinned by a modern data platform, so we can get the most out of this powerful new technology. I am glad, again, that this is an area of cross-party consensus. Telemedicine has taken off. The NHS covid-19 app has been downloaded almost 24 million times and the wider NHS app, on which we can now demonstrate our vaccine status, was downloaded more times on Monday this week than on any previous day. If Members have not downloaded it yet, I recommend that they do. They can see their medical records and show somebody when you had the jab. NHSX committed to delivering the app by the ambitious schedule of 17 May, and it delivered. I am grateful to everybody who worked on this incredibly important project. The lesson of our data-driven vaccine roll-out must be applied everywhere. As citizens, we value the ability to see our data—after all, it is about us and it effectively belongs to us—and we want to see it used to drive better decisions, better research, better treatment and better support for colleagues on the frontline.

My view is that for years the health system has shied away from the modern use of data, and struggled on with paper forms, fax machines and clunky systems that do not talk to each other—but no longer. The pandemic has proved without doubt the incredible value to patients and clinicians alike of the modern use of data. Because of the gift of a universal NHS, we have the opportunity to have the best data-driven healthcare in the world, and I am determined that we seize it. Our health and care Bill and our new data strategy will drive a whole new approach to unleash that potential.

In addition to all those changes, we must, throughout, support all those who improve our health, including those in our life sciences and those who work in the NHS. Last week, I attended with colleagues a service to commemorate the life of Florence Nightingale. In his bidding, the Dean of Westminster reminded us that in Florence Nightingale, compassion and care had the power to deliver not just healing, but change. That must be our mission too: not just to heal, but to change. I am proud to be a member of a Government who deliver on our commitments. We delivered on our commitment to Brexit. We delivered on our commitment to protect the NHS. We are delivering on our commitment to vaccinate all. This Queen’s Speech is a commitment for healing and for change, for a United Kingdom that is stronger, healthier and more prosperous together, and I commend it to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Alison was 68 when she fell down a long flight of stairs and hit her head. She was bright as a button until that moment but the damage has left her feeling befuddled and trapped.

Heather was seven when she was hit by a car as she turned a corner on her scooter. Thank goodness she survived, but she suffered a terrible blow to the head. She is now 13 and she still struggles to concentrate.

Gareth played rugby from the age of 10 until he retired as a professional rugby player in his 30s. He took blow after blow to his head in the game and was repeatedly concussed, and kept on going back on the pitch. He now suffers from panic attacks, depression and anxiety. He thinks of taking his life every day. He fears dementia.

Rhys is in his 80s. He gets terribly confused and forgetful. He half-remembers that he has been diagnosed with dementia, but sometimes, paranoia sets in and he gets very angry with those who are looking after him.

Kate is 19. She was in a car with three friends when another car suddenly appeared on the wrong side of the road and crashed into them. The ensuing crash left her paralysed from the neck down and with significant cognitive impairment. She feels completely trapped.

Mark is now 19 and lives on his own. He finds it difficult to control his emotions and perform normal executive functions such as turning up on time. His doctor thinks that that is because the boiler in his childhood home was pumping out carbon monoxide for years without being spotted.

Richard and Jane adopted Kia when she was three months old. She suffers from foetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

Nick is a former fusilier in the British Army. He was caught by an improvised explosive device in Iraq, but because there was no physical sign of an injury, he was never checked for brain damage. He, too, suffers from depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts.

Faisal had covid last year. He has never shaken it off. He suffers from terrible fatigue and brain fog all the time.

Maria is 42. She was in a horrible abusive relationship for a decade, but never dared go to the doctor when her partner smashed her head repeatedly against the kitchen worktop. She suffers from terrible paranoia and has just been sent to prison for possession of illegal drugs.

These people—I have changed their names—and the 1.4 million people like them really need legislation now. A brain injury Act would do five things. First, it would guarantee neuro-rehabilitation for all, bridging the gap between acute services and community services, which so many people miss out on. Secondly, it would put proper protocols in place on concussion in all sports, both professional and grassroots, and make them identical so that children who play more than one sport do not end up terribly confused. Thirdly, it would help to prevent brain injury by legislating on carbon monoxide poisoning and employers’ duties towards their staff, including in the British armed forces.

Fourthly, the Act would ensure research into the causes, effects and treatment of brain injury. It seems remarkable to me, as the child of an alcoholic mother and as somebody who has seen various forms of brain injury in my own family, that we still do not really understand how the mind sits inside the brain. We really need to invest much more dramatically in research in that area.

Finally, the Act would require that all public bodies, including schools, the police, Department for Work and Pensions assessors and the courts, be trained in brain injury. One thing that repeatedly comes back to me is that people know that their injury is not visible to everybody else. The strength of the internal agony that they might be suffering changes from day to day and from week to week. To banish some of the taboos in this field, it is essential that, when they deal with somebody in our public services, they know that that person fully understands. Amendment (e) has not been selected today—I never thought it would be—but I hope that one day we will have proper legislation in the field.

I end by paying enormous tribute to the people in the Rhondda who have been doing the mass vaccination programme. I have seen the work that they do every Friday afternoon when lots of people have not turned up: they are so desperate not to waste a single dose that they ring anybody they know to get them in. That is an enormous tribute to them.