Covid-19 Update

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Monday 14th December 2020 Commons Chamber

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

As always, I am grateful to the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement.

This is a virus that, without adequate restrictions in place, spreads with ferocity. Case rates are increasing again, hospital admissions are climbing and the R is edging up. Last week, the England-wide rate was 159 per 100,000; now it is 188 per 100,000. That is a 20% increase. Across London cases have increased by 30% and across the east of England by 36%, so none of us is surprised at the action the Secretary of State is taking today. Indeed, he was warned that tier 2 would not be enough to contain the spread of the virus in many places. Indeed, it looks like in some areas, such as Kent, tier 3 is not enough to contain the spread either.

Elsewhere in the country, tier 3 does appear to be forcing the virus to flatline. Indeed, in the north-west it is trending down. However, overall the increasing areas are rising faster than the decreasing areas are falling. As things stand, we are heading into the Christmas easing with diminishing headroom. The buffer zone that the tiers were supposed to provide is getting much thinner.

What is the Secretary of State’s plan to keep people safe through Christmas and avoid huge pressures on the NHS in January? What is his plan to support an exhausted, underfunded, understaffed NHS through January to deliver the care patients will need? Is he confident that our NHS will not be so overwhelmed in January that it impacts on the vaccination programme?

Our response to covid throughout could have been stronger had contact tracing been more effective. In boroughs such as Islington, only 65% of people have been traced by the national system. In Tower Hamlets the figure is only 60% and in Barking it is only 61%, yet Test and Trace is costing £22 billion—more than the policing and fire service budgets combined. According to the National Audit Office, up to September only £785 million was allocated to local council public health teams. Meanwhile, Serco has subcontracted to 21 other firms, offering little training to staff, with some people in call centres sitting alongside others making sales calls for gambling websites. Surely it is time to scrap Serco and put all public health teams in the lead in the retrospective cluster-busting contract tracing we need.

The Secretary of State has promised more testing for tier 3 areas. What about the tier 2 areas? On the lateral flow tests he is rolling out, he will know that some care home providers are refusing to use them because of concerns about their accuracy. Is he satisfied that these tests are accurate enough for this purpose and safe? If they cannot be used for care homes, how quickly can care home residents’ relatives make use of polymerase chain reaction tests?

The Secretary of State often praises Liverpool, but is not the biggest lesson to draw from Liverpool that people still struggle to isolate if they do not have the financial means to do so? The eligibility criteria for the £500 payment is still too tightly drawn. People need decent sick pay. People in some circumstances need alternative accommodation. People need help with their shopping and medicines. Surely some of the £22 billion spent on Test and Trace could be reallocated to offer people adequate isolation support.

On the variant that has been identified, our constituents will naturally be concerned.

Will the Secretary of State undertake to keep the House updated throughout? I am grateful for the briefings he has arranged for myself and others with the chief medical officer, but if this variation means the virus is more easily transmissible, fixing contact tracing and isolation becomes even more fiercely urgent.

Finally, today I spoke to Fred Banning. Fred is just 38, has two children under 10 and has terminal cancer. He asks that those with terminal illness are given quicker access to the vaccine, so he can in the words that he said to me this morning “make the most of the time he has left with his family.” I understand that these are clinical decisions, but can the Secretary of State through his offices look into access to the vaccine for those with terminal illness and see what can be done for people such as Fred and many others in this situation?

[Matt Hancock]

I am glad to say that across large parts of the country there is very good evidence that tier 3 restrictions are working and the rates are coming down, but we need to be vigilant and, as the hon. Gentleman knows, overall rates are no longer coming down, hence we are having to take further action.

The hon. Gentleman talked in particular about the lessons from Liverpool; the primary lesson from Liverpool is that when everybody pulls together and everybody makes the sacrifices that are necessary for their whole community, we can really get this thing under control. I am grateful to colleagues across London and Essex and Hertfordshire, to whom I have been talking today, who are committed to working to ensure that we get the public health messages out first and foremost, and to the Mayor and the Conservative candidate for Mayor, who are both committed to working on behalf of the capital and, of course, those parts of Essex and Kent and Hertfordshire that are affected, because the single best thing that we can all do is speak with one voice about what is needed to get this virus under control.

The hon. Gentleman asked about Christmas, and my recommendation to people is to be cautious and careful. He asked about NHS funding and staffing; of course we have the strongest funding in history for the NHS, and I am delighted to say that we have more nurses in the NHS than ever before—14,000 more nurses than this time last year. I pay tribute to each and every one of them.

The hon. Gentleman asked about contact tracing and no doubt he will have seen the figures published on Thursday, which show that contact tracing now reaches over 80% of contacts. I pay tribute to the team, both local and national, who are ensuring that we can get to more than four fifths of people whom we need to reach, and that has been rapidly improving.

Finally, the hon. Gentleman asked about Fred, the gentleman with terminal cancer whom he spoke to this morning. Those with terminal cancer are, of course, clinically vulnerable by the nature of that awful disease, and we will ensure that those who are clinically vulnerable get access to the vaccine when clinically appropriate. I am very happy to take up the individual case he raises and ensure that Fred gets a fair deal.

All in all, I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s support for the measures we have outlined today and of course for the vaccine programme, which is rolling out across the country right now.