Covid-19

Justin Madders Excerpts

Monday 28th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

We have heard contributions from nearly 70 Members today. From the Labour Benches, we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle), my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (John Spellar), my hon. Friends the Members for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), for Hartlepool (Mike Hill), for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood)], for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith), for Newport East (Jessica Morden), for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy), for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), for Jarrow (Kate Osborne), for Bradford West (Naz Shah), for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali), for York Central (Rachael Maskell) and for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins). I am not going to be able to go through each contribution, but I wish to pick out a few highlights.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda gave a thoughtful, considered speech, touching on a number of areas where there was a great deal of consensus across the Benches—I will return to that later. He also raised points where there will be less consensus, but I certainly agreed when he said that there was a tendency in government to focus a lot on boasting about what they were going to do rather than what they could do at this particular time. My hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow spoke for many on these Benches and across the country when she said that the Government had squandered a great deal of good will in their handling of the pandemic. She was right to raise the issue of the disproportionate impact on BAME communities and the urgency with which we need a plan to address that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey was right when she said that a decade of austerity had weakened our defences and that the Government needed to justify their decisions better. We have heard plenty of examples of that tonight and we will go on to discuss it later. Like many, she raised the issue of problems with test and trace. I was alarmed to hear that in the Wirral area, not too far from me and where extra restrictions are in place already, people are waiting up to seven days to get their test results. It is not difficult to see why that is a huge problem that needs fixing urgently.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Warley gave several examples of where ministerial replies to written questions are not being provided in a timely manner, and I can certainly sympathise with that, given my experience. That ties in with the concerns that many Members raised about accountability, an issue I will come on to shortly. My hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South spoke candidly about her own health and how the crisis had impacted on her. May I say how pleased we all are to see her back in the Chamber tonight? Her campaigning on issues relating to social care and mental health came to the fore in her speech, and we needed to hear from her on those issues. We could not help but be moved by the heartbreaking stories I am sure we have all heard from distressed constituents who cannot see their loved ones because they are in a care home, and I hope we can see further action on that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South also raised the issue of those needing cancer treatment, the shockingly low levels of people receiving treatment for the first time at the moment and how some people are receiving their diagnosis so late that it is too late for any treatment to be effective. My hon. Friend the Member for York Central spoke passionately, as she always does, about the situation in her city and the challenges facing the care sector, which I will come on to shortly. My hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool was, once again, as he always is, a strong advocate for his local hospital and the people who work there, and he, too, raised the issue of the delays in testing locally. He also made the important point that the increased restrictions locally do require more resources to follow.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newport East gave an excellent and wide-ranging speech, contrasting some of the measures introduced in Wales with those introduced in this country. She also highlighted some of the broader issues that persist, including the 3 million people who have been excluded from any support whatsoever and the continuing difficulty that the five-week wait for universal credit creates.

I certainly could not refer to Members’ contributions without waxing lyrical about my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith), given that he is my Whip. He spoke about the challenges the university sector has faced in his city and the lack of support for the entertainment industry, of which he has considerable personal experience. There is no doubt that that represents a massive hole in the Chancellor’s winter plan that needs to be filled.

Virtually every Opposition Member talked about the well documented problems with the test and trace system, and about how the private sector national system is not working and how local public health teams should be given greater responsibility.

Many Members talked about the various sectors, including entertainment, where there is insufficient support and no immediate prospect of reopening. That concern extended to hospitality, and there was plenty of challenge of the Government’s decision to introduce a 10 pm curfew in pubs and restaurants, and whether it is working.

That is a current example of the wider issue that Members on both sides of the House have raised tonight about the sidelining of democracy and accountability during the crisis. The Minister knows these arguments well—she hears me make them every week in Delegated Legislation Committees. She will know that the Opposition have said on more than one occasion that we are more than happy to convene at short notice to debate regulations before they become law. More than 200 statutory instruments to do with coronavirus have been introduced since March, and I do not think one of them has been debated and voted on before it has become law.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda was right when he said that we are in danger of losing the public’s confidence when laws are introduced without scrutiny, debate and democratic consent. It is clear tonight that Members on both sides of the House are frustrated with the Government’s approach—we heard the word “frustration” used on more than one occasion.

When does the need to act in an emergency cease and become instead a routine disregard for parliamentary scrutiny? In the early stages we of course accepted that there was a need to act quickly, but more and more regulations are being introduced that do not satisfy the test of urgency. The laws on face coverings were debated more than four months after the Government recommended the wearing of them. The increase in fines for breaching the various rules did not need to be rushed in. The offence had already been created and it was just the level of penalty that was new.

Evidence, explanation and communication are essential ingredients for a healthy democracy, never mind a healthy country. The Government should not be afraid of challenge, but should be confident of their arguments and ready to deploy them in debate. They should be prepared to show the advice that supports their decisions. If they do that, in the long-term the decisions will be better, public support will be stronger and the chances of limiting the virus will be greater.

When it comes to stopping the spread, the timing of today’s debate is important. We all recognise that we are at a perilous moment, with the virus rising across the country and new restrictions being applied on an almost daily basis. We will do what we can to support the national effort. If ever a Government needed help, it is now. They give the impression that they have lost control, lurching from one crisis to another, seemingly unable to reverse the rise in cases.

At the heart of this failure is a testing system that is collapsing just when we need it most. Every scientific adviser said that relaxing lockdown measures would work only if we had an effective test and trace system in place, yet on just about every measure we are going backwards. People up and down the country are unable to access tests. Those who get tests find that it takes longer and longer to get their results. The private testing and contact tracing service is performing more poorly now than in its early weeks. This is not the world-beating service we were promised. This is not where we should be.

No one can have failed to notice the immense strain the social care sector has been under throughout the covid-19 outbreak. Several Members raised this issue tonight, including my hon. Friends the Members for Bradford West (Naz Shah) and for York Central. Reports that infection rates are beginning to rise in care homes once more should be of serious concern to us all, because it is vital to get on top of the challenges faced in social care ahead of the winter. We simply cannot afford for the action to protect our care homes and other services to be as slow and ineffective as it was at the start of the pandemic. We know that weekly testing for care home residents and staff, which the Government promised back in July, is critical to saving lives, but there have been repeated delays in the roll-out of testing and we hear that care homes are still waiting up to 15 days to receive their results. That is simply not good enough.

I want to say a few words about the workforce. Of course, we are all in awe of our wonderful NHS and social care staff and how they have coped throughout the pandemic. We pay tribute to each and every one of them, particularly those who have, sadly, lost their lives to the virus. They have worked under extreme pressure, and I know that they are dreading what appears to be heading their way. They will strain every sinew to provide the very best care; they always do. That is why they hold such a special place in our hearts.

In return, we owe it to those staff to provide them with the best support possible. No more scrabbling around for PPE and having to bring in their own home-made items, while UK manufacturers sold their products overseas; no more hospital outbreaks because there was no routine testing of patients; and no more discharges into residential homes of people already carrying the virus. This time, let us make sure that there really is a protective ring around social care. The hollowing out of public health and social care over the last decade has left us horribly exposed to the worst of this virus, and we cannot allow the same thing to happen again.

I really wish we could say that things will be better this time around, but what do we see at the moment? Children who have already missed six months of education are forced to spend more time away from school because they cannot get a test. Young people, many of whom have moved away from home for the first time, are holed up in their flats with no support because the Government did not prepare properly. Local public health teams are still not getting the data that they need from national test and trace to identify and isolate local outbreaks. It did not have to be like this. The Government have wasted the last few months boasting about moonshots and millions of daily tests at some point in the future, when they should have been dealing with the here and now to get test and trace ready for the increase in cases, which should have been anticipated, with people returning to work and students returning to school and university. We need an urgent plan to deal with testing now, not in a few months’ time.

We want the Government to succeed, and we will support them in whatever reasonable steps they propose to halt the spread of the virus, but we also want them to learn from their mistakes. It was not inevitable that we would have one of the highest death rates in the world, it was not inevitable that we would have the worst recession in Europe and it was not inevitable that we would see a second wave. And yet we are now on the cusp of one, but what do we see from Government? Confusion and ambivalence—the perfect Petri dish for the virus to thrive in.

The tension at the heart of Government is there for all to see. The Chancellor says that we should not be afraid of the virus, but the Chancellor should not be afraid of his own Back Benchers either. If scientists say that tougher measures are needed, let us see the advice, have the debate about what further economic support will be needed and then let this House decide on the right course of action. What we have now is the worst of all worlds: no transparency, no scrutiny and no leadership.