Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Leicester) (No. 2) Regulations 2020

Lord Bethell Excerpts

Thursday 24th September 2020 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Bethell]

That the Regulations laid before the House on 3 August be approved.

Relevant document: 25th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee

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

My Lords, the regulations that we are debating today came into force on 3 August and 19 August respectively, but the story of these regulations began a month earlier, on 3 July, when the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Leicester) Regulations 2020 imposed the first interventions in Leicester and neighbouring boroughs. Those original regulations required the closure of all non-essential businesses and restricted indoor gatherings, overnight visits and visitors. We reviewed the regulations every 14 days, working closely with local leaders.

Aware of the distress caused by local lockdowns to the people of Leicester, we have relaxed restrictions whenever that appeared safe to do so. Thus, on Saturday 18 July we removed the borough of Blaby and Charnwood from the protected area. Then on 24 July we amended the regulations to allow specified businesses, out-of-school childcare and educational establishments to reopen in Leicester. The amendments that came into force on 1 August removed Oadby and Wigston from the protected area.

The regulations that we are debating today repealed the three previous Leicester regulations. That is why we are not debating Statutory Instruments 2020/754, 787 or 823, which have been revoked. The (No. 2) (Leicester) regulations are what we are debating today. They came into force on 3 August. They allowed more businesses to reopen across the city, fine-tuned restrictions on residents and applied the learning of our work in the city. For example, residents were allowed overnight visits, and the restrictions on gatherings were replaced by restrictions preventing different households meeting up with each other inside homes and their gardens.

Then on 19 August the (No. 2) (Leicester) regulations were amended. With a more stable incidence rate of the virus of 70 per 100,000, my right honourable friend agreed that it was safe to allow more businesses to reopen, in accordance with Covid-secure guidance, but not to relax the restriction on households meeting one another in another home. We also published guidance for people living in Leicester to help them to understand what they could and could not do under the restrictions, which was updated each time there was a change.

I am acutely aware that your Lordships are familiar with the detail of these regulations after several debates on local interventions. Rather than rehearsing the detail, I would like to share with the House some of what we have learned from this process, learnings that we have applied to other lockdowns. I reiterate that this has been a partnership between national and local government. National government was required to apply the right legal restrictions. It provided extra analytical insight from the data that was beginning to come on stream from our test and trace operations and other operational resources. NHS Test and Trace provided mobile testing units and supported the development of a local contact tracing service, which achieved a success rate of over 91% in tracing those not reached by the national service, so that was a successful model for other areas. However, that success would have been impossible without the herculean efforts of local leaders and the local community, and I am sure that all noble Lords will wish to join me in paying tribute to them. I give particular thanks to Public Health England’s experienced regional director of public health, Dr Sue Ibbotson, and her team, who have provided invaluable advice and expertise to complement the work of the two excellent local directors of public health, Ivan Browne and Mike Sandys.

From early in July, Leicester City Council, Leicestershire County Council and the local resilience forum co-ordinated testing and tracing, instigated communications and brought about community and business engagement as well as managing education and adult and social care. In doing so, they have used their profound local knowledge to reach all parts of the community. For example, they have translated messages into multiple languages spoken locally and ensured that they have been delivered by trusted local leaders. This has helped to build support for the restrictions across the area. They have engaged with local businesses in the wards with the highest incidence rates to provide advice on Covid-secure practices.

This excellent work was recognised by Dame Ney in her report Rapid Stocktake of Lessons Learnt and Good Practice in the Management of Local Covid-19 Outbreaks, published in August. She noted that there was a

“commitment by all agencies and their staff to work together and tackle the situation.”

She commented on their

“openness and flexibility in seeking solutions”.

She also recognised the ongoing “continuous learning” that was developing both local and national ways of working.

The effective collaboration in Leicester—of central resources and expertise working with local knowledge and implementation on the ground—took a huge effort to get right. There was some grinding of gears, but the lessons learned have informed our response in other areas, and I pay tribute and give thanks to all involved.

We always knew that the path out of the lockdown would not be entirely smooth. It was always likely that infections would rise in particular areas or workplaces and that we would need to be able to respond quickly and flexibly to these outbreaks. This has been the story in Leicester. The protected area covered by these regulations was extended on 22 September so that, once again, it included the Borough of Oadby and Wigston. Unfortunately, following a drop in the incidence rate in that area earlier this summer, rates have now risen to an unacceptably high level: 102 per 100,000 people for the seven days from 9 September to 15 September.

The Leicester regulations have demonstrated our willingness and ability to take action where we need to. We will, of course, use the experience of these measures in Leicester to inform and help us to develop our responses to this and other local outbreaks in the future. As I said earlier, there have been ongoing reviews of the Leicester regulations, and the next review is due tomorrow. We will, of course, make the outcome of this next review public in due course.

I am grateful to your Lordships for your continued engagement in this challenging process and the scrutiny of these regulations. In particular, I thank the people of the protected area in Leicestershire, who have responded so well to the measures put in place. It is thanks to their continued efforts that we are able to reopen non-essential retail, childcare and educational establishments. I reassure the Chamber that we will make further relaxations as soon as the epidemiology permits. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their thoughtful questions. I will try to get through as many of them as I can. I start with the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, echoed by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, about the speed with which the regulations before us were presented. In defence of the work of those who draft the Explanatory Memorandums, there has been a huge amount of legislation going through Parliament because of Covid. The team that draft it has been augmented; we have brought in more parliamentary training in order to bring more people on to that team. I pay tribute to their very hard work, but I completely and utterly recognise the points made by the noble Lord and the noble Baroness. Complex regulations brought into this place at speed rightly deserve a clear Explanatory Memorandum. We will endeavour to ensure that that happens with all the material we bring to Parliament in the future. The noble Baroness rightly praised the work of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. I echo that: the work it has done is unsung and deserves our praise.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, asked how we judge whether an area should come out of lockdown. This is now done by an extremely thoughtful team run by the joint biosecurity team. They look at a very large number of measures. They look at the connectivity of a given place. A high street in the centre of a busy town with strong community relations up and down the country is inevitably going to be of higher focus than, say, a rural, self-contained area. They look at on-the-ground intelligence from the local infection control teams, who will have their own assessment as to how well the restrictions are being applied and followed by people on the ground. They look at the direction of travel of the infection rate, both locally and nationally, and within the groups in a given area. They look at acceleration—whether something is holding at a given level, or moving in one direction or the other at speed. We are learning all the time from both British and international comparisons, and we look at the response of the people on the ground and the resources of the local authorities for implementing local measures. These are some of the factors that play into the assessment and, as noble Lords can see, an extremely complex but thoughtful process is now in place. 

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, rightly asked about the involvement of local authorities and whether the leader of the local authority should make a statement. The frustrating truth is that the virus does not respect political boundaries in the way we would like it to; it tends to flood over them. One of the challenges we face is trying to build political alliances across boundaries, where people may have different priorities and alliances. Therefore, building those cross-boundary alliances is a key part of what we do.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, talked about family links. She is entirely right—one aspect of the disease is our understanding now of how far people travel to pursue their family and community connections. We can trace, through genetic detective work, who has what disease and from where, and it is astounding how far and how quickly the disease moves through the corridors of family and community links up and down the country. The noble Baroness also mentioned the challenges of working parents and childcare. We completely recognise those challenges: they are intimate, personal and profound. We have already moved a long way, particularly in the north-east with recent changes, to try to accommodate these important challenges, in particular those of women, who are suffering in a particularly tough way during this disease.

My noble friend Lord Bourne talked about the retrospective flavour of these regulations. I am afraid to say that that is simply an aspect of how quickly we are moving. He also asked about the infection rate in Leicester, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, and the noble Lord, Lord Bhatia. It is currently 103.9 and rising. That is an extremely frustrating statistic because, as you will remember, it was only just over 100 when these regulations were brought in. In other words, it has gone down and then back up again. The positivity rate is 8%—that is quite high, and it speaks of there being an infection challenge in Leicester.

We acknowledge that, across the country, there is a particular problem with young people. They do not get hit by the symptoms of this disease themselves, but they are vectors of infection. One of the challenges we have in Leicester, as we do in many towns, is that young people are, quite understandably, frustrated about the restrictions placed upon them and are not necessarily abiding by the social distancing restrictions. That is one reason why we have had to bring in new measures beyond the rule of six in the Prime Minister’s recent announcement.

The noble Lords, Lord Bourne and Lord Bhatia, both asked about lessons learned. There are dozens of lessons learned, but I can indicate two that are particularly striking. First, we have learned it is better that plans for local restrictions originate locally, rather than coming from the centre and being passed down. Secondly, no one likes to see added restrictions imposed on their area, or to see this happen because an adjacent geographic area has an infection rate issue. That is one of the things we have had to do, and it is a really big challenge for those concerned.

The noble Lord, Lord Bourne, also asked about Asian communities and what we have learnt about them. Government marketing and communications into hard-to-reach communities, such as the Asian community in Leicester, but also the seasonal agricultural working community in places like Hereford, are not what they should be. We have come a long way in learning how to use languages and community media, and we now have a strong partnership with local radio and TV directed at those communities. We have learnt a lot and come a long way.

The noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, rightly cited mental health as a key issue. It is one that we discussed earlier today, and about which we are particularly concerned, investing £8 million in the Wellbeing for Education Return fund. I welcome the noble Baroness’s suggestion that we work with Barnardo’s, an organisation that has enormous respect and trust in government, and I would be glad to work with her on that.

My noble friend Lady Altmann asked about assessments. May I direct her to the review by Dame Mary Ney, which is a stocktake of local lockdowns? My noble friend questioned the whole principle of lockdowns—but may I reassure her that the principle of local lockdowns is to try to avoid national lockdowns? We have them because the virus largely plays a local role. We seek to impose local restrictions to avoid national restrictions. That is international best practice. But I completely acknowledge the damage done to local health outcomes, and we work hard to avoid it.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, rightly cited the importance of investment in local business. I remind him that we have invested £70 million in businesses in Leicester. He also asked about local authorities’ implementation of the £500 bonus. I assure him that it will be in place by 12 October, and that those who have not been paid by then will get retrospective payments.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, asked about whether things had been fair in Leicester. This virus just is not fair, and the way in which we handled it in Leicester represented the very best endeavours possible. Yes, of course there will be people in Leicester who feel hard done by—but we could not have tried harder, and we continue to do our best to crack down on this horrible virus.

Motion agreed.