Lord Patel
Main Page: Lord Patel (Crossbench - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Patel's debates with the Leader of the House
(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
I thank my noble friend. Certainly, the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and the Communities Minister have all had regular dialogues with the leaders of the Liverpool City Region over the last few days. She is absolutely right that within the very high tier there are certain baseline restrictions and then others that can be decided at a local level. She is right that in Liverpool, decisions have been made to close casinos, betting shops, indoor gyms, fitness and dance studios and sports facilities, although there are going to be exemptions for organised indoor team sports for disabled people and activities for under-18s, understanding some of the issues she raised. Obviously, she is absolutely right about mental health, which is why we have provided £9.2 million of additional funding for mental health charities.
Lord Patel (CB) [V]
My Lords, it is generally accepted that the test, track and isolation policy is important for suppression of the virus. Despite the large volume of tests that we carry out, as the noble Baroness stated, plus the increase in capacity, we have not seen any significant effect in suppression of the virus through this policy, so what more needs to be done to make our test, track and isolation policy more effective? Furthermore, does the Minister agree that any policy, suggested by some, of abandoning suppression of the virus and adopting a policy of herd immunity is morally, ethically and scientifically flawed?
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
On test and trace, I hope I outlined in my earlier answers the work that is going on to further improve national and local link-up. As I said, across the country there are now 95 local authority contact tracing teams—21 local teams in the east of England, for instance, 23 in the east Midlands and 21 in the north-west. Combined with the national system, they are helping to ensure that we have good data on the ground so that we are able more effectively to track what is happening and then, with the tiered approach, make sure that the interventions work on a regional or even more local level.