Oral Answers to Questions

Matt Hancock Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

What his timetable is for the operation of the NHS test and trace service nationwide.

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

NHS Test and Trace was introduced on 28 May, working with local authorities to prevent and contain the spread of covid-19. I am encouraged by the early results, which show that in the first two weeks of operation 87,000 people were contacted by NHS Test and Trace and agreed to self-isolate.

[Meg Hillier]

The Secretary of State will recall that I wrote to him a little while ago suggesting that an approach that was a bit more Shoreditch and a little less Whitehall might be effective. Given the lack of success of the app, maybe he could have taken that advice. I am pleased that Hackney Council is one of the five areas that is piloting this, working with GPs and other health professionals in public health and so on, but the critical thing is that we are not getting the data locally that we need to do the proper tracing of those who were close to someone who has tested positive. When will that data arrive? Without it, it is like working with one arm tied behind our back.

[Matt Hancock]

The amount of data flowing to local authorities has increased substantially over the past few weeks since the start of the operation at the end of last month, and there will be more coming very, very soon.

[Lilian Greenwood]

We all want to see lockdown eased, but that reopening will only be safe if the system to test, trace and isolate is working effectively. As more people return to work, start to travel on public transport, and perhaps even go to pubs, cafés and hairdressers—albeit keeping their distance—the ability to trace contact people we do not know will become much more important. The Secretary of State initially said that the app would be rolled out in mid-May; it is now the end of June. When are we actually going to see the app in action?

[Matt Hancock]

Obviously, as soon as possible. I agree very strongly with the hon. Lady about the importance of contact tracing—the Test and Trace programme is one of the largest of its kind—to ensure that, as we manage to lift national measures, which we can because the disease is clearly under control and the number of cases is coming down, we can then respond through local action.

[Dr James Davies]

NHS Test and Trace will play an important part in our continued fight against covid-19, but efficient co-ordination across Great Britain will be vital to its success. What steps has my right hon. Friend taken to ensure effective joint working between England, Wales and Scotland?

[Matt Hancock]

That is an incredibly important question. Of course, I would add Northern Ireland to that group. We have regular meetings. I have a weekly call with my counterparts in the devolved Governments. Of course, the devolved Governments have a huge role to play in this. I will give whatever support I can to help the Welsh Government to make sure that they can deliver contact tracing, and indeed the wider testing programme, as well as possible.

[Mrs Hodgson [V]]

Will the Minister urgently set out a plan to support local authorities to implement local lockdowns if needed, along with providing them with all the resources they need to implement this?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Select Committee Chair, Jeremy Hunt.

[Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con)]

NHS Test and Trace is currently tracing the contacts of about 700 people every day who have the virus, but the Office for National Statistics says that 2,500 new people are being infected every day, which means that since the programme started, up to a quarter of a million people have not been asked to isolate who should have been. It is a big achievement to get the programme going, but that is also a big gap. What are the Secretary of State’s plans to close it?

[Matt Hancock]

I am not sure I agree with my right hon. Friend’s figures in terms of the assumptions that underpin them. We have had this discussion and this exchange before. There are a whole number of asymptomatic cases. The critical thing about Test and Trace is to find as many of the asymptomatic cases, and as many of the positive test result cases, as possible. We need to do that over time by expanding the programme.

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP) [V]]

While a proximity app would assist in identifying casual contacts, many people were concerned that a centralised model would harvest their data. In the trial, this one failed to detect 96% of contacts. So why did the Secretary of State persist so long with an app that simply did not work on the majority of phones?

[Matt Hancock]

I am afraid the hon. Lady is wrong. The trials in the Isle of Wight showed that the app worked on Android phones, but was blocked from working effectively on Apple phones; hence we are now working with Apple and Google, as we have been over the past few weeks, to find a system that can be effective. But I will not sign off on an app where we do not know and have not been told by some multinational company what it is recommending to people because, after all, the critical thing that matters in test and trace is that people isolate to break the chain of transmission.

[Dr Whitford]

I would gently suggest that iPhones are actually quite common, so it is important that it does work on iPhones. The boss of Serco has admitted that its contact tracing system will not be fully functioning until the autumn, and we find that actually local public health teams are carrying out the vast majority of contact tracing, so would Government money not be better spent reversing five years of budget cuts to public health?

[Matt Hancock]

It is very strange taking these questions from the SNP spokesman, given that I am working with the SNP Government on resolving exactly these problems in Scotland, and maybe the SNP would do better to focus there. In response to the second question, honestly, we have put £300 million of support into local directors of public health to tackle this pandemic, and I know that her colleagues in the Scottish Government are working hard with local authorities in Scotland as well in exactly the same way.

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

The Prime Minister promised that 100,000 people a day would be tested by the end of April, so since that date, on how many occasions have more than 100,000 people been tested on any single day?

[Matt Hancock]

I have not got those data exactly—[Interruption.] If the Opposition would care to engage on the substance, rather than not taking this seriously, yesterday, we delivered the 8 millionth test in this country. We have delivered more than 100,000 tests on almost every day since the end of April and at the end of last week we were delivering 230,000 tests a day. I think what we need from the Opposition is support for the testing programme, because that is what people care about.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

What steps he took to promote Infant Mental Health Awareness Week.

[Mr Speaker]

Has the Secretary of State got the back-up, please?

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

I understand that Infant Mental Health Awareness Week was a great success. There is much to be gained from seeing the world through a baby’s eyes.

[Tim Loughton]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that short answer. We have heard much about the impact of lockdown on school-age children away from school, but little on the impact on babies and new parents facing particular challenges on their emotional wellbeing. Has the Secretary of State or the Minister, if she has got her voice back, seen the research published during Infant Mental Health Awareness Week by the First 1001 Days Movement last week, suggesting that three quarters of parents with children under two are feeling the detrimental impact of the lockdown, particularly BAME parents? What are the Government doing to put this crucial cohort on the radar and provide support before they grow up and take the problems to school and beyond?

[Mr Speaker]

Is the Minister available? No. I call the Secretary of State.

[Matt Hancock]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right on this. I applaud the work of the First 1001 Days Movement. It is incredibly important. I strongly support the work that it has done to highlight the importance of the early days of life and the time before the birth of children. I have seen that report. I have discussed it with the Minister and we are working very hard to put that into effect.

[Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to support the social care sector during the covid-19 outbreak.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)]

What plans he has to ensure that the NHS has the capacity to tackle the next phase of the covid-19 outbreak.

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

Thanks to unprecedented action, we have protected the NHS. It was not overwhelmed during the peak of this crisis, and all covid-19 patients admitted to hospital were able to receive urgent treatment that they needed. We remain vigilant.

[Joanna Cherry]

I thank the Minister for his answer, but after the end of the Brexit transition period, all four health services in the UK and Northern Ireland will face increased bureaucracy and increased costs to import drugs from Europe. On top of that, it has been estimated that a trade deal with the United States of America could increase the drugs bill from £18 billion to £45 billion. How will the Secretary of State prevent these extra costs from hampering NHS capacity?

[Matt Hancock]

First, there is no reason at all why the exit from the transition period should have the impact that the hon. and learned Lady describes. We have put in place a huge amount of work to ensure that Brexit works positively for our life sciences industry and indeed, as we do now, that we can buy pharmaceutical products from around the world, not just from within the European Union. As for the idea that somehow a trade deal will increase prices of drugs, that is flat wrong.

[Gavin Newlands [V]]

With the need for additional infection control measures, how can the Secretary of State ensure sufficient staff to support parents to spend time with their babies in special care baby units, when covid-19 is creating additional barriers to parents being with their baby as much as they want and need to be? Moreover, will he look at an emergency form of neonatal leave and pay, or a subsistence fund similar to Scotland’s, to allow parents affected by covid-19 to have the time they need with their baby?

[Matt Hancock]

We are putting in a huge amount of support for maternity services and other services across the NHS in England. Of course, when it comes to the hon. Gentleman’s constituents in Glasgow, he will have to ask the SNP Government.

[Simon Jupp]

Local construction firms are working around the clock to build the NHS Nightingale hospital in Exeter, based in my constituency of East Devon. I am sure the Secretary of State will agree that we all hope it will never have to be used. Can he assure my constituents that the Nightingale will help the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, our community hospitals and our health and wellbeing hub to continue to focus efforts on delivering the superb services that they are well known for across East Devon?

[Matt Hancock]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend is a great advocate for Devon, and for East Devon in particular. The Nightingale Hospital in Exeter will have more flexible uses than the previous Nightingales, so, for instance, it will be usable should there be extra winter pressures. This is all part of protecting our NHS. At the heart of our response to this dreadful disease, we protected the NHS, making sure it was always there for everyone. That has been down to, and is a testament to, the work of so many people, who delivered on that requirement.

[Gareth Davies]

Yesterday, our local NHS trust, the United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust, temporarily downgraded and closed emergency admissions at Grantham and District Hospital, in response to covid-19. After many years of uncertainty, there is understandable scepticism about this latest move by the trust. Will the Secretary of State join me in calling on the trust to ensure that these changes are indeed temporary and that covid is not used as cover to make them permanent?

[Matt Hancock]

Thanks to my hon. Friend’s assiduous work on behalf of his constituents in Grantham, and at his suggestion, I discussed this issue directly with NHS officials. Grantham’s unit will be open, 24/7, as an urgent treatment centre; this is part of plans to ensure that covid and non-covid services are kept as separate as possible. In addition, thanks to his intervention, we will ensure that that position will be reviewed quarterly.

[Tommy Sheppard [V]]

The NHS in England had more than 40,000 nursing vacancies at the start of the covid pandemic, but student nurses stepped forward to contribute to the response. So why are many of their contracts now being terminated, given that they may well be needed this autumn? Would a better approach not be to increase nursing bursaries to £10,000, as they are in Scotland, where nursing vacancies are half those of England?

[Matt Hancock]

We have increased by about 10,000 the number of nurses in the NHS in the past year, and during the crisis that number increased further. We also set out at the start how we are paying student nurses, as they stepped up to the mark, as the hon. Gentleman rightly said. I am delighted that so many of them did, and we are sticking to the agreements that we set out with the student nurses at the start of the crisis.

[Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

What progress his Department has made on delivering covid-19 testing kits to care homes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Craig Williams (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to support the development of a vaccine for covid-19.

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

Vaccine development is progressing well, with human clinical trials underway by both the University of Oxford and Imperial College London. We are also exploring how other vaccines, both from the UK and internationally, can be deployed here should they show promise.

[Craig Williams]

Can my right hon. Friend reassure me, the House and my Welsh constituents in Montgomeryshire that if and when a vaccine for covid-19 is developed, it will be rolled out in a UK-wide partnership? Will he work with the devolved healthcare systems but ensure that the vaccine is UK-accessed?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, of course. That is an incredibly important question for anybody living in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, like my hon. Friend’s constituents. The vaccine programme is being taken forward on a UK-wide basis. Of course people living in the devolved nations should have access to vaccines according to a prioritisation that is clinical and not based on where people live. We will absolutely work with the devolved authorities on the delivery and deployment of that vaccine. Of course, we want the whole country to get the vaccines, if they become available, according to clinical priority.

[Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)]

If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

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

Yesterday, clinicians set out our advice for those who are shielding because they are clinically extremely vulnerable. The whole House will want to pay tribute to the enormous sacrifice of that group, who are among the most vulnerable to covid-19. Very shortly, the Prime Minister will set out to the House the next steps to get the country back on her feet.

[Edward Timpson]

There is no doubt that lockdown has taken its toll on the mental health and wellbeing of many children of all ages, whether by way of social isolation, physical inactivity or a sense of loss. I know that my right hon. Friend is very exercised by that, so, as we understand more about the impact, will he look again at the long-term NHS plan to establish whether it is really able to meet what will be a more acute challenge in the future?

[Matt Hancock]

That is a very important question on supporting children’s mental health. We absolutely reiterate the long-term plan ambitions for service transformation and expansion. Indeed, one of the things we have learned during coronavirus is that when it comes to paediatric mental health, telemedicine can actually have a better and more effective impact than face to face. That is a good thing to have learned and will help the roll-out further.

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

On the app, the Secretary of State told us it was crucial and would be ready by mid-May. Experts warned him it would not work. He spent three months, wasted £12 million and has got nothing to show for it. It is a good job he is a tech-savvy expert on apps; otherwise, this would be a right shambles now, wouldn’t it?

[Matt Hancock]

On the contrary, ensuring that we use technology to its best possible effects is incredibly important. I would have thought that the shadow Secretary of State would want to side with and support the efforts of all those, including in the NHS, who are doing the work to ensure that we can get this up and running as quickly as possible.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

In the past few days, I have been listening to the Secretary of State’s excuses. He is like the Eric Morecambe of the Commons: he has been playing all the right notes, just not necessarily in the right order. On test and trace, local areas such as Leicester, which has had a spike, still do not have local data; GPs still cannot refer people for testing; and NHS staff are still not tested regularly. He has spent £100 million on a Serco and Sitel call centre where the tracers are saying they have nothing to do. This is not a “world-beating” system; it is more like a wing and a prayer. When are we going to get a functional test, trace and isolate strategy?

[Matt Hancock]

The shadow Secretary of State is far better when he supports the Government than when he pretends to oppose them. We have all seen him explaining why the steps that the Government are taking are the sensible ones, why it is important to move from a national lockdown as much as is safely possible to local outbreak control, and why test and trace is important. When he gets on to saying that the money we have spent to protect the NHS and put in place the actions needed to get us out of the lockdown is wasted, I think that that is opposition for opposition’s sake.

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

Maintaining safe and healthy food standards is essential for public health. As we leave the European Union and sign trade deals around the world, what are Ministers doing to ensure that the system maintains public confidence?

[Matt Hancock]

As we sign trade deals around the world, we will have enhanced animal and food standards in this country, and of course the Food Standards Agency plays a vital role in ensuring that those standards are upheld.

[Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)]

On 21 May, the Prime Minister bowed to pressure and agreed to abolish the immigration health surcharge for NHS workers. However, NHS workers applying to renew their visas are being told by the Home Office that this policy is still being applied and is still in place. Why is this immoral and mean-spirited policy still being applied, in light of the Prime Minister’s clear promise?

[Matt Hancock]

We are putting this policy into action and it will be retrospective to the date of the announcement by the Prime Minister.

[Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con) [V]]

Yesterday’s announcement on easing restrictions for those like me who are among the 2.2 million people who have been shielding for months is very welcome. What reassurance can my right hon. Friend give on the scientific evidence that supported the decision to ease restrictions for shielders from 6 July and to finish them on 31 July?

[Matt Hancock]

I am absolutely delighted that my right hon. Friend will be able to follow guidance and take more steps out after 6 July. The decisions on shielding were all based on the best clinical advice. Dr Jenny Harries, the deputy chief medical officer, has led the medical advice on this programme with great élan and wisdom. The reason that we are able to make these changes and recommend these steps to my right hon. Friend and the 2.2 million others in his situation is that we have protected the NHS and got the virus right under control.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

My constituent Jonathan e-mailed me to say:“Today for the first time my partner will see our baby and hear their tiny heartbeat. However, I’m writing to you from the car outside as she attends our 12 week scan. I’m banned from attending due to government guidelines.”Jonathan says he is being robbed of enjoying these special moments with Emma, yet they can shop together, travel on public transport and even visit the beach. What does the Secretary of State have to say to expectant fathers like him?

[Matt Hancock]

Of course it has been necessary to have tight controls over visitors in hospitals during this crisis, because people picking up nosocomial infections in hospital has been one part of the epidemic that we need to get under control. My heart goes out to those many people who have made sacrifices, including the hon. Member’s constituent, and of course we always keep this under review.

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

As we return to normality, we inevitably run a risk of a second wave of the virus. What infection threshold would my right hon. Friend consider sufficient to warrant further lockdown, and what criteria would be applied to determine the geographical ambit of any future lockdown?

[Matt Hancock]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. She may have seen this morning that in Germany, North Rhine-Westphalia has been put back into lockdown because of a local outbreak. So far, the local outbreaks we have seen have essentially been clusters in very small areas, and we have been able to bust those clusters and tackle them. We do, of course, hold the powers to have wider local lockdowns. Those will be based on judgments based on the epidemiological advice and advised by the joint biosecurity centre, working with all the relevant agencies.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

The Secretary of State rightly says that black lives matter. The time for action is now, yet latest figures show that black African and black Caribbean people are four times more likely to be detained under the Mental Health Act. When will he bring forward the White Paper on the mental health Bill? Will he please ensure that that legislation enshrines the four principles laid out in the Wessely review, including treating the patient as an individual, so that we can start to tackle racial disparities in mental health treatment?

[Matt Hancock]

We will bring forward that White Paper. The work has been ongoing even while we have been dealing with coronavirus. As far as I am concerned, the Wessely review is one of the finest pieces of work on the treatment of mental ill health that has been done anywhere in the world.

[Simon Baynes (Clwyd South) (Con)]

We have just marked Loneliness Awareness Week. Does the Secretary of State agree that combating loneliness is vital in ensuring the health and wellbeing of elderly people? I have seen excellent work at the Rainbow Centre in Penley in my constituency and by the charity I helped to set up, the Concertina Charitable Trust, which provides live music in care homes and day centres.

[Matt Hancock]

Absolutely. When we set up the loneliness strategy in 2018, when I was the Culture Secretary, I had no idea that covid-19 would make it so vital. I very much hope that, in England at least, the measures the Prime Minister is due to set out very shortly might help in that regard. Covid has underlined the importance of loneliness as an issue that we must directly and actively tackle.

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

At the start of the crisis, as a former emergency planner for the NHS, I thought the Government would trust the local well-established emergency planning systems that were in place and they had my support. However, they have wasted time and money. My hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) is quite right to criticise the Government, because that has led to excess deaths and time lost. It is welcome that we are now supporting the local, but will the Secretary of State tell me why, when his friends at Deloitte have been set up to do the testing at Bristol airport, the complaints process is run through an NHS trust?

[Matt Hancock]

Because this is a big team effort by a combination of public and private sector partners. I pay tribute to Deloitte, without which the testing programme would not be possible. I pay tribute to all the pharmaceutical companies and I pay tribute to Amazon, which has delivered the home testing with remarkable success. Instead of trying to divide, we should unite and bring people together.

[Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)]

Dr David Rosser and his team at the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS foundation trust have done amazing work during the pandemic to make sure that people in Birmingham are safe and cared for. Will the Secretary of State give them all the flexibility and support they need to ensure that services at hospitals like Queen Elizabeth can go back to normal as quickly and as safely as possible?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes. David Rosser is a great leader of a very, very impressive trust. I was speaking to him only last week. There is an important lesson from covid, which is that many of the NHS central rules and much of the bureaucracy was lifted to allow local systems to respond as a health system. That has worked well. We need to learn from that. We need to not only make that permanent, but see where we can go further in that sort of system working.

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

My borough of Enfield has been allocated the equivalent of £4.58 per head to support the NHS test and trace programme. That is a third of what other London boroughs have received, despite the fact that it has the 12th highest number of covid-19 cases in London. That exacerbates the unfair share of public health grant received by Enfield and fails to take account of its health inequalities. Will the Secretary of State meet me to discuss the allocation of funding for Enfield’s needs?

[Matt Hancock]

We were scrupulously fair in the allocation of funding to local authorities, ensuring, for instance, that the support for social care went according to the number of beds. We have taken a great deal of care to make sure we get this right.

[Mr Speaker]

To allow the safe exit of hon. Members participating in this item of business and the safe arrival of those participating in the next, I am now suspending the House for three minutes.