Covid-19 Update

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, that is a really important point. Part of the challenge of, and the reason for, a second lockdown was NHS capacity. The more we protect those who work in the NHS, the fewer are unavailable to work, precisely as the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) said, and the more capacity we have in our NHS.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

As families begin to dare to hope in the possibility of a vaccine, it is vital that we prioritise mental health resilience and confidence in learning among our young people. Outdoor education centres in Cumbria and across the country are uniquely equipped and able to help with just that, yet most of those centres face closure, essentially because the Government advice remains against residential school visits, even though outdoor education centres are just as covid-safe as schools. Would the Secretary of State agree to work with the Department for Education to try to change that advice and to make sure outdoor education centres remain open?

[Matt Hancock]

I am very happy to look at that matter with my right hon. Friend the Education Secretary. It is, of course, a Department for Education lead, but I am happy to do my bit.

Covid-19 Restrictions: South Yorkshire

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

I can give my hon. Friend exactly that assurance.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

The hospitality and tourism industry in Cumbria is comfortably our biggest employer. It was very much looking forward to half-term next week, as a chance for businesses to pick up after the enormous damage they have sustained as a result of the virus. However, we are seeing cancellation after cancellation, because neighbouring economies in Lancashire, Greater Manchester, Merseyside and now, of course, other parts of the north England have been put into tier 3 and people are therefore not able to travel. Rather than quibbling over £5 million, people in Cumbria are getting nothing—no compensation for their businesses collapsing. Will the Minister commit to making sure there is support of the hospitality and tourism industry in tier 1 places such as Cumbria, where our market has dried up because our neighbours are in tier 3?

[Mr Speaker]

This is about Yorkshire, so if we could mention Yorkshire it would help.

Public Health

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 6th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I, too, am deeply concerned that the evidence for the rule of six is not extensive enough to demonstrate that it does more good than harm. I will wait to hear what the Minister says, and we will hopefully hear in days to come more of the evidence behind this rule. However, for all the reasons set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson), the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) and others, there is deep concern about undermining consent for the process.

In a sense, this is a mobile lockdown for families who may well be able to leave their home and do various things but cannot mingle. I am very concerned—not least because of the growing presence in my inbox, in my phone surgeries and at the one or two physical surgeries that I have started again—about the serious growth in the volume of mental health-related cases, and specifically among younger people. They are heartbreaking individually and deeply alarming when we see the volume of them collected together. That is why we need to be very careful in understanding the complexities of human relationships and how important they are to our sense of wellbeing.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

In relation to a four-nations approach, the First Minister of Wales has called on the Prime Minister to ask people in restricted areas in England not to travel into Wales. The Prime Minister has refused. The First Minister of Wales has now said that people living alone—including in my constituency, which is under restrictions—can bubble with one person within the county to help improve mental health. As the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) mentioned, groups of 30 can gather outside in Wales. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, if we had a genuine four-nations approach to this, we could learn from decisions taken by the Welsh Government in the way that they can learn from ones taken by the UK Government? At the moment, there seems to be some sort of blockage to the four nations working together, and I put it to him that it is partially the Prime Minister and No. 10.

[Tim Farron]

The hon. Gentleman makes a really good point. Any party in power anywhere would have been like a rabbit in the headlights over the last six months, given what has happened, so I am not making a particular partisan point. It could happen in any Administration with any combination of colours of party. I am always careful not to use the phrase “U-turn” as an insult or a barb, because it shows that someone was listening and has enough substance to take on board the fact that somebody else may have had a better idea. I always say that all my best ideas were somebody else’s first. It is critical that this is a learning and iterative process, so I take that point on board.

It is the mental health concerns that I have for families, and particularly younger people, that make me sceptical and lead me to ask questions about the lack of evidence behind this. Much as I want to support the Government in doing tough things that need to be done to control the virus until we can eradicate it through a vaccine, we need more evidence.

I think inconsistency is an issue for all of us, and certainly for most of us who are here today with a particular interest in this matter. If we stick to the rule of six, I do not see why multiples of six cannot be used as the building blocks of bigger events. At the moment, there is a limit of 15 people allowed at a wedding. It seems entirely possible to make that an event of 36 or 48 people with building blocks of six, if the venue was big enough. Up to 300 people are allowed at a non-league football match below the seventh tier, so if someone wants to get together with their mates, they can just turn up at the mighty Kendal Town on Saturday. Those things are possible, and that inconsistency makes it difficult for people to understand why the Government are doing it and why they should be obedient.

The impact on the wedding industry, the events industry and the leisure industry is huge, and it is adding to the economic hardship that many people are experiencing. It seems wrong for us to be unnecessarily forcing people through that hardship, particularly as we come to the end of furlough in a few weeks’ time, when an intelligent approach could allow us to restrict people’s behaviour and protect against the virus but not kill several industries in the process.



I will finish by focusing on something else that worries me deeply. Our ability to get people to comply with regulations that exist to keep them safe, save lives and protect the national health service depends upon the credibility of the rules to which we expect them to be obedient. That is why the evidence is here. The rules also need to be coherent and easy to understand, which the rule of six just about is—that is the best argument that I have heard for it so far. They also have to be consistent from week to week, and with other areas of application, as I mentioned.

If people are going to be expected to be obedient and to comply with restrictions that exist to protect themselves and others, they also have to be able to afford to comply. That is my great concern moving forward. If the Government are looking at a traffic light system, which in itself is not a bad idea, that allows there to be blanket closures of the hospitality, tourism and leisure sector in certain towns, boroughs or counties, we surely cannot expect those industries and employers to close down and for there to be no compensation, and no return to furlough for those areas or grant system for those businesses.

In Cumbria, hospitality and tourism is the biggest single employer. It is the fourth biggest in the country. We cannot, when the traffic light gets to red, expect those businesses to close down completely without compensation. People will not comply with the rules if they fear that they will be unable to pay their rent or mortgage or feed their kids in the process. Let us ensure that the rules that we have are credible, coherent and consistent, and that people can afford to obey them.

Covid-19 Update

Tim Farron Excerpts

Monday 5th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

All of the 15,000 have been contacted for the first time.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

In the Secretary of State’s statement, he spoke with pride about the Prime Minister’s announcement on Friday of the additional capital programme for hospitals. In Cumbria, we met that announcement with some dismay. As the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) said, there is a proposal to close the Preston and Lancaster hospitals and merge them into a single hospital somewhere in between. Does the Secretary of State realise that that will mean even longer journeys for acute care for people from the South Lakes? Will he have a word with the Prime Minister, and drop that dangerous proposal from the consultation, so that people in south Cumbria do not have to make dangerous journeys for emergency care?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. That was only touched on briefly in the statement, which was a covid update. It would have been really nice if the hon. Member could have asked his question in relation to the covid update, which is what the statement was mainly about.

Coronavirus Act 2020 (Review of Temporary Provisions)

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 30th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Matt Hancock]

If I could just make some progress.

The fourth part of the Act contains measures for managing the deceased. This is a devastating virus that has caused pain and suffering for many and, tragically, has taken away many loved ones before their time. We have worked hard to treat them with the utmost dignity, along with protecting public health and respecting the wishes of the families of the bereaved.

The Act expands the list of people who can register a death to include funeral directors, and sets out that coroners only have to be notified when a medical professional is not available to sign a death certificate. It allows death certificates to be emailed, instead of physically presented, removes the need for confirmatory medical certificates in order for a cremation to take place and relieves coroners from the need to hold inquests with a jury in suspected covid-19 deaths. Over the past few months, those powers have eased pressure on coroners, reduced distress to the bereaved and allowed funerals to take place without delay. We therefore propose to keep them.

Finally, the fifth part of the Act includes measures to protect and support people through this crisis. The financial support provided by the Government has proved to be a lifeline for so many. These measures in the Coronavirus Act made that support possible. The Act provides for the furlough scheme, the temporary increase in working tax credits and making statutory sick pay payable from day one. Without the Act, we would not have furlough or the job support scheme. The Act also includes measures to protect both business and residential tenants by delaying when landlords can progress evictions.

I know the burdens that the virus has placed on the livelihoods of so many, and we have worked to give as much protection as possible. I think that the whole House will want to keep these powers in place so that we can continue to help people in future. Without the passage of this motion, the financial support for people that is provided for and legally underpinned in this Act would not be legally possible. I understand that many colleagues may have concerns about individual parts of the Act, but a vote for this Act allows many of the necessary legal powers that have been required, including underpinning the financial support that has kept so many people afloat during the crisis.

[Tim Farron]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. Will he agree, though, that the inconsistent and sometimes nonsensical application of some of the rules is doing damage to some of the businesses that he talks about? In particular, I am thinking of the wedding industry and the many families who have been affected by that. The rule of six surely can apply so that a place that can take many multiples of six could host weddings and give people their special day, and so that it does not kill a vital industry not just in the lakes and the dales, but across the country.

[Matt Hancock]

I think we have shown throughout that we are always willing to try to improve the way the rules operate in a way that is safe. At weddings, of course people tend to come together physically. It is a time of celebration of love, and that is in its nature, so we make restrictions with huge regret, but we always keep an open mind on the public health evidence.

Covid-19 Update

Tim Farron Excerpts

Monday 21st September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Over the weekend I have been listening to headteachers from around the south Lakes, who tell me that they are under increasing pressure, with teaching staff, teaching assistants and others off work, struggling to book a test slot. Some have been advised to travel as far as Brighton, a 10-hour round trip, and some pupils are off school for 10 days waiting for a test of their own. Our teachers are doing their job brilliantly. Is it not time that the Government did theirs and provided a testing scheme that works?

[Matt Hancock]

I would be very interested in the examples, especially of people being sent long distances, because, as I said earlier, the information I have been given is that that problem has been resolved. I am working incredibly hard to resolve all the other problems and to bring to bear the record testing capacity that we have.

Coronavirus

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I am very grateful for my right hon. Friend’s support. I am working very closely with him and with the other Birmingham MPs, because there is a serious challenge in Birmingham and in other parts of the west midlands. On the point about getting the data down to a ward level, I will absolutely ensure that he gets that data. We look at it down to a lower super-output area level, and we publish that data weekly. I will ensure that it gets to him and that we get the full details of exactly how many cases there are in each part of Birmingham. I recognise that, while Sutton Coldfield is in the Birmingham local authority, it has a distinct geography within that area. As he knows, both from our discussions and from how we have acted in other parts of the country, we will take action on a sub-local authority area where that is supported by the data. Unfortunately, for now, we do have that local action in Sutton Coldfield, but we keep it constantly under review.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Has the Secretary of State seen today’s analysis revealing the terrifying scale of the backlog in cancer treatment and diagnostics? It is now clear that it would take the system operating at 135% capacity for six whole months just to catch up with where we were in March. Until then, the tragic reality is that people in my constituency and around the country will be unnecessarily losing their lives. I beg him to urgently meet the clinician-led Catch Up With Cancer campaign so that we can give him the solutions to boost cancer services and save tens of thousands of lives.

Coronavirus

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I am really glad that my right hon Friend has raised that point, because screening services are so important, including for cancer, which is a subject that has been raised many times in this debate and in the House in general. We are working very hard to expand and reopen screening services, making sure that infection control is possible and that we are using testing effectively, so that when people come forward for screening, they can do so with confidence. My right hon Friend is right to raise the issue. We will keep pushing it, because screening is so important to keeping people healthy.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Last night’s “Panorama” programme showed the awful truth that we could lose more people to cancer due to delayed treatments and interventions than we do to covid-19 itself. We know we can avoid that tragedy in a number of ways, one of which is to expand the operation and to bring forward the implementation of radiotherapy around the country—this summer, especially—to clear the backlog and to give people hope. That should include delivery close to home in places such as Westmorland General Hospital in Kendal. Will the Secretary of State meet the all-party parliamentary group on radiotherapy to discuss our six-point plan to help give people hope and to save lives immediately and in the long-term?

[Matt Hancock]

We share a common mission in this space, because we have already invested £200 million in expanding diagnostics, and that is an incredibly important part of the reopening of the NHS. I am very happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and his group and all those interested in the expansion not just of radiography but of all types of diagnostics. We need to ensure we do that in a way that works for patients and therefore opens access. That is incredibly important. We are putting in the investment and we are rolling out the programme. It is happening as we speak, and if he has further ideas to throw into that area, I am very happy to listen to them.

Testing of NHS and Social Care Staff

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2020 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move,

That this House expresses thanks to the heroic work of frontline NHS staff who have saved lives throughout the Covid-19 pandemic; pays tribute to the at least 312 NHS and Social Care staff who have died of coronavirus in the United Kingdom; recognises the impact that coronavirus will have upon the NHS to deliver routine care including mental health care without additional Government support; notes that NHS waiting lists are projected to reach 10 million by the end of 2020, that cancer referrals fell 60 per cent during the peak of the coronavirus lockdown and that four out of five children have reported their mental health has got worse during the pandemic; further notes that there is a backlog of NHS care that needs to be tackled and that it is vital to prepare NHS services to deliver safe care alongside care for coronavirus, including preparing for winter and ensuring necessary supplies of PPE and medicine; is concerned that routine testing of NHS and Social Care staff is not currently in place; and calls on the Government to implement a routine weekly testing programme for all NHS and Social Care staff to enable NHS services to safely resume and ensure the continuity of services throughout the winter alongside a functional, national, public test, trace and isolate system.

We have brought this motion to the House today to provide an opportunity for the House to reflect on the Government’s response in handling the pandemic, to thank our brave, hard-working NHS and social care staff for their extraordinary efforts—including, if I may say so, our student nurses who do a tremendous job on the frontline; I hope the Minister praises them and recognises their worth when she gets up to make her remarks—and to pay tribute to and remember over 300 health and social care staff who gave their lives during the pandemic. We have also tabled the motion to put to the Government a constructive, practical suggestion that we now consider necessary to prepare our national health service to meet the monumental growing burden of unmet clinical need and set out what we think is necessary to prepare us in case of a second wave of the virus.

The key to resetting the NHS and the safe easing of lockdown measures announced yesterday is a fully effective system that finds cases, tests cases, traces contacts, isolates, and then properly financially supports those who have been asked to isolate. We believe a key element of that must now be the regular testing, weekly if necessary, of all NHS and social care staff. This is what we are suggesting to the Government today, and we hope they will accept our constructive suggestion and find a way to make it work.

Throughout the pandemic, our concern as an Opposition has been to save lives and minimise harm. We have always thought that that means suppressing the virus, not simply managing its spread, and measures to crunch the virus down, as nations like New Zealand and Iceland have done, and not merely squashing the sombrero. It is why we on the Labour Benches called for a lockdown. Indeed, when I called for a lockdown in March not everybody in my party supported me at the time—many on our side were concerned about the extraordinary restrictions to civil liberties—but we supported the Government when they announced a lockdown and we co-operated with the Government in ensuring that the necessary legislation passed this House.

I also said, however, that a lockdown was a blunt tool. I said it would buy us time while transmission in the community reduced. We always recognised that we could not stay in lockdown forever. Lockdown has huge social repercussions, especially for children. This is not a debate about schools, but I was struck by the words of UNICEF, which warned:

“Children are not the face of this pandemic. But they risk being among its biggest victims.”

We have always understood that there would come a moment when we need to ease out of lockdown, but it has to be done safely.

Of course, nothing is risk-free. We can never entirely eradicate risk, as the chief scientific adviser reminded us yesterday. We cannot be complacent. This virus exploits ambivalence, and the reality is that there are many hundreds of infections every day. Globally, we have passed 9 million cases. The virus is accelerating across the world. There are outbreaks in South Korea and Germany, countries that have been far more successful than we have. The chief medical officer yesterday warned us to expect to continue to be in this situation way through the winter and way into next spring. We all know from our history books that about 100 years ago there was a deadly second wave of Spanish flu. A second wave must surely be a possibility with this virus.

We are tracking towards one of the worst death tallies in the world: over 65,000 excess deaths, with 26,000 excess deaths in care homes. Ministers cannot run away from the realities, no matter how uncomfortable they are. Today, we call on Ministers to outline a plan for the next stage and to prepare us in case of a deadly second wave. Let me deal with the points in the motion about the NHS.

Ministers boast that the NHS was not overwhelmed, that it coped and that 119,000 people were admitted to hospital for covid and they received exceptional care. They are right to make those claims. Thankfully, the desperate scenes in Lombardy hospitals that we witnessed on our TV screens were never repeated here. Naturally, I pay tribute to all our NHS staff involved in that and all the staff who ensured the building of Nightingale hospitals, developed new care pathways, and moved to digital care or returned to the frontline. But let us be absolutely clear: that surge capacity in the NHS, and the wider protection of the lockdown, has come at a cost, because millions are waiting for care. For those millions, this has not been a cosy hibernation, as the Prime Minister told us yesterday. It has been a time of struggle, of suffering and of distress.

Protecting the NHS has been on the back of cancelled operations, delayed treatment, and, arguably, the biggest rationing of services in the 72-year history of the national health service. It has been on the back of shielding some of the most vulnerable in society, who remain anxious and scared today for their personal health and safety as lockdown eases. Let us remember that, when we went into this crisis, we had 4.5 million on the waiting list. We had A&E targets routinely missed. Every winter, we saw the crisis in our hospitals of trolleys lined up in corridors. We have had some of the worst cancer waiting times in history, and now the NHS Confederation is warning that elective waiting lists could hit 10 million by Christmas. Yes, referrals are down, as the Minister for Health, the hon. Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), recognised yesterday, but that is because of unmet need in the wider community. Indeed, experts are predicting that about 1.6 million are being added to the waiting list every month. That means ever lengthening queues in our constituencies of people in pain waiting for care. The Minister will know that at the end of January, there were 521,000 people waiting for trauma and orthopaedic surgery, including hip and knee replacements, and probably another 42,000 added to the waiting list each week. That means that thousands of our constituents are waiting in discomfort and pain, often when pain-relieving drugs are inadequate.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is making a very important and well-presented case. In my constituency, at Westmorland General Hospital, the trust closed down the Kentmere ward, which is the adult mental health ward. It is fairly obvious that most Members will have had in their inboxes a lot of people presenting with higher degrees of mental health need than during normal times. That ward was closed down temporarily to take account of the crisis. Does he agree that now is the time, particularly with mental health issues, to look again at those temporary closures and to bring the Kentmere ward and other such wards back into service, to meet the needs of those struggling with mental health conditions?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

The hon. Gentleman puts his case persuasively. My hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan), who will be winding up the debate for the Opposition, will, I am sure, want to touch more on the mental health impact of the lockdown. It is undeniable that the lockdown has led to unquantifiable mental health problems festering in society, and statistics show an increase in anxiety and depression. There are particular issues around young people not being able to access child and adolescent mental health services. If services have closed, as happened in his constituency, then, yes, we need a plan to ensure that those services are reopened as quickly as possible.

Another area where we have had access to services restricted is in cancer, and cancer touches everybody. It touches every family. It has touched many Members in this House very individually and personally as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Whately]

The hon. Gentleman has talked about taking out large numbers of testing; as the Minister for Care, I have seen a huge demand from the social care sector for testing through those channels, so I would not take out other forms of testing. For example, testing through tests sent to people’s homes very much counts and should be considered as part of our testing programme.

We have put a rigorous focus on testing in care homes, too. We met our target of offering tests to all staff and all residents of care homes for over-65s and those with dementia in England by 6 June. We then announced that we were able to extend the testing programme to all adult care homes. Since the launch of whole care home testing, we have provided over a million test kits to more than 9,000 care homes, and we are now able to send out more than 50,000 test kits a day. We are also running a prevalence study to get a detailed picture of coronavirus infection in care homes. Phase 2 of that study has just gone live, meaning that 10,000 residents and staff across 100 care homes will have repeat swab and antibody tests.

[Tim Farron]

The Minister is being generous in taking interventions. Does she agree that to keep care homes safe from the coronavirus, the testing needs to happen regularly, not just once or even twice, and it needs to include people displaying no symptoms whatsoever? Does she also agree that, particularly for those NHS sites that are deemed to be clean and that are attempting to be covid-free, which are often the places where surgery will take place, the regular testing of staff even on a weekly basis, whether or not they display symptoms, is essential, not only, for example, to bringing back the mental health and maternity services that are currently lost to Westmorland General Hospital, but to making sure that the whole of our health service can operate as normal?

[Helen Whately]

I absolutely recognise the importance of repeat testing, both in the NHS and in social care. Our policies, and the testing programmes that we have in place and are launching and taking forward, are based on the clinical advice as to what the right programme to have in place is. I have set out the programme for the NHS, which is based on the advice of the chief medical officer, and we have sought advice from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies on what the repeat testing programme should be for the social care sector.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right that there will be a time when we will look back and learn lessons, and I wish that not so many people had died in social care, but right now we are looking ahead. We are making sure that we have in place the plans to support the social care sector through the months ahead, and we are also pressing ahead with work on social care reform.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

If he will publish the timetable for the NHS England plan to roll out stereotactic ablative radiotherapy to all cancer centres by April 2021.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Jo Churchill)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman and the other members of the all-party group on radiotherapy and cancer for meeting me and officials recently. It is expected that each of the 50 NHS trusts that provide radiotherapy will be able to deliver stereotactic ablative radiotherapy no later than 31 March 2021. Increased external quality assurance capacity means that we could complete the roll-out process for all commissioned indications quicker than that. I am sure the hon. Gentleman would agree that such a result would be fantastic.

[Tim Farron]

I very much welcome the Minister’s response and thank her personally for her excellent attention to this matter and the progress that she has helped to make possible. Of course, with a 60% drop in the number of cancer referrals and a 20% drop in the number of people starting cancer treatment, we have late diagnoses and a backlog that could, tragically, kill more people than covid. Will the Minister therefore go further and faster and deploy expanded radiotherapy treatment this summer to clear the backlog? Will she commit to appointing a radiotherapy tsar and to a rolling radiotherapy fund, so that we can stop more lives being unnecessarily lost?

[Jo Churchill]

The hon. Gentleman will know which parts of that are still open for discussion between us, but we are of course driving hard to make sure that patients get their radiotherapy and treatment as quickly as they can. The NHS has a “Help Us Help You” campaign: it is open for business and people should make sure that they attend any appointment they are called to.