Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what support his Department plans to provide to local authorities to enable them to support vulnerable people on the covid-19 shielded patient list after the provision of direct Government support to those people has ended.

The Government is injecting an additional £63 million to boost local authority welfare assistance to ensure that no one has to go without food and other basic necessities. This is on top of £3.2 billion in additional funding to help councils manage the immediate impact of coronavirus, including supporting local shielding programmes.

As announced on 22 June, the Government is relaxing advice to those shielding in two stages. From Monday 6 July, those shielding can spend time outdoors in a group of up to six people (including those outside of their household). From Saturday 1 August, advice to those shielding will be further relaxed, meaning people who are clinically extremely vulnerable will be advised they can go to work or to the shops, as long as they are able to maintain social distancing and are robustly practicing good, frequent hand washing. Support for those shielding has been extended to the end of July – this includes the delivery of food and medicines.

The Government will continue to review the risks for the clinically extremely vulnerable as they review social distancing advice for the general population.