Coronavirus

Before I call the Secretary of State to make his statement, I would like to draw the attention of the House to the fact that this statement on coronavirus is being streamed live, with the accompanying British Sign Language interpretation, at parliamentlive.tv.

This afternoon, the World Health Organisation declared coronavirus a global pandemic. I have spoken to the Leader of the House, and we have had discussions, Mr Speaker, and we have resolved that we will keep Parliament open. Of course, in some ways this House may have to function differently, but the ability to hold the Government to account and to legislate are as vital in a time of emergency as in normal times. Our democracy is the foundation of our way of life.

Turning to the advice that is being provided to Parliament, may I start by welcoming the way in which you are working with the Government, Mr Speaker? I know how seriously you take the wellbeing of all Members and staff in Parliament, and the Government will continue to work closely with you, the Lords Speaker and the authorities in both Houses in the coming days and weeks. As the Leader of the House said in business questions last week:

“The public will expect Parliament to sit, and to get on with its job...

Our approach will be guided by the best scientific evidence and medical advice, and we will take all necessary measures to deal with this outbreak.”—[Official Report, 5 March 2020; Vol. 672, c. 984.]

I know Mr Speaker, that you are committed to providing as much information to Members and staff as possible and to taking any action that is required. A cross-parliamentary group of senior managers meets daily to plan the response to covid-19 and ensure business continuity, with close input from the Government. It is essential that the parliamentary authorities continue to work closely with the Government and in line with medical advice, and I commit us to that endeavour. Both Houses are conscious of our national role at this time, and by basing decisions on the very best public health advice, we can be confident that we are doing the best we can to respond to this virus.

Around the world, the number infected is rising. As of today, here at home, 456 people have tested positive and eight people are, sadly, confirmed to have died. The positive cases of course include the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries). She has done exactly the right thing in following the official advice to self-isolate, and I know the whole House will wish her well as she recovers. Public Health England has world-class expertise in contact tracing, which it initiated as soon as her case was confirmed. PHE will contact anyone who it thinks may need testing. This will only include those who had close contact. The advice of the chief medical officer is that close contact is defined as being within 2 metres of someone who has active symptoms for more than 15 minutes. Those who have not been in close contact with my hon. Friend since Thursday have no cause for concern in this case, and anyone who has concerns should seek guidance from PHE. I also know my hon. Friend wants me to pass on her thanks to officials at PHE and to the NHS, who have been brilliant throughout.

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement and, as is entirely appropriate, for making arrangements to come to the House at this relatively late hour in these unusual circumstances. I thank you, Mr Speaker, for your constructive engagement with the Opposition on these matters. I know that you will continue that, and we welcome it.

I put on the record my sorrow that two more people have died, and I express our deepest condolences to their loved ones and family. Again, we thank the NHS and Public Health England staff for all they are doing. Will the Secretary of State convey our very best wishes to the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries), who is in all our thoughts, as well as to her staff in both her departmental private office and her parliamentary office? I am sure they are all very worried, and I want them to know that they are in our thoughts as well at this time.

We welcome what the Secretary of State has said about Parliament and his advice to keep Parliament open. It is crucial that Members should be able to continue to raise issues on behalf of their constituents and hold Ministers to account. I note that he said that procedures or arrangements may need to be modified, and we look forward to continued engagement on that front.

I also welcome the advice that the right hon. Gentleman has given to people who have come into contact with the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire, but can he offer us some extra advice? I have heard about cases of this today. What is the advice for those who work on the estate who feel ill and appear to have symptoms but have not, as far as they are aware, been in contact with the hon. Lady? Should they now be tested as well as a matter of routine? The advice for them is just to self-isolate, but what is the latest guidance on that front?

We welcome the opportunity to discuss emergency legislation. The Secretary of State knows that we have concerns about statutory sick pay and other issues, but we will engage constructively on that front and seek to pass emergency legislation in a timely manner. He also knows that we support the action of the chief medical officer and we very strongly agree that we must at all times be guided by the science. However, may I press him a little further on the epidemiology, the latest medical advice and the appropriate moment when we should move into the so-called delay stage and start adopting some of the more stringent social distancing strategies?

The right hon. Gentleman will have seen that some in the science community—the editor-in-chief of The Lancet, for example—are suggesting that we are not following the epidemiology in the correct way and that we are perhaps placing too much emphasis on behavioural science. Other countries are taking different approaches. Tonight, for example, 3,000 Atlético Madrid fans are arriving in Liverpool to watch the champions league game. If that game was in Madrid, they would not be able to go to the stadium because of the Spanish social distancing measures. Will the Secretary of State explain the thinking in the United Kingdom and why it appears to differ from that of some of the other nations in Europe? Our constituents would welcome that.

I am grateful to the shadow Secretary of State for the tone that he has adopted and for his full support for keeping Parliament open. He raised the issue of statutory sick pay. Statutory sick pay and the measures that we are taking in the Bill are an example of why accountability helps to get the response right, especially when there is a constructive tone, as there is. He was the first person to raise the issue of statutory sick pay across these Dispatch Boxes, and it will now be in the Bill because the point that he raised was the correct one, and we therefore took action. Likewise, the Bill has been drafted alongside the Labour Welsh Government, the SNP Scottish Government and the multi-party Administration in Northern Ireland, and they have added contents to it. It is a true cross-party effort.

The hon. Gentleman asked about advice for those who are ill but cannot recall whether they came into close contact with my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire. The answer is to call 111 and ask the questions, and then get the clinical advice and follow that advice. The advice may be different for people in different circumstances. When people are recommended to follow certain advice by 111, they should follow that advice, because it takes into account a clinical judgment based on the information that is provided to a clinician.

We will, of course, as I have repeated many times, be guided by science. The hon. Gentleman mentioned that some voices are asking whether the appropriate moment for further action is now. Of course, we keep action under review all the time and, as I said, the Prime Minister is chairing a Cobra meeting tomorrow. There are some voices that are saying that we should not base our response entirely on the science, but I think that they are wrong. He asked about our differences with other countries and mentioned Spain in particular, but there are others. The truth is that different countries are at different stages of the virus. The point is that we will do the right thing at the right time. There are some countries that are not fully following the science. I am not going to criticise them, because I think that in responding to a pandemic such as this, everybody is doing their level best.

I thank both Front Benchers for the highly responsible way in which they are approaching this crisis, which shows Parliament at its best. I also thank the Health Secretary for his role in getting those very generous words for the NHS into the Chancellor’s speech this afternoon; they have been widely welcomed across the NHS and were much needed.

The chief medical officer says that we would have to be “pretty optimistic” to think we could contain the virus in this country. The deputy chief medical officer says that she thinks we may hit the peak in the next fortnight. We now have more reported cases in this country than there were in Wuhan when it went into lockdown. We know that the Secretary of State will rightly follow the science, but could I ask him to give his judgment to the House as to whether he thinks we still can contain the virus in this country and, if not, whether he expects to move to the delay phase very soon so that families up and down the country can start to prepare their loved ones for any precautions they might want to take?

I want to make two comments in response to my right hon. Friend. First, I want slightly to correct the point about the deputy chief medical officer, who said that in the next couple of weeks we may see the numbers starting to rise fast to their peak. We do not expect numbers to peak in the next fortnight. We expect them to continue to rise after that. The peak would be in a matter of a couple of months, rather than a couple of weeks. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Secondly, the World Health Organisation declaring this afternoon that the virus is globally now regarded as a pandemic indicates that the WHO thinks it will spread right across the world, and that will have a significant impact on the way in which countries around the world will now take forward their plans. Of course, the expectation that this may well happen was all within the plan that we set out. We will be discussing that at the Cobra meeting tomorrow.

I echo the good wishes to the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries).

I welcome the declaration to keep Parliament open, but surely we should be looking at core functions, at who comes into the House and at what we do in the House. I have to say that I was a bit disappointed to have several hundred of us jammed into the voting Lobbies on Tuesday. That is just not a good idea. There are ways of working that would still allow Parliament to stay open.

With cases having increased by 13 times outside China in just two weeks, the virus has of course been declared a pandemic by the WHO, which describes its concern at “levels of inaction”. It calls for quicker and wider testing so that milder cases are diagnosed quickly, isolated and the spread reduced. We have seen the speed of change in northern Italy over a matter of a couple of weeks, so should we not be thinking about the delay phase? Containment and delay are a continuum; it is not a switch between one and the other.

We see large leisure events still continuing. They are not critical, so should we not be decreasing them? Do we know yet whether children are spreaders? We know they do not catch the virus, but do they spread it? That would be central to any decision about closing schools, and obviously closing schools would have an impact on NHS and social care staff.

I welcome the announcement in the Budget of funding to support people on sick pay, but will the Secretary of State clarify whether this will be provided to people who do not have sick pay in their contract? That is exactly who we were concerned about when we raised this point.

How quickly will all three devolved Governments hear about the extra funding that they are going to get, since it is urgent for them to take action as well? There has been talk about bringing doctors back from retirement. Is there a discussion with the General Medical Council about relicensing doctors, and about providing Crown indemnity for doctors who may have retired within the last year or two? The UK is already outside the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, so will the Government now at least rethink leaving the pandemic early warning and response system?

The hon. Lady asked some important questions about how Parliament will function. Matters of how we work are of course for Parliament—for the Leader of the House, the Speaker and the Commission, all guided by the science. They are in constant contact with Public Health England to get the very best advice. As for when we are voting, this disease passes in very, very large part from people who have symptoms, and we may not have symptoms. What really matters is making sure that as soon as people have symptoms potentially of coronavirus, they get in contact with 111 or Public Health England.

The hon. Lady asked for more testing. We are absolutely ramping up the testing capabilities. We have been commended on the approach we are taking by international bodies; she mentioned the WHO. She asked about children. One of the good pieces of news about the virus is that it does appear to have a much, much less significant impact on children. On the GMC and indemnity, absolutely —both those issues will be addressed in the Bill, and we are working very closely with the GMC.

The hon. Lady asked about collaboration and work with the European Union. We still remain within the European Union data transfer capabilities. Most of this data is being transferred—frankly, it is being published. We are being as transparent as possible. This week, we brought out a new website in order to be as transparent as possible about all the cases in the UK. Most European nations are taking exactly that approach.

Can I just say, to help Members, that I expect to run this for an hour from now? That should accommodate everybody.

I would like to take the Secretary of State back to his point about a real national effort. Last week, he talked about the supermarkets helping to get supplies to elderly and vulnerable constituents, many of whom cannot get out—and right now we do not want them to do so. Will he join me in paying tribute to the army of volunteers across the country in community shops such as the Hursley community shop in my constituency? The shop told me today of the service that it is running for elderly parishioners in getting essential supplies to them and picking up prescriptions for them. That is a brilliant example of the big society—remember that?—doing its bit to help this country to get over this terrible time.

Gosh, that is a blast from the past—that phrase was invented almost exactly 10 years ago. My hon. Friend is quite right, though. This is a national effort, and community shops can play a huge role in helping people to get the groceries and other supplies that they need. There has been much discussion of supermarkets. I am glad to say that the vast majority of supermarkets are playing an absolutely incredible part in this national effort; we are working very closely with them and have been for some time. Our community shops will be really embedded in their communities; they often know which people are going to need the most support, and have those personal relationships. As long as they are following the public health advice to ensure that the people they are helping are also kept healthy, then they have an important role to play in our national effort.

Can I press the right hon. Gentleman on the issue of the 3,000 or so Atlético Madrid fans who have travelled to Liverpool and are, at the moment, in a crowd of 54,000 at Anfield? Schools and colleges are closed in Madrid, and public gatherings of over 1,000 people are banned, because there is a cluster of 782 coronavirus cases and there have been 35 deaths. Now that we have a pandemic, is it really sensible for this to be allowed to continue? Both the Government and UEFA told the Liverpool Echo today that it is not up to them to take action—so who is it up to? Is it really sensible for fans who could not watch their team at home to be able to travel to Liverpool and watch their team play with 51,000 locals?

It is for Public Health England to make advice available and to give guidance. We will always follow the scientific advice on what makes the biggest impact. It is interesting, listening to the scientists, that sometimes the things that we, as lay people, may feel intuitively will have the biggest impact do not in fact have the biggest impact. The measures that we are taking and proposing to take include, for instance, looking at asking people who have symptoms, however mild, to stay at home. We are aiming to do the things that have the biggest impact. There are some things that feel right but do not have an impact at all. That is why it is so important to follow the science and what Public Health England says.

Primary care clinicians are expected to collect quality and outcomes framework data, which can be-time consuming and take them away from their clinical work. Will the Secretary of State consider suspending QOF data?