Covid-19 Update

Statement

The following Statement was made on Monday 29 June in the House of Commons.

“Mr Speaker, with permission, I would like to make a Statement on local action to tackle coronavirus. The impact of coronavirus has been deeply felt, yet, thanks to the extraordinary action that this country has taken, it is now in decline at a national level. The number of positive new cases is now below 1,000 a day, and the number of recorded deaths yesterday was 25. I am pleased to report that there were no deaths in Scotland, for the fourth consecutive day, and that there is currently nobody in intensive care with coronavirus in Northern Ireland, so we have been able, carefully, to ease the national restrictions.

Alongside the easing of the national restrictions, we have been increasingly taking local action. In May, we shut Weston General Hospital to new admissions, after a cluster of cases there. Earlier this month, we closed two GP surgeries in Enfield and a meat processing factory in Kirklees, and the Welsh Government have closed factories in Anglesey and Wrexham. We have put in place a system to tie together local and national action, based on insight provided by the Joint Biosecurity Centre, working closely with Public Health England and the NHS. Analysis is based on three levels of spread. Individual cases are identified and managed by NHS Test and Trace. When many cases are found in one setting, be it a care home, factory or hospital, that is classified as a cluster, and it will be dealt with largely by the local director of public health, who has statutory powers to close individual organisations. When PHE or the new JBC identifies clusters that are linked to one another, that is defined as an outbreak, and a range of local and national actions may be needed. Decisions are taken through our local action committee command structure, which works as follows: if PHE or the JBC spots a problem that needs attention, or the local director of public health reports up a problem, through the regional health protection teams, the outbreak is assessed at the daily local action committee bronze meeting, issues of concern are raised to the local action committee silver meeting, which is chaired by the Chief Medical Officer, and problems requiring ministerial attention are then raised to the local action committee gold meeting.

Yesterday, I chaired an emergency local action committee gold meeting specifically to deal with the outbreak in Leicester. Unfortunately, while cases in most parts of the country have fallen since the peak, in Leicester they have continued to rise. The seven-day infection rate in Leicester is 135 cases per 100,000 people, which is three times higher than the rate for the next highest city. Leicester accounts for about 10% of all positive cases in the country over the past week, and admissions to hospital are between six and 10 per day, rather than about one a day at other trusts.

Over the past fortnight, we have already taken action to protect people in Leicester. We deployed four mobile testing units and offered extra capacity at the regional test site and provided thousands of home testing kits and extra public health capacity to boost the local team. This afternoon, I held a further meeting with local leaders, PHE, the JBC, the local resilience forum and my clinical advisers, which was followed by a meeting of the cross-government Covid-19 Operations Committee, chaired by the Prime Minister. We have agreed further measures to tackle the outbreak in Leicester. First, in addition to the mobile testing units that I mentioned earlier, we will send further testing capability, including opening a walk-in test centre. Anyone in Leicester with symptoms must come forward for a test. Secondly, we will give extra funding to Leicester and Leicestershire councils, to support them to enhance their communications, and ensure those communications are translated into all locally relevant languages. Thirdly, through the councils, we will ensure support is available to those who must self-isolate. Fourthly, we will work with the workplaces that have seen clusters of cases to implement more stringently the Covid-19-secure guidance.

Given the growing outbreak in Leicester, we cannot recommend that the easing of the national lockdown, set to take place on 4 July, happens in Leicester. Having taken clinical advice on the actions necessary, and discussed them with the local team in Leicester, and Leicestershire, we have made some difficult but important decisions. We have decided that from tomorrow non-essential retail will have to close and, as children have been particularly impacted by this outbreak, schools will also need to close from Thursday, although they will stay open for vulnerable children and children of critical workers, as they have done throughout. Unfortunately, the clinical advice is that the relaxation of shielding measures due on 6 July cannot now take place in Leicester.

We recommend that people in Leicester stay at home as much as they can, and we recommend against all but essential travel to, from and within Leicester. We will monitor closely adherence to social distancing rules and take further steps if that is necessary. The more people follow the rules, the faster we will get control of this virus and get Leicester back to normal. We will keep all these local measures under review and will not keep them in place any longer than is necessary. We will review whether we can release any measures in two weeks’ time.

These Leicester-specific measures will apply not just to the city of Leicester but to the surrounding conurbation, including, for example, Oadby, Birstall and Glenfield. I know that this is a worrying time for people living in Leicester, and I want them to know that they have our full support. We do not take these decisions lightly but do so with the interests of the people of Leicester in our hearts. I want everyone in Leicester to know that we have taken every one of these decisions to protect them from this terrible virus. We must control this virus. We must keep people safe.

These actions are profoundly in the national interest, too, because it is in everyone’s interests that we control the virus as locally as possible. Local action like this is an important tool in our armoury to deal with outbreaks while we get the country back on its feet. We said that we would do whatever it takes to defeat this virus, and we said that local action would be an increasingly important part of our plan. The virus thrives on social contact, and we know that reducing social contact controls its spread. Precise and targeted actions such as these will give the virus nowhere to hide and help us to defeat this invisible killer. I commend this Statement to the House.”

My Lords, I thank the Minister for providing the Statement.

Many in Leicester are wondering why it has taken so long to act, when authorities knew that there was a surge of Covid-19 cases in early June and the Health Secretary called it “an outbreak” a fortnight ago, on 18 June. Why did it take so long for pillar 2 information to be shared with the council and public health leaders in Leicester? Is the Minister aware that published data for Leicester recorded just 80 new positive tests between 13 and 26 June, but the Secretary of State has revealed that the complete figure for that period was 944?

In the last 30 minutes, a leading respiratory doctor and consultant at Glenfield Hospital has confirmed what my right honourable friend Sir Keir Starmer said at Prime Minister’s Questions an hour ago—that the true numbers and demographic data were not shared. Why is the Prime Minister trying to pretend that the information was made available when the truth is that it was late? Given that the Minister is in charge of testing in the UK, he might owe Leicester an apology for this disrespectful and dangerous treatment. Does the Minister agree that areas that see flare-ups will need a faster response?

This is important, because new statistics show that coronavirus cases have increased in 36 parts of England; Bradford, my home city, is number two. I learned from the Public Health England website that many of the places on the list with increased infection rates have large BAME populations, so why are PHE’s recommendations regarding the disproportionate effect of Covid-19 on our BAME populations not in play here? Given the diversity of a city such as Leicester, why have none of the PHE recommendations that have been implemented included the mandatory collection of ethnicity data?

Can the Minister confirm whether the Government anticipate announcing further local lockdowns in the coming days? The Prime Minister has used the rather ridiculous and flippant words, “whack-a-mole” strategy, regarding tackling local outbreaks. If that means moving quickly and firmly, then frankly it is of no use to the people leading the response on the ground, including Public Health England local leaders, if they are not given the most accurate, up-to-date data possible as soon as it is available. Does the Minister agree? Can he ensure that it happens without centralised bureaucracy getting in the way?

My Lords, first, on behalf of the Lib Dem Benches, I once again pay tribute to all of those who are helping to curb the coronavirus pandemic, whether in the front line or behind the scenes, and especially in Leicester. We know that there are many unsung heroes who continue to work long hours in stressful and ever-changing environments. Secondly, on behalf of these Benches, and in memory of the outstanding report by William Beveridge, I extend our congratulations to the NHS on its birthday, and note that of the five evil giants, many are still present in those most affected by Covid.

If the Minister is unable to answer all the questions asked, will he write to noble Lords with an answer? I hope that I can speak for other Members of your Lordships’ House when I say that we understand that the nature of a pandemic means that there are many questions to raise, but to repeatedly not have answers from Ministers is disappointing.

On that note, I ask the Minister for the fifth time in just over two weeks what the problem is with ensuring that every local council and director of public health has full test and tracing data as it becomes available. Over the past three weeks, it has become clear that full data has not been provided, and directors of public health, council leaders and mayors have all had to beg for data so that they can intervene early to prevent further cases, hospital admissions and deaths. Information is being dribbled out and it appears that pillar 2 testing lies at the root of the problem.

Stella Creasy MP asked a Written Question in the Commons, which was replied to by Minister Nadine Dorries on 11 June. It states:

“The contract with Deloitte does not require the company to report positive cases to Public Health England and local authorities.”

Does that remain the case, or has the contract now been varied to ensure that that information is made available immediately to key partners? The issue of why any such contract should not require positive cases to be reported is quite extraordinary but for another day; however, with low transmission, tracing pillar 2 cases is absolutely critical. Are all local authorities and directors of public health now getting full data, including pillar 2 data immediately so that they can prepare for small or larger local outbreaks? That is important because there are reports from across England of areas with increasing cases—indeed, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, said, Sky News reported this morning that 35 other local authority areas may face locking down if their cases do not reduce quickly.

My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Thornton and Lady Brinton, for their thoughtful questions. To answer directly, it is extremely important that we are currently here debating the outbreak in Leicester, because in a way it is a tribute to the success of the hygiene, isolation and social distancing strategy that has borne so heavily down on this disease that we are now in the position of focusing on those rock pools of the epidemic that have been left behind by the tide of this disease going out. But I completely accept the importance of this outbreak management. That is where the Government’s focus is centred.

I reassure both noble Baronesses that the data that local authorities and local directors of public health require is being given to them and access is being provided. All local authorities were issued with data-sharing agreements to access personally identifiable local testing data on 22 June. After signing those data-sharing agreements, the first local authorities accessed the data on 24 June. Leicester accessed it with its log-in details on 25 June. An enormous amount of progress is being made in an area that is now very much our focus. Local authorities, public health directors and infection control teams have worked hard in the past few weeks knuckling down on those lockdowns that did not get away, on the local outbursts that were well managed and that have not hit the headlines and that are now falling lines on the epidemiological graph.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, asked about the legal aspect. I reassure her that the lockdown in Leicester is being carried out under the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 at the request of the local authority as the provisions of that Act require. Therefore, regulations will not be brought to this House. The Secretary of State and the Government have sought to manage the epidemic through the consent of the people, not through making things mandatory. That has been our consistent approach because trust and collaboration are at the heart of this country’s response and we do not believe that making things mandatory through regulation will be as effective. However, if regulations are necessary, we will bring them to bear in order to protect lives and save the NHS.

We now come to the 30 minutes allocated for Back-Bench questions. I ask that questions and answers be brief so that I can call the maximum number of speakers.

My Lords, as we have sadly seen in Leicester, it is clear that this virus still lives in our communities. We know that testing is key in helping to keep the pandemic under control. Does the Minister agree that anyone who has been in close contact with someone testing positive for coronavirus should be able to get a test, whether they have symptoms or not? At present, this is not the case. In Buckinghamshire, for example, there is only one testing facility that offers this.

I reassure my noble friend that anyone who has reason to believe that they may have been infected by the virus is eligible for the test. The resources we have put into testing are now enormous. There are nearly 300,000 tests a day. Those in Buckinghamshire who are too far away from the drive-in testing facility should apply for an at-home testing kit.

My Lords, I agree with much of what the noble Baronesses, Lady Thornton and Lady Brinton, had to say. In response to them, the Minister said the dashboard will provide data about the infection rate to local authorities and local healthcare. If that is so, I welcome it. Does that mean a change in policy towards greater involvement of local public health directors in managing this pandemic?

To be clear to the noble Lord, the dashboard was made available on 22 June. It has a very large amount of local information, including information from 111, hospitals and the test and trace programme. The analysis of the data will be enhanced using the latest technology in order to give the most granular information possible. Those enhancements will be rolled out very shortly.