Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Leicester) Regulations 2020

Motion to Approve

Moved by

That the Regulations laid before the House on 3 July be approved.

My Lords, these regulations were made on 3 July and came into effect the following day. On 16 July, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care made a Statement in the House of Commons saying that the latest epidemiological data allowed for a relaxation of some of the measures in the protected area of Leicester. As of Saturday 18 July, local restrictions were lifted in other parts of the county that were initially in the protected area, namely Charnwood and Blaby. As of 24 July, a further amendment to the regulations meant that non-essential retail, out-of-school childcare and education establishments were allowed to reopen in Leicester. Bars, restaurants and hairdressers remain closed until at least the next review, which will be on 30 July.

The concern about the outbreak in Leicester has been significant, which is why we took it so seriously. Engagement has been extensive, repeated and productive, and is, I am pleased to say, yielding results. I would like to say a profound thank you to the local authorities and the local resilience forum, to national organisations including Public Health England and the Joint Biosecurity Centre, and to the local directors of public health, Ivan Browne of Leicester City and Mike Sandys of Leicestershire County Council.

The decision to act was not driven by any one number. It was a judgment about the overall situation. But when we imposed the local lockdown, one number did stand out: the seven-day infection rate. In Leicester, it was 135 cases per 100,000 people, which was at the time three times higher than the next highest area. On the clinical front, admissions to hospital were between six and 10 per day in Leicester, rather than one or two, as in other trusts. Action had already taken place to protect people in Leicester, including increases in testing and public health capacity. We hoped that these interventions and the work of local public health teams would get the infection rate down. However, by the end of June it was clear that the high rate of infection was continuing.

The cross-government Covid-19 operations committee, chaired by the Prime Minister, decided on 29 June to take further measures. The Secretary of State set out these measures in his Statement. Most of the measures taken did not require legislation. We increased testing capacity further, with eight mobile testing units deployed across the city and three local test sites. We also gave additional funding to the upper tier local authorities: Leicester City Council received about £2.5 million and Leicestershire County Council received approximately £2.3 million. This enabled them to enhance communications, including using locally relevant languages and channels such as community leaders and volunteers. We recommended against all but essential travel to and from Leicester. Shielding measures could not be relaxed, as they were in the rest of the country the following week. Schools in Leicester were closed, except to vulnerable children and children of critical workers.

My Lords, I thank the Minister and refer him to the report of Sir David King and colleagues in Independent SAGE, who concluded that:

“The situation in Leicester was both predictable and avoidable.”

This derived from the premature lifting of lockdown restrictions when the virus was still circulating widely in some areas, when there was no functional system of find, test, trace, isolate and support, and when the Prime Minister then sent an implied message that things were getting back to normal. Independent SAGE further stated:

“The current situation arose out of a failure to respond to the increase of infections in Leicester … at an early stage and before they reached crisis levels. This was a result of several factors”,

including

“excessive centralisation and unavailability of data”.

The Minister said just now that megabytes of data were given to local directors of public health, but why did it take so long for all the data to be given to Leicester’s director of public health?

On Monday in his Covid-19 Statement, and he repeated it today, the Minister was very clear that the Government were in constructive dialogue with dozens of directors of public health. If that is the case, can he explain why, on the test and trace system, directors of public health have expressed frustration that local expertise has been sidelined? Of course, he is right in saying that data alone will not deal with the virus and that what counts is local action. However, does he not agree that for local action to be effective, you have to trust people locally and give them the full facts?

I refer to my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. These regulations, made at speed, playing catch-up and at odds with government guidance, have caused confusion for local people—for example, being told not to leave the lockdown area when that is not in the regulations, and some police forces saying that they would turn back cars registered to a Leicester address. The Government believe that a top-down approach is best, and they are not listening.

Back in March, I moved an amendment to the Coronavirus Bill to give local authorities a power of general direction. It is a pity that the Government refused to accept it. A little more listening to some of us who have served in local government would have helped prevent some of the issues that have arisen. Will the Government now implement a power of general direction for local authorities over this issue? I am doubtful that this will happen, as the Government have not been in listening mode when it comes to regulations dealing with this public health crisis. Emergency, top-down and contradictory official guidance has become the norm, coming to this House many weeks after it has come into law.

That matters because emergency powers have unintended consequences which scrutiny by this House would have teased out. More temporary powers for local government will mean smarter and effective measures in dealing with the smaller outbreaks. Ministers really do need to listen more and trust local areas to deliver. This has to be built on a true partnership and not on “Whitehall knows best”. So far in regulations that have been implemented but not yet brought before this House, only low-level operational powers have been granted to local authorities.

Countries with the best record of dealing with the virus unlocked the potential of local government right from the start. Rather than ongoing knee-jerk, emergency regulations, the Government should now bring forward a Bill that gives local authorities a full set of powers and tools to manage ongoing local outbreaks effectively.

My Lords, these regulations are proportionate and in the interests of the public’s health. They should be passed. Professor Michael Marmot, in his review of the social determinants of health inequality, noted in 2010 that the lower an individual’s social position, the poorer their health was likely to be. Ten years on, in some parts of the UK not much has changed. The outbreak of coronavirus in Leicester, Oadby and Wigston was not surprising, given the occupational factors, the evidence of multigenerational living and the exposure to Covid-19 of those of BAME backgrounds—something that I understand the Government are reviewing.

The news today that Oldham has recorded 119 cases in a week, up from 26 the previous week, is equally worrying. Criticism was made in the House of Commons of the lack of sharing of information on pillar 2 tests —that is, tests outside hospitals—with local authorities. Details including ethnicity and postcode data for pillar 2 testing were key to identifying where the outbreak was occurring but did not become available until 25 June—11 days after they were requested. As pointed out by the noble Lords, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Scriven, this was too late. Can my noble friend the Minister say why this delay occurred, what lessons have been learned and what plans there are to let local authorities manage the situation with the support of Public Health England rather than the other way round?

My Lords, in reality, it is only within the last seven days that local directors of public health, after many times of asking, were finally given access to address-level data, which is so needed for local contact tracing. This is very important to stem household transmission within vulnerable communities, particularly among those living in overcrowded housing. As yet, local public health officials and local authorities still do not routinely, in real time, get other data on those who have had negative tests; nor do they have workplace data to spot workplace clusters early and take effective action based on local knowledge. They do not have data by ethnicity, which is provided only sporadically at the time of testing and not regularly on death certificates.

Some local authorities are doing crazy things, such as scanning test results to spot likely ethnic names to help them understand the characteristics of a community spread. Information from the call centre process is not available to local authorities on who has been contact traced, where they live or whether they have undertaken to self-isolate. As well as inadequate real-time data, local authorities lack resources. The additional £300 million for Covid-19 action plans will not go far. Some local authorities have no paid or trained local contact tracers. Can the Minister clarify whether he sees local authorities, rather than the national process, as the leads in managing outbreaks; what he is doing to assure them of real-time comprehensive data of the kind that I have outlined; and how he plans to create a step change in local authority capacity? Yesterday, the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, said that local outbreaks are being managed by local authorities extremely well. This is not how local authorities feel.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his update, but again we find ourselves agreeing to regulations after the enforcement date, which was over three weeks ago. They will be in place until January 2021, although today’s news from Hong Kong is a very timely reminder of the gravity of our situation. The Secretary of State must review them every fortnight. Given that 16 July has passed, can the Minister please let us know the outcomes of that first review? Has there been any significant change in the situation? How will this be conveyed to Parliament during the Recess?

We know that there has been a considerable amount of testing in Leicester and the surrounding area, and that there is still a push for more testing. How is this progressing? What proportion of the population has now been tested, and is the sample size large enough to make meaningful decisions on a way forward?

Why is sport singled out for preferential treatment in SIs? We are a nation that loves our sport, but why is a sportsperson deemed more worthy than, for example, a world-class organist? They cannot take their instrument home, but their form goes unless they continue to practise. What is the harm in them trying to maintain their standard, too, if they can practise in a distanced fashion?

Finally, one area of concern that came from press coverage of the Leicester outbreak was employee safety. Employers have a legal responsibility to protect their employees and other people on site, and most are diligent. On the news that evening, we saw garment trade workers in Dickensian conditions, neither wearing masks nor distancing from their colleagues. What penalties does an employer pay for this dereliction of duty? What confidence have the Government that this was the exception and not the rule?

My Lords, in this short contribution I need to remind myself that, although I was the Member of Parliament for Harborough for 25 years, since 2017 that constituency has been ably and diligently represented by Neil O’Brien. His constituents are more than fortunate to have him as their MP, and I could not have wished for a better successor.

Part of the constituency, the borough of Oadby and Wigston, covered by the LE2 and LE18 postcodes, is still included in the area covered by these regulations. It is wholly within the Harborough constituency, but has a three or four-mile border with the city of Leicester to its south and east. While politically—and in many other ways—wholly distinct from the city of Leicester, thousands of residents in the borough work in or have connections with the city. Many Leicester families send their children to the excellent state and private schools in the borough and in rural Harborough. There is a huge amount of social and business travel between the city and the borough. Many of the textile businesses in the city are owned by residents of the borough and a great many students at Leicester and De Montfort Universities, both of which are within the city, live in halls of residence and other accommodation in the borough. The three NHS hospitals in the city—the Royal Infirmary, the General and the Glenfield—employ staff and treat patients resident in the borough.

Therefore, what happens in the city affects the borough, even though the borough is not the city and the city is not the borough. In his article in the New Statesman dated 24 July to 13 August, Professor Robert Colls of De Montfort University reports that in Leicester there were 141 cases per 100,000 people for the week ending 28 June and 119 new cases per 100,000 people on 16 July, compared to a UK average of 13.2. The Minister’s figures were slightly different, and he tells us that they are now down to 64 per 100,000. However, while the residents of the borough, and of Harborough more widely, appreciate the general dangers of a resurgence of Covid-19, they are also entitled to a clear explanation of why their community is being brought in or out of local lockdown measures. In the city, the highest infection rates are in the most deprived and overcrowded council wards. There are no such wards in Oadby, but—

My Lords, we are very tight for time. Can my noble and learned friend bring his remarks to a close?

If the demographic information given by my noble friend Lord Ribeiro is correct, there needs to be some sort of framework, as there is in other countries, to explain to people why decisions taken 100 miles away in London are necessary. At the moment, for example, people have no idea of where rates of infection need to fall to for them to be released from lockdown.