That this House has considered the impact of long covid on the UK workforce.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing us to hold this updated debate on long covid. I also thank my co-sponsors, some of whom, I am sad to say, are at home ill with covid and very much wanted to be here today. Also the fact that the debate has moved weeks has not helped. For those watching at home, I have been contacted by several Members who are very sorry that they are not able to be here. I also want to put on record my thanks to the many hundreds of people who, over the years, have contacted the all-party group on coronavirus with their personal stories, many of which are very heart warming, but also moving and worrying because it is a debilitating condition. What I say to all of them is: “We hear you, you have not been forgotten and we will continue to fight for you.”
I want to recognise the actions that the Government have taken so far. I was pleased that, after the first debate we had on the issue in January 2021, the Government made some £18.5 million available for research into long covid, including treatment, and delivered even more funding in the summer, which is incredibly welcome. In that debate, I also welcomed the new dedicated long covid clinics and the publishing of guidance to medical professionals by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network and the Royal College of General Practitioners. However, despite that welcome action, it has felt, over the past eight months, that long covid has totally dropped off the radar and, on this issue, there has been very little debate.
I thank the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) for coming to the Chamber to answer this debate. I believe that it is the first time that the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy has answered in the Chamber on this. I will focus my remarks on the effect that long covid has had on the workforce because our belief is that this is a looming crisis that we need to think ahead about and that it would be wrong for us just to focus on the medical side— there are broader implications here.
Although there are many understandable reasons why this matter may have dropped off the radar, including the cost of living crisis and the war in Ukraine, I argue that these things are very much linked. How are we going to have a strong and productive economy if large swathes of our workforce are struggling to do the jobs that they are meant to be doing? How can we help them to recover?
Over this past year, we have had more information and learned more about long covid, although it is worth saying that there is still no cure. There are treatment plans that can help with symptoms, but the past year has been awful for many, including Andrew, a headteacher whom I spoke about in the debate a year ago, who received multiple written warnings about his inability to do the job in the day. I went back to him and asked how he was. He said:
“I made the difficult decision to resign from my post as a headteacher, so my limited energies could focus on coming to terms with my illness rather than continuing to face dismissal from a career that I had committed the past 25 years to and one that I dearly love.”
I also got an email from Nell, one of my constituents, who is a doctor. She said:
“I adore being a hospital doctor. I love my patients and I trained for years to do this. It’s been nearly two years of struggling with my health after covid, and while I continue to slowly recover, I don’t know if I can do this much longer. I’m so very sorry—I feel that I have let you down writing this.”
To Nell, I say that I do not believe that she has let anyone down, but I think that, to an extent, the Government have let her down.
I thank the hon. Member for giving way and for her excellent speech. I also thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting the debate. She has raised a couple of cases that she has heard about. I have been in touch a lot with Sam, a carer in my constituency. At the very beginning when she had long covid, people did not understand the condition and it was not taken seriously, and it has affected her ability to work ever since. Does the hon. Member agree that, as well as dealing with the health side and getting more research on how the condition affects people so differently, it is important to have guidance for employers—she will probably come on to this—on how to deal with this and how to support those who may have long covid through that very difficult period? As we do not know how long the condition lasts, we need a proper long-term strategy for those who are affected and for their families.
The hon. Member hits the nail on the head. People can recover, and very often do, but the way to help them do that is very badly explained to employers right now. Indeed, I will come on to talk in some detail about that.
Many people were told, especially at the beginning, that long covid was something that they were making up. They were told that it was all in their head. I have a research paper here that shows that scans have been done on people’s chests and the reason they were suffering from breathlessness was that the tissue was fundamentally damaged. This is very much a real disease, which now needs a real response.
It is not just public sector workers who have dealt with this. I spoke to Rebecca, who gave evidence to the all-party parliamentary group. She was a fitness instructor, Madam Deputy Speaker. You would think that a fitness instructor would be very healthy and would have very good lungs—before the pandemic, anyway. She used to teach 14 high-intensity classes a week and ran her own business. Now long covid means that she is in bed 60% of the time and describes being
“unable to return to work, and to be the mum, wife or friend I once was”.
It is utterly heartbreaking. We now need to accept that, if we are going to live with covid, we also have to live with long covid. In the evidence sessions that the APPG took in December and January, we heard how the condition is still severely impacting the lives and livelihoods of people across the country. They described how the condition has left them unable to work, sometimes unable to move, forcing them into long periods of absence from work, dipping into their savings and doing anything to stay afloat—something that is much more difficult now with the cost of living crisis.
A study released this month by Queen Mary University concluded that becoming infected with covid increases the risk of economic hardship, especially if the individual develops long covid. Those individuals describe a patchwork of uneven availability when it comes to long covid clinics and many are desperate for treatment. We heard from one nurse, for example, who has spent thousands of pounds going to Germany to get treatment that she is not able to access here. Public sector workers gave their lives for us. When we were all allowed to be at home, they went in, and they are the ones, according to Office for National Statistics surveys, who have the highest prevalence of long covid. I believe that we owe them so much more than they have had so far.
I congratulate the hon. Lady and her colleagues on securing this important debate. Does she agree that it is not only the people who have had long covid who suffer, but their family members who have to care for them? My constituent Julie Wells has had a working life of nearly 40 years. Her teenage daughter, on a second dose of covid, has been left with totally debilitating symptoms and now needs constant care. Julie hopes at best to get back to part-time work, but she may not. That is a full-time person lost to the workforce because of caring for a family member.
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. The caring responsibilities are greatly increased, as is the prevalence in children. I was alerted by my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) to a case of a parent who is asking for dispensation for her child from taking examinations because she has missed so many days of school. I am talking to the Education Secretary separately about that point, but long covid affects the entire family, not just the workforce.
Some 1.5 million people have long covid, but 989,000 people say that those long covid symptoms adversely affect their day-to-day activities and 281,000 people report that their ability to undertake their day-to-day activities had been “limited a lot”. That often means they must take part-time instead of full-time work, and sadly it often means they are unable to recover well because they are pushed to try to get back to work.
The effect on business is now being better documented. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development found that a quarter of UK employers cited long covid as one of the main causes of long-term sickness absence among their staff. For small businesses, the effects can be devastating. The Federation of Small Businesses has shared guidance on how to help with statutory sick pay and arranging for temporary staff cover.
However, I am concerned that the ACAS guidance right now is pretty sparse; I hope the Minister might take that up. The guidance signposts to other websites but does not make it clear that one of the most important things to do with long covid is often to let someone rest. People say “listen to your body” when it comes to medical things; I am afraid that with long covid that is actually the treatment plan.
If someone is forced or encouraged into work by their employer—often inadvertently, if they do not have proper guidance—it can set them back and cause even more problems down the line. One of our main calls is for employer guidance, but I also urge the Government to look at the ACAS website, for example, and ensure that it is clear to employers how they can help and support their employees to stay at home and rest as long as they need to, so that they come back and we do not unnecessarily lose people from the workforce.
Forewarned is forearmed, as they say, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran). I congratulate her not only on securing this debate, but on her leadership of the APPG, which she chairs exceptionally well. Today’s debate and the report that underpins it reflect that. I also thank all those who have provided evidence to the APPG, particularly on the latest report. Their stories are moving and quite shocking. In addition, I thank the secretariat, who do a fantastic job of providing support to the group.
This Covid pandemic is far from over. I am wearing my mask, and we know we have an outbreak in Parliament, with a number of MPs currently off with covid. It is far from over. We are seeing case numbers ticking upwards, hospitalisations also on the rise and, sadly, increased deaths. Once again, we have seen the burden of disease from this pandemic hitting the most deprived. Avoidable mortality is six times greater for women in deprived areas compared with the least deprived women and nearly five times greater for men. Yet we see a spring statement where the Government’s “levelling up” rhetoric has no substance. Just £1 out of the £6 from the Chancellor’s tax hike in the autumn was given back, but only 30p from that £1 went to those on the lowest incomes.
Despite the Government’s hype, their pandemic preparedness was woeful and their pandemic management in too many aspects was reckless, wasteful and even unlawful. We are now aware that, although many people may have fully recovered from the acute phase of covid infection, as the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon has said, for a significant number—ONS data estimates more than 1.5 million or 2.5% of the population, although the covid tracker identifies a larger percentage—there is a longer chronic phase. That chronic phase affects children, about 34,000 at the moment, women, particularly younger women of working age, people on low incomes, frontline workers who are more at risk of exposure, including NHS and care workers, and those with an existing activity-limiting health condition or disability.
A couple of weeks ago, I attended with constituents the service at St Paul’s Cathedral that was organised by the cathedral, Sir Lloyd Dorfman and others to remember those who have died from coronavirus. Indeed, earlier today in business questions we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) about the very striking memorial wall in her constituency along the banks of the Thames by St Thomas’s Hospital.
I am really grateful to the Backbench Business Committee and the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) for enabling us to remind ourselves of all the other victims of covid who are, in a sense, the lucky ones who have survived but who still need our attention. I declare an interest in that a member of my immediate family suffers from long covid. If the House will bear with me, I will not actually identify who it is. For 18 months, that member of my family has not really been able to get out of bed. In terms of work, they were doing well. They are young. Their career was progressing. They were being extremely well rated at work. Almost overnight, that came to a crashing halt.
At first, when you suffer from covid, as I did at the same time as my family member, you hope and believe that although it is going to be awful and unpleasant, if you get through it, life will carry on. Then long covid starts to emerge and you do not get any better. I got better and my family member did not. It involved all the symptoms that my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) described—huge tiredness, brain fog and aching limbs. At the time, the best source of advice that was available, and the best source of support, was my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne). There was nothing really available. People had not come to terms with the condition and with identifying what its causes were. I pay tribute to and thank him for his work and his support to my family.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) for securing this important debate, and I must thank the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) for bringing to life the reality of many of our constituents and what they experience day to day. No one wants to be in the position of experiencing long covid, the variety of symptoms that it presents with and its timescale. With people having experienced long covid symptoms since the very first wave, it is clearly a difficult and debilitating issue for the country to deal with.
A little over a month ago, I raised the issue of long covid and employment in an Adjournment debate answered by the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman). Although I was grateful for his responses then, I would like to raise some issues again—my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon has raised some of them—because there is very much more that we could be doing.
When I was here a few weeks ago, I quoted the Office for National Statistics figures, which said that in the four weeks to 2 January, 1.3 million people across the UK were suffering from long covid. That number is now estimated to be 1.5 million, and that is an incredibly fast uptick. Like others, I have recently had covid myself. I was in my bed for four days. Like the hon. Member for City of Chester said, I had a good day and I did too much, and I ended up back in my bed again. Although thankfully for me it was mild and I seem to be very much back on my feet, there is no doubt that regardless of the strain or variant, long covid can still be the result. Even if symptoms are mild for many, the reality is that mild symptoms can still result in long covid. That number shows an incredibly fast uptick, and I stand with colleagues across the House when we say that clearly this condition will not go away, and the Government cannot close their eyes to it.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) for securing this debate, and I reiterate what has been said by many: we understand that so many people are suffering from long covid, and it must be taken seriously by the Government. We understand the impact it is having not only on those individuals and their daily lives, but the workforce. This economic issue will continue to have a serious impact, and it needs to be addressed. I reiterate the main ask that we have and that the all-party parliamentary group on coronavirus has in its very helpful report on long covid, which is for employer guidelines so that people are not at the whim and the mercy of different employers regarding understanding and support for their continuing in or returning to the workforce.
I have come to this debate for two groups of people. One is all those suffering from long covid across the country—an estimated 1.5 million people, or 4.4% of the workforce. The other is those constituents who have been suffering from ME, who have learned many lessons from that and think they are relevant to working with those with long covid. They have been underestimated, not believed and not supported. When they have gone to their GP, they have been told the wrong advice—advice that makes their ME worse—and they have not been understood in schools, whether by young people or teachers, or by their employers, and they do not want anyone with long covid to go through the same. I have been disturbed to hear some of the evidence given to the APPG about workforce practices that are not conducive to helping people come back to the workforce and not the best for those individuals and our economy.
A couple of my constituents have written to me. One said:
“I have now had long covid for two years...We desperately need more investment in potential treatments. It is clear that the illness impacts the blood, autoimmune system, organs, brain and central nervous system. None of these mechanisms are being treated by the NHS so far. Treatments are being trialled in other countries.”
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, which brings back many memories, as the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) said. There will be no one in the Chamber today who is not reflecting on those who have been lost over the past two years. As of last week, we have lost 3,200 people in Northern Ireland and 157,000 across the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It is fair to say that every family and every person has been touched by the loss of someone to covid. We cannot help but think of those numbers in this debate.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) on setting the scene and on her hard work with others on the APPG to bring this matter to a head and to highlight and better understand these issues.
I was first elected as a councillor in 1985, and I sat in the Northern Ireland Assembly for 12 consecutive years. When I first became a Member of the Legislative Assembly in 1998, one of the biggest issues in my office was benefits, and it continues to be the biggest issue—benefits, housing and planning, in that order.
The hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) talked about ME, and others will recognise this story. When I was an MLA, people with ME would come to me when they had to fill in benefits forms. They said, “My doctor says there is nothing wrong with me.” And I said, “Are there any other doctors in the practice you could speak to?” I am not disrespecting doctors, as they are excellent people, but there was no understanding of ME then. We had to fight incredible battles to get the evidence to prove these people had ME. They said they had chronic fatigue, and they did. It was called ME, and it was a disease. That supports what the hon. Lady, the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon and others have said.
I am not saying anyone here is special, but I commend the hon. Member for City of Chester for his very personal story, which the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) also mentioned. His personal story resonates, and he knows that I missed him. I said to him, “We missed you. Where have you been?” He did not tell me everything he had been through, but he told me some of it—he told it all today. Others in the House have been affected, too, so we thank him for his story.
My wife says I am special. I thank the hon. Lady for being most complimentary.
I did not have any symptoms, but I isolated as instructed, because I follow the rules—that is the way to do it. Although I was fortunate and blessed to be asymptomatic and not ill with covid, that is not the case for the many people who did not come through covid unscathed. We have all mentioned that 1.5 million people, 2.4% of the population of this great nation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, have self-reported ongoing covid symptoms that have persisted for more than four weeks, as of 31 January 2022. Forty-five per cent of them, 685,000 people, first had or suspect they first had covid-19 at least one year previously.
I think of the wall outside St Thomas’s Hospital, where some ladies from Manchester, Liverpool and elsewhere met us two or three months ago. I was walking to the hotel one night, many months ago, and passed the wall. It is a wonderful memorial to those who have passed on, and it is good that those ladies and others organised the wall to give people an outlet for their feelings.
Two years after the first lockdown, the long-term effects of covid are becoming clear. We need to put protection in place for employees with this long-term illness that doctors cannot pinpoint. These people struggle daily to live with it, but they are not protected by the Disability Discrimination Act 1995.
This Government should urgently produce guidelines for employers in both the private sector and the public sector on managing the impact of long covid among their workforce. We should also launch a compensation scheme, as the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon mentioned, for all frontline key workers living with long covid. I agree with the APPG that the scheme should mirror the armed forces compensation scheme, which we discussed on Monday night, recognising the relapsing nature of long covid and going beyond the existing pay scheme.
Unsurprisingly, though, it is not just about public services. We have 1.4 million people across the country experiencing self-reported long covid symptoms. That is 2.4% of the population and that cuts across every single sector, not just the public sector.
In the hospitality sector, which, as the Minister will know, is already struggling, 2.6% of workers have long covid. If we take the 3 million workforce estimate from UKHospitality, that equates to 70,000 workers unable to do their jobs as they did before. In retail, it is 2.3%, which equates to just under 70,000 workers; for personal service, such as beauticians, it is a bit less at 6,000, but still 2.1%. Those are big numbers in sectors that are already struggling post pandemic and struggling with workers’ visas following Brexit. They do not need this.
A legal expert speaking to the APPG described the lack of access to financial support and said,
“lots of people with Long Covid find themselves starting for the very first time to be involved in the obstacle course which is our benefit system”.
It is clear that long covid is having a serious impact on the ability of our workforce to do their jobs, and we can only expect that to get worse as the virus spreads through the population again and we get more cases of long covid.
What can we do? The all-party group has released a report on long covid this week; if the Minister has not seen it, I would be happy to give him a copy. In it, we make 10 recommendations, but I will highlight just a few. First, the Government need urgently to prioritise research treatments for long covid patients. We welcome the money already committed, but we would contrast it with the United States, for example, where $1 billion has been earmarked for this, because the US recognises the effect long covid could have on its economy and sees this as an investment. I urge the UK Government to find similar ambition.
Secondly, we call for employer guidelines, set out by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in conjunction with the Department of Health and Social Care, to help all businesses to help their employees back into work. Thirdly, we call for the UK Government to launch a compensation scheme for all those frontline workers currently living with long covid, similar to the armed forces compensation scheme.
The Minister will perhaps be aware that the process for the designation of an occupational disease is ongoing; we are hopeful that that will report back soon, and we are discussing that with the Department for Work and Pensions. That designation could be game-changing, particularly in those public sector areas where prevalence was incredibly high, such as education, the health and social care workforce and public transport, which had some of the highest prevalences of covid, particularly at the beginning.
The Office for National Statistics survey points to where we need to look. However, I urge the Government not to wait for that designation. Many of those workers, as in my examples, have already left the professions. They are leaving the sector or deciding to take early retirement, and this is a time when our economy needs a boost. It needs those experienced workers. At the moment, we are not paying any attention to that.
The main reason we secured this debate was to urge the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to look ahead and take this seriously. The best thing we can do right now is to help hard-pressed people in the UK in our fight against Putin, against the cost of living crisis and all the rest. If we are to get our economy back on its feet, we must get our workers back at their desks. If those workers have long covid, there is currently very little out there to support them or those businesses that desperately want them back.
As we have heard, symptoms vary but, in summary, they include fatigue, pain, reduced muscle strength, brain fog and so on. In my own case, I have experienced prolonged fatigue bordering on exhaustion, being awake but my brain being somehow disengaged from what I am doing and nasty bouts of nausea. I believe that covid has also exacerbated my already severe arthritis, which is partly the result of many years of running, but has got considerably worse with long covid. The pain is constant and sometimes completely debilitating, making it difficult to stand up.
What is shocking is the response to people who are experiencing long covid from their employers. The hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon mentioned some of these cases. I have also heard of those who have been disciplined by their employers. They were struggling with this condition and wanted to go about their everyday lives. They wanted to be at work and yet they were disciplined for not being able to be back at their desks, back in front of their class, or to see patients; we heard from a GP, as Members may remember. This very much reflects, unfortunately, the attitude of some, but it was particularly disappointing in public sector organisations, especially the NHS.
In December 2020, the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence brought forward its guidelines on managing long covid. At the time, I commended it on the holistic healthcare approach taken when assessing a patient with symptoms beyond four and 12 weeks, with the emphasis on empathy and acknowledging the impact the symptoms may have on the patient’s day-to-day life, including their ability to work. This was a major step forward from previous NICE guidelines on other chronic fatigue syndrome illnesses that are similar to long covid but also affect the nervous and immune systems. The NICE guidelines on long covid were updated earlier this month, and I note that they are to be regularly updated, which we recommended, because there is emerging evidence that we must make sure is incorporated at the earliest opportunity. I hope, because I have not seen evidence of this, that investigations into the range of immune responses to covid as well as immune therapies will also be incorporated.
As I mentioned last year, the British Society for Immunology and several others have suggested that in addition to long-term damage to multiple organs, the pain, muscle weakness, fatigue and even brain fog often associated with long covid may be due to inflammatory issues associated with our immune response rather than covid itself. Covid-19, like other viruses, attacks multiple systems—respiratory, cardiovascular, nervous and gastrointestinal—as it attaches to epithelial cells that are distributed throughout the body. Our bodies’ ability to fight the virus depends on our immune systems reacting appropriately and not overreacting.
We need adequate long-term funding for long covid clinics providing evidence-based therapies—evidence is the key. I pay tribute to my colleagues in Oldham for helping over 300 long covid patients. We need to ensure that long covid is recognised as an occupational disease. There has to be a societal approach.
The employers of my family member were excellent, and still are. They have not been able to continue paying, but as far as they are concerned my family member is still on their books. They value the contribution that my family member has made—again, I am sorry to talk vaguely but I do not want to identify the person—and have said, “When you’re ready to come back, we’re ready to have you.” That is the kind of employment practice that we are looking for.
To echo my hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon), another member of my family has had to give up their job in order to be the carer. What we are looking for is some kind of hope—something to cling on to and to demonstrate progress. There has been progress. I welcome the Government’s investment of £18 million and the growing recognition of the post-viral chronic fatigue syndrome caused by coronavirus. Whenever there is a new light on this, even in scientific papers that I would not normally understand, we devour them to try to find an explanation, a cause, a hope of a cure or a treatment that will get us and my family member through this. Is it caused by scarring on the lungs? Is it caused by microclots? Is it caused by activating postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, which also bears some kind of relation to what is going on? The truth is that it could be any one of those in any number of individuals, but the absolute fatigue is the same.
I remember my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish advising me, “If you’re feeling good, don’t do too much—don’t exert yourself.” I passed that advice on. It is also about the mental effect. When you are having a good day, you do not want to exert yourself because then you might be knocked out for the next three days, so that forces you to withdraw into yourself and not want to go out. You cannot even walk down to the shops or to the park because you are so terrified that you might then not make it through the next three days. It is about the hope and desire and almost desperation that when you have a good day and it is followed by another good day and then perhaps another, is this the beginning of the end, or even the end of the beginning? For so many, including my family member, it has not been that.
I would ask for the same consideration that has been given to my family member to be given to others—for employers to recognise that the Government have recognised this as an issue and the medical establishment has recognised it as an issue. Employers need to treat their employees who have this illness as also being victims of the pandemic, because nobody has chosen to have it. My message to those, including constituents, who still persist in saying that covid-19 is nothing—that it is just like a cold or the flu—would be something along the lines of, “Get stuffed.” There are 140,000 names on the wall outside St Thomas’s, and there are maybe a couple of hundred thousand others who are still suffering today and are desperate to get over this terrible long-term affliction and have some hope of a better life to come. I am most grateful for this debate, and most grateful, again, to my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish for the support he has given to my family.
Indeed, this morning I met RESULTS UK to talk about work we have done on equitable covid access. There is no doubt that unless we do more to help developing countries and other parts of the world in managing this pandemic, we will see future variants, so the risk of long covid does not go away.
Scottish National party colleagues are always talking about Scotland’s doing a lot better compared with elsewhere, but I think the Scottish Government are letting down long covid sufferers in Scotland. As my friend the Member of the Scottish Parliament for Edinburgh West has shown, of the 119,000 long covid sufferers in Scotland, only 1,000 had been referred to the long covid support services announced by Chest, Heart & Stroke Scotland by the end of February. A recent Freedom of Information request showed that of the much-needed £10 million long covid support fund announced by the Scottish Government last September, not a single penny has been allocated or spent. I am an absolute believer in devolving decision making to the place where it can be most effective for our constituents, but the Scottish Government are failing in delivering this support, whether through inefficiencies, errors or something else. My constituents in North East Fife and my SNP colleagues’ constituents deserve better, and I hope to see better in future.
Turning to the impact of long covid on the workforce, I want to focus specifically on those who would otherwise be working, but cannot as a result of their medical condition. I thank those Members who have already highlighted where employers are trying and helping people to work. We have to acknowledge, though, that there are employers out there not doing right by constituents and members of staff, and we must work hard to ensure that they do what is required.
I do not want to repeat my entire speech from a month ago, but I will turn back to a few key points that I do not feel were properly addressed then. Will the Government commit to extending the period that claimants for benefits have to complete their application forms? For someone with a debilitating condition, particularly relapsing remitting ones, which long covid often presents itself as, four weeks is just not enough time to complete a 30-page form, including the collection of evidence. Particularly when experiencing some of those symptoms, they simply cannot concentrate for the length of time required. It takes up more time and resources to apply for a two-week extension. As I raised in the last debate, why do we not just automatically apply that extension to give people more time, rather than taking up DWP time and resources, as well as those of the person, to request that extension? It would be a cheap and straightforward step to give enough time in the first place.
Will the Government commit to consulting with disabled people, including those with long covid or other relapsing remitting conditions, such as ME, about the design of those application forms to ensure that they are properly able to explain the impact of their conditions? I appreciate that the Minister is from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, but we have had a cross-Government approach to covid, and we need a cross-Government approach to long covid, too.
Will the Government accept that the evidence of doctors and specialists who truly understand complex conditions, such as long covid, is relevant to the assessment of how people’s day-to-day lives are affected? Are they afraid that hard evidence will make it more difficult to minimise payments to those in need? Sometimes we are left to wonder just that.
Will the Government publish their decision making matrix for assessors and submit it to independent scrutiny to ensure that it allows for suitable decisions to be made relating to complex conditions such as long covid? That will also have the additional benefit of considerably increasing trust in DWP. We hear about that a lot in this Chamber, and we know it is incredibly low. Finally, will the Government provide proper training to staff in DWP centres—both front and back office—relating to assessments and work coaching? We want to ensure that they are equipped to work with claimants suffering from this new and complex condition. We have heard the variety of symptoms that it creates, but I am pretty sure that increasing people’s anxiety and stress will do nothing to help them.
Those who cannot work because of a health condition are the other side of the workforce coin. Everyone must be supported, and those who are less visible must be given the support they require.
There are questions being asked about the trials being conducted in other countries and what more could be done here.
Another constituent said:
“I contracted covid-19 at the very end of September. Like many people, I suffered mild symptoms…2 weeks on from my initial infection I was suddenly hit with a wave of long covid symptoms and was truly horrified at what was happening to my brain and body. I felt drained and broken, and…I felt as though a foreign body was inside my head—I could no longer hold even a conversation, yet alone work. For the last 7 months I have been unable to function in any sort of capacity.”
Finally, my cousin has had long covid for a long time. He sent me a list of his symptoms: fatigue, concentration impairment, memory problems, cognitive loss, internal pain, chills and sweats, sleeplessness, sore throat, dizziness, shaking, anxiety, faintness and muscle aches. All these symptoms and impacts of long covid need to be understood by employers, by teachers and education settings, and by general practitioners and all medical workers, as recommended by the report of the APPG on coronavirus.
I underline those recommendations and ask specifically for the urgent production of clear employer guidelines, otherwise there will continue to be an employer lottery in the treatment of people with long covid as they return to work. I ask for guidance to education settings, because many students with ME found it difficult to get understanding in order to continue with their education. We cannot have the same happen for those with long covid. And I ask for clear guidance to medical practitioners on children and adults with long covid so that everyone gets the proper care, support and understanding they need so that they have hope and do not add being misunderstood to their long list of symptoms, only increasing their anxiety.
I welcome this debate, and I hope to hear some good news from the Minister about the key recommendations of this report being taken up to create a good situation for everyone with long covid.
Although I have been double-jabbed and boosted, I was informed by a test after getting home from the House on an early Saturday morning that I had covid. I could not understand it, because I had no symptoms. A lady from the NHS back home phoned me on the Saturday morning and said, “Mr Shannon, how do you feel?” And I said, “Would you be shocked to know that I feel great?” She said, “Well, do you have any symptoms?” And I said, “I have no symptoms. As a matter of fact, I do not think I have felt this well in the past two weeks.” The lady could not understand it, and she told me that I was asymptomatic. I am not sure what that means—
Long covid is a debilitating illness. There is a gentlemen I have known ever since he came to Ards. He is the pastor of a church in my constituency, and he almost lost his life to covid. He is 6 feet 4 inches, and this big, strapping man was brought to his knees. He walked up the hill to Stormont in the “Voice for the Voiceless” protest, and I thought he would have to lie down. Long covid has hit him incredibly hard. He has one day of good and then three days of bad. He has headaches, stomach upsets, blood clots, reduced lung function and chronic fatigue. His church is happy to allow him to rest as he needs. Had he worked for another employer—I will not mention them—he would not have that protection. We must improve the current care pathways for long covid, with a view to ensuring the healthcare system is capable of meeting current and future demand.
In a Westminster Hall debate, I mentioned a constituent who had brain fog. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), has lived that. It is important to say that one of our friends and colleagues in this House has lived with long covid and has found it incredibly difficult, as have others, to deal with. You are not far from our thoughts—