The Business of the House motion just agreed to by the House provides for the motions on the five statutory instruments on today’s Order Paper, each relating to public health, to be debated together for up to three hours. Those are SI Nos. 1518, 1533, 1572, 1611 and 1646. At the end of the debate, I will put the Question on each motion separately. A large number of Members want to contribute to the debate, so we will start with a five-minute time limit.
That the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Self-Isolation and Linked Households) (England) Regulations 2020 (S.I., 2020, No. 1518), dated 11 December 2020, a copy of which was laid before this House on 11 December, be approved.
That the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 (S.I., 2020, No. 1533), dated 14 December 2020, a copy of which was laid before this House on 14 December, be approved.
That the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers) (England) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2020 (S.I., 2020, No. 1572), dated 17 December 2020, a copy of which was laid before this House on 17 December, be approved.
That the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers and Obligations of Undertakings) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 (S.I., 2020, No. 1611), dated 20 December 2020, a copy of which were laid before this House on 21 December, be approved.
That the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers) (England) (Amendment) (No. 3) Regulations 2020 (S.I., 2020, No. 1646), dated 24 December 2020, a copy of which were laid before this House on 29 December, be approved.
Before I say anything else, I want to say thank you to all our health and social care workers who have been working day and night through Christmas, Boxing day and the bank holiday. I know that every single one of them is feeling the strain and that they are not just tired but exhausted, having gone not just the extra mile but miles and miles of extra miles. I would also like to thank everyone across the country who has forgone the joy of sharing Christmas with family or friends. We have all missed those precious moments, and I know that this has been particularly painful for those facing what may be the last chance to spend Christmas with a loved one nearing the end of their life. That is why I say thank you to them from the bottom of my heart for what they have done, not so much for their own sake but to protect others.
I would like to take a moment to celebrate the good news of the authorisation of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for use. Although the development of vaccines is an international collaboration, we should recognise the contribution of the British life sciences sector, which offers the UK a way out of this disease and will make a huge impact on the global response.
My hon. Friend may well have heard the statement by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, after which he answered a large number of questions about the vaccine. As he said, we will be rolling out the vaccine as rapidly as possible, we are poised and ready to start rolling out that particular vaccine as of next week, and it is all about getting the supply of the vaccine in to enable us to do that.
There is light at the end of the tunnel, but we are not there yet. We are here today to debate regulations that increased the restrictions on parts of the country before Christmas, but we also heard the Health Secretary’s statement earlier and know the seriousness of the situation we face despite those greater restrictions. We know that we have just had the highest number of new cases in one day—over 53,000—and in many parts of the country, our hospitals are stretched to the limit. We know we are facing a new variant of covid that is more infectious and spreading rapidly in many parts of the country, so I am in no doubt that we were right to introduce further restrictions when we did.
Before going into the details of the regulations, I will give a brief overview of the measures we are debating. On 2 December, a revised tiering system was introduced following approval of the all-tiers regulations in both Houses. Those have been amended four times. On 14 and 16 December, the all-tiers regulations were amended to move some local authority areas between tiers. Those changes came into force on 16 and 19 December respectively. On 20 December, the all-tiers regulations were amended to introduce a further level of restrictions—tier 4—and to move some local authority areas into that tier and to exclude tier 4 from the Christmas easements. Finally, on 24 December, the all-tiers regulations were amended to move some local authority areas into higher tiers, and some amendments were made to the measures in tier 4.
In addition to those four amendments to the all-tiers regulations, we are debating the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Self-Isolation and Linked Households) (England) Regulations 2020, which reduce the self-isolation period for household and non-household contacts from 14 days to 10, based on evidence showing that the likelihood of being infectious as a contact after 10 days is low. That decision was made following advice from UK chief medical officers. To bring English policy in line with other nations in the UK, we now count the start date of this period from the day after exposure, onset of symptoms or a test. Those with covid-19 should continue to self-isolate for 10 days, as per Government guidelines. We have brought the wait time for those switching support or childcare bubbles down to 10 days, in line with those changes.
Sir Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)
The great disappointment felt by many colleagues, who appreciate that the Government are under enormous pressure, is that the House rose on the Thursday, and the decision was made pretty much the next day. It is a great shame that the House was not recalled on the Friday, or possibly even the Saturday before Christmas, to scrutinise the new regulations. That is where the sense of disappointment lies. Most families are more than capable of making the right decisions for their relatives without being instructed to do that in law.
I hear my hon. Friend’s point, and I share his view that throughout this pandemic the vast majority of people have behaved with great responsibility. I know that people in tiers other than tier 4 thought very hard about whether they should gather with relatives, even within the easing that was allowed during the Christmas period, and rightly so. We must all play our part in controlling the virus and stopping its spread.
At the time of these provisions we were seeing an exponential rise in cases in London, Kent, and some other parts of the south-east, and it was clear that the tier 3 restrictions were not sufficient. We identified the existence of a new variant in those areas, and further analysis showed us that the new variant was driving the steep trajectory of infections. The new and emerging respiratory virus threats advisory group—NERVTAG—tells us that the new variant demonstrates a substantial increase in transmissibility, compared with other variants, and that the R value appears to be significantly higher, with initial estimates suggesting an increase of between 0.4 and 0.9.
There is no evidence to suggest that the new variant of the virus is more likely to cause more serious disease, but increased infections lead to increased hospital admissions and, sadly, increased loss of life. These winter months already pose great challenges for our NHS. That is why we had to take the action that we took before Christmas, and the further steps announced today to control the relentless spread of the virus. However, it is not all bad news.
I am making some progress and I am mindful that many Members want to speak this evening.
The roll-out of the Pfizer vaccine is happening at pace, with more than 600,000 people receiving it between 8 and 20 December. Vaccinations in care homes started on 16 December, and the NHS has already been getting the vaccine to those who are most vulnerable, and the care workers who look after them. Now the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine has been approved, and it is much easier to get out to people and into arms. There is every reason for optimism, but we are not there yet. We must suppress the virus now and in the weeks ahead.
On the specific measures in these regulations, in response to the greatly increased risk, the addition of tier 4 stay-at-home measures will be familiar to people from the November national restrictions. Tier 4 involves minor changes to those national restrictions. As of November, people in tier 4 areas must stay at home and not travel out of tier 4. They may only leave for a limited number of reasons such as work, education, or caring purposes. We are advising that clinically extremely vulnerable people in tier 4 areas should do as they did in November and stay at home as much as possible, except to go outdoors for exercise or to attend health appointments. The regulations contain the same exemptions as other tiers for childcare and support bubbles. We advise that people elsewhere avoid travelling into a tier 4 area, unless they need to do so for work, education or health purposes.
Can my hon. Friend help me? Statutory instrument No. 1572 required the people of Christchurch to move from tier 1 to tier 2, and it came into effect on 19 December. Today, the Secretary of State has announced that the people of Christchurch should be moving into tier 4, with effect from midnight tonight. What has happened between 19 December and today to force the people of Christchurch to lose all that liberty?
One thing that I will do when I have finished speaking is see whether I can look up the specific data for the hon. Member’s constituency. In general, however, the announcements made today, just as with previous announcements, are based on the data that we are seeing, which includes rapidly rising rates of infection in certain areas, the level of new infections, the trajectory and hospital pressures.
The tier 4 regulations require all non-essential retail, indoor entertainment, hairdressers and other personal care services to close. International travel is restricted to business trips. However, we have listened to hon. Members and the public about what is most important to people in their daily lives so, unlike in the November restrictions, communal worship and a wider range of outdoor recreation are still permitted. We also recognise the restrictions’ impact on businesses and continue to provide them with ongoing support to help them get through the crisis.
We know that these measures are hard. We know that they keep families and friends apart, yet we also know that they are necessary for us to get through this situation and to prevent the loss of lives as we do so. This virus thrives on the things that make life worth living, such as social contact, but that means we can all play our part in stopping the spread—as I said, if not for ourselves, then for others. The end is in sight, but for now it is our duty here in Parliament to put in place these restrictions—onerous though they are—to control this virus. I commend the regulations to the House.
As I said, we will start with a five-minute time limit on Back-Bench speeches. I remind hon. Members that, when a speaking limit is in effect for Back Benchers, a countdown clock will be visible on the screens of right hon. and hon. Members participating virtually and on the screens in the Chamber. For right hon. and hon. Members participating physically, the usual clock will operate.
I hope you had a good Christmas, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I wish you and all colleagues a happy new year. I take this moment to express our gratitude for the work of you and the staff to ensure that we could sit today. I also associate myself with the Minister’s comments regarding this country’s outstanding health and social care workforce, who have made Herculean efforts over Christmas and new year. They are greatly appreciated.
There is something very 2020 about discussing covid regulations three hours after a subsequent set of regulations were introduced, but it is nevertheless important that we do so. I will cover each of them, perhaps making some cross-cutting points as I do so.
With regard to SI No. 1611, we discuss these regulations today because we are obliged to do so following their introduction on 20 December. However, we are compelled to do so because the failures of the restrictions announced on 2 December. At some point in the next few parliamentary days, we will debate the restrictions announced from the Dispatch Box earlier, and we are compelled to do that because of the failure of restrictions that we talk about today. This episode is a perfect encapsulation of the failings of the Government’s handling of the pandemic: slow and always falling short.
The Government have now had three goes at a tier system. The first two have failed, and today’s announcement marks the final attempt to salvage a third go. We must hear from the Minister today a clear commitment that, based on the best scientific guidance available, the Government firmly believe that these restrictions will halt the rise in the infection rate and, indeed, start to reduce it. We must have that commitment today, because otherwise we will be back here time and again. When the Minister, hopefully, makes that commitment, there ought also to be a commitment to publish the guidance that the judgments are based on, so that we might begin to repair damaged trust.
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I know that some hon. Members have previously raised concerns about parliamentary scrutiny, and some may be disappointed that those amendments were made in advance of this debate. However, I am sure hon. Members will also appreciate that this virus does not wait for parliamentary procedure. The situation we faced in the run-up to Christmas, as we identified that the cause of the rapid rise in infections was the new variant, meant that we had to act, and act fast.
The stakes are high. We cannot afford failure. Our national health service is experiencing dire pressures. A major incident was declared in Essex this afternoon. Elsewhere, exasperated doctors are taking to social media to report that oxygen is running out. An internal incident has been declared at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich. London hospitals are asking their counterparts in Yorkshire for support. Rates of sickness in our care facilities are increasing. Right hon. and hon. Members had a call this afternoon with Stephen Powis from NHS England, and it was clear not only that the pressures are significant, but that we can expect multiple weeks of growing demand. If the Government dither and delay again today, the price will be significant indeed.
We are considering a bundle of five different regulations. I do not intend to labour too much on SI No. 1533 or SI No. 1572, as they deal exclusively with moving specific geographies into specific tiers and are now significantly out of date, as was elegantly demonstrated by the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope).
SI No. 1611 creates tier 4, something that nearly 80% of us will now need to get used to. I shall cover that shortly, but it also deals with Christmas. Although that is of course now in the past, it is worth reflecting on briefly. The change was announced on 19 December, turning the nation’s plans upside down at a stroke. Of course, some allowance must be made for the changing nature of the virus; I accept that. We are in very fast- moving times. However, it was clear many days before the announcements were made that the initial Christmas plans would not be sustainable. That was regrettable, but it was clear. On 16 December, the Leader of the Opposition asked the Prime Minister from this Dispatch Box to look at it again, and the Prime Minister replied characteristically with bluster and bluff. Later that day, he said that it would be an “inhuman” thing to do, but of course he had to. He delayed, he dithered and, eventually, he had to do it anyway. Again, these things matter because they chip away at public confidence bit by bit to create a sense that the Government do not really have a handle on the crisis.
We will all have been cheered—the Minister majored on this in her speech—to wake up this morning to the news of the approval by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. This is an extraordinary scientific success and a vindication of the Government’s backing of multiple vaccine candidates. We should be exceptionally proud of Britain’s role in this vaccine and others. It is a great success story for our country and our place in the world after such a significant day today.
The Health Secretary said today that the vaccine is the way out of the pandemic, so for us today the vaccine must be the way to end the regulations. That is nearly right, because actually it is a vaccination programme that is the way out of this. Of course, a vaccine is the most vital component of such a programme, but now that we have that it ceases to be so much a question of science and becomes a much more rudimentary and basic exercise in logistics.
The Government have faced two such major logistics challenges in this pandemic. The first was the effective and urgent procurement and distribution of personal protective equipment and the second was the roll-out of the test, trace and isolate system. Both have been significant failures. The PPE roll-out was a farce for at least the first two months, and the test and trace system has not delivered, even on the Government’s own metrics, since its introduction. At the root of both these failures has been the same slowness that has characterised the Government’s response to the pandemic. They have been slow to respond and slow to grasp the scale of the challenge—this cannot happen again with the vaccine.
I have an awful lot more confidence in a programme that will be delivered by the NHS than in one delivered by one of the companies that the Government seem to default to even though they do not tend to deliver for them. There are still some questions, however. NHS staff are in category 2 of the initial prioritisation, but we are still hearing that there has not yet been a full roll-out. Can the Minister let us know when she anticipates that all our NHS heroes will have had their jab? Of course, that is the least they deserve, but we have heard today from the British Medical Association that NHS staff absence is at 10%, so it is a pragmatic necessity that, as we deal with increasing demand, we have a resilient workforce to do that.
We saw a significant change of direction in the administration of the vaccine this morning. Previously, we were administering it in pairs about a month apart, and that was seen as the best way of delivering it effectively. Now, the Government have made the judgment that they will go to a first shot, with a second shot to come three months or so later. I assume that this reflects the best advice of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, and if so we will support it, but will the Minister publish that advice and, crucially, the roll-out plan?
We know now that we have enough vaccines for everyone who wishes to take the offer up. We know that we have a national health service and different ways of dispensing it through our GPs and our hospitals. We know all the components, but we now need to know the timetable. That is important so that it can be scrutinised and perhaps improved, but also so that we can build public confidence in this crucial plan. People are rightly looking at this with great hope, and it is right that they know that there is a proper process behind it. In the meantime, however, the way out of the tiers as constituted in SIs Nos. 1611 and 1646 remains to reduce the five metrics on which the Government say the tiering decisions are based.
As a constituency MP, I have to say that this is a Kafkaesque process. Like you, I suspect, Madam Deputy Speaker, I have met Ministers, Government scientists and NHS leaders, both national and regional, and I still do not believe that there is a particular criterion for going up and down tiers. It is more that you kind of know it when you see it. To an extent, that is understandable. This is a complicated mix of infection rates, healthcare capacity and their associated trajectories and directions of travel, and then you kind of cook them all up altogether, so it is never going to be one number at one time at one moment. However, it is a significant issue for us as local leaders that we cannot build confidence in regulations by answering the basic question from constituents. I have had this multiple times, as will have other hon. and right hon. colleagues. Constituents are saying, “I accept that we are in the tier that we are in, and it is important that we are. I wish that we were in a lower one, so that I could do more of the things that I enjoy doing. What do we need to do in order to achieve that?” Frankly, as a local leader, I cannot answer that question and I doubt that anybody, including the Minister, could answer that question either.
What we did not hear from the Health Secretary from the Dispatch Box earlier, and what we did not hear from the Care Minister in her contribution just now, is that the reality is that people are in their tiers now, especially in tier 4, until the vaccine is rolled out. However, we have heard from the Prime Minister on that, hints on that from Robert Peston and hints on that in a reply after the Downing Street briefing. If that is the case, it is time for the Government to be honest about it. The one thing that we know after the year we have had is that the British people can take it. They can take that level of honesty. What they hate is when plans are changed at the last minute. What they hate is being told that, if they push down the infection rate in their community, they will be able to get back to doing the things that they love doing, and then finding out that it is no longer that but the percentage of positive tests. We have been through that in Nottingham; it is horrible and it is chipping away at confidence. It is time for a bit more honesty.
We support the introduction of these tiers. We withheld our support from the three-tier system. We did not believe that it would work and it did not. This goes further, so we are willing to support it, but two things need to be resolved with regulations that flow from today’s announcements, but also relate to the regulations we are discussing today. First, on the support for business, the £1,000 for wet pubs was an insult—£30 a day for the busiest time of year. Tiers 3 and 4 mean a shuttered hospitality sector. Viable businesses, jobs and livelihoods that are closed for very good reason must be better supported.
Similarly, tier 4 restrictions were introduced 10 days ago. We have worked throughout this pandemic on the principle that as restrictions increase, so does support for businesses, jobs and communities, but we have heard nothing since then. Where is the Chancellor? His slow and shorthanded response in his winter economic plan meant that, in the end, he had to have four different versions of it. Frankly, we might need another one because, otherwise, these restrictions will mean significant damage to our economy and to lives. This means action, finally, for those who have fallen between the various schemes on offer. We could dispute all day how many have been excluded, but we cannot deny their existence. I would give the Government significant latitude in understanding that, making a furlough scheme and a self-employed scheme out of nowhere for the first time, means there will be gaps between those schemes. It is entirely obvious that that will happen. However, we must do something about it and close those gaps. It has been months and months, and now the Government really have to do it.
Secondly, a fundamental gap remains the test, trace and isolate system, which is fundamental to breaking the chains of transmission. The Prime Minister promised 100% of results within 24 hours nearly six months ago. At the moment, that figure is 19%. If we allow for next day, rather than 24 hours—because it is still the Christmas season—that figure rises to 37%, which is pathetic. On tracing, things have got better, with the greater improvement of local authority teams. However, the one way the Government have made significant inroads in their testing statistics is by defaulting to the canniest tactic in the book; they have changed the way this is counted. Generally, that is not a good sign about how things are going. Again, progress here has been pathetic.
Crucially, we come to isolation payments. All colleagues will have heard stories of constituents making that impossible choice between feeding their families and doing the right thing for the national effort. The £500 payment was too slow to come forward and does not adequately replace lost income. The scheme is still so full of holes and very much depends on how the system picks people up. Self-isolation should be automatic and we have failed communities by not creating conditions for it to be so. Ministers will want to blame the new strain for covid’s continued spread, but the reality is that they did not have control of the virus prior to this and they still do not have an adequate test and trace system to subdue and control it anyway. In the course of such a defective system, we have managed to spend £22 billion—dearie, dearie me.
Finally, on SI No. 1518, we are happy to support the reduction of the self-isolation period from 14 to 10 days, assuming, again, that it is based on the best scientific evidence. Will the Minister commit to publishing this?
To conclude, we are at a crucial point in this pandemic. Today, with profound sadness, we hear of the passing of a further 981 of our fellow countrymen and women. The total directly who have lost their lives from covid alone is over 70,000 but, in reality, it will be many, many more. Those are big numbers but behind every one of them is a life, a person missed, a grieving family. Today, we have heard that the way out of this is in sight. However, we have also heard that things are poised to get much, much worse before they get better. In recognising this, the Government’s response is another system of tiers. These have failed every time so far. They must not fail now and we must hear from them why they believe they will work. We must also hear more clearly what they are going to do to deliver on other crucial aspects—on the vaccine and on test and trace. Failure to do that will cause extraordinary harm.