Sir John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con):

Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Tom Pursglove): I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for his question. Of course, as is standard practice, budgets are agreed formally with the Treasury in the usual way. I think it is fair to say that, as Ministers, our door is always open to talk to colleagues about concerns they have about particular circumstances in their own constituencies. I think it is fair to say we are facing very considerable pressures at the moment in this space and it is important that all parts of the country do their bit to help to address some of these challenges. I would encourage local authorities that are not currently assisting with that work to look at how they can help, particularly along the lines of the dispersal model. But to be clear to the House, we want to get away from this reliance on hotel accommodation. We are working towards that objective and that is the right approach.

Question:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the number of operations that the NHS will procure in private hospitals over the next three months. (91821)

Tabled on: 13 December 2021

Answer:
Edward Argar (Minister of State):

No estimate has been made. Since 1 April 2021, national contracting with independent sector providers has come to an end and commissioning has returned to local arrangements. It is therefore the decision of local National Health Service commissioners and trusts to contract with independent providers for the capacity they require.

Through the Elective Recovery Fund, £2 billion has been made available for tackling backlogs in treatment this year, part of which will be used to fund systems for independent sector capacity above 2019/20 levels. The partnership between the NHS and independent sector will continue to play a role in both dealing with the pandemic and securing elective recovery.

The answer was submitted on 15 Dec 2021 at 15:01.

Question:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many medically trained people have returned from retirement to relieve shortages in response to requests. (90314)

Tabled on: 09 December 2021

Answer:
Edward Argar (Minister of State):

The Department does not hold the information requested.

Winning a difficult vote will come as an unsurprising relief to the government. They had to rely on the Opposition and on this occasion it worked. It does not however solve the underlying problems.

If the virus continues to spread the government will be told by its ever cautious scientific advisers to lock down more. They are bound to say that as it is the safest thing to say if your one task is to curb the disease. The measures taken this week are unlikely to arrest its progress. Indeed one of the main arguments against the vaccine passports is vaccinated people can get and pass on the virus so how does it help as a device to control Night clubs and large events?

If the virus turns out as some think to be milder so there is no surge in serious cases the governments critics will claim the measures were needless.

More  seriously Ministers have to rebuild trust with a large number of MPs who voted against, abstained or wanted to vote against but responded to persuasion or coercion. Ministers need to grasp both the scepticism about some of the forecasts and measures proposed, and the concern that every time a new variant appears there could be more lockdowns.

Government needs to balance freedoms and economic  needs against pandemic control. It needs to recognise that anti pandemic rules can cause more mental health problems, loss of jobs, businesses and income and damage to the social life of communities. There needs to be more evidence about which measures do most at least collateral damage to contain the spread of the virus.

We could do with more information on what progress has been made with air extraction and cleansing in public buildings, more information on approved and potential treatments and more on disinfection.

Government also needs to ensure extra resources going into  the NHS can be used to tackle the many non covid health problems  that do not go away because of the virus.

Question:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for what reason the total budget allocated to housing illegal migrants in hotels is commercial in confidence when that total would not reveal the contract terms of individual suppliers. (86524)

Tabled on: 03 December 2021

Answer:
Kevin Foster:

The Rt Hon. Gentleman’s question appears to relate to a Freedom of Information (FOI) response. Responses to all FOI requests are handled in line with the legislation, including applying relevant exemptions where applicable.

The answer was submitted on 14 Dec 2021 at 10:31.

COMMENT

This was a question further to a previous Parliamentary Question! It has nothing to do with FOI.

The government needs to reconsider its policies as we move away from emergency measures to handle the pandemic.

We need a growth policy based on cutting tax rates and backing individuals and small businesses as they innovate, serve customers and expand.

We need a levelling up policy based on making it easier for people to follow their personal journeys through better education and  training, scope to work for yourself or build a business, the opportunity and freedom to turn your interests and hobbies into ways of sustaining your life

We need an ownership policy encouraging and helping more people to own their own home, to build their own business, to  become shareholders in the company they work for, to accumulate savings for a rainy day and for their retirement.

We need a public sector policy to deliver great education, health and social care, with choice for the users, free at the point of need.

We need a strong policy for the UK as an important influence for the good in the world, protecting our borders, helping our allies and being proud of our country.

We need to defend everyone’s right to democratic debate and challenge to government, preventing those who would stifle our national conversation by self serving wokery.

The Department of Health and Social Care has provided the following answer to your written parliamentary question (56360):

Question:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the costs are of NHS Test and Trace each month. (56360)

Tabled on: 15 October 2021

Answer:
Maggie Throup (Minister for Vaccines and Public Health):

The costs for NHS Test and Trace vary each month according to the prevalence of COVID-19. The budget for NHS Test and Trace activities in 2021/22 is £15 billion. On average this equates to approximately £1.25 billion per month.

I sat through the Health Secretary’s latest statement in disappointed silence. I have heard a few Ministerial statements over the years that have bombed with the Ministers own side as this did, but do not recollect cries of Resign before from the government benches. Sajid Javed needs to ask himself why and start improving the way he does the job.

I guess the impatience with the Secretary of State reflects pent up anger about the way Ministers are constantly telling us the NHS cannot cope despite £64 bn more being spent on health this year than two years ago. Ministers are unable to answer basic questions about plans to recruit more, to increase beds, to improve air filtration in health  settings, to improve infection control, and to   find new treatments.

The PM and the Treasury both want the Health Secretary to get a grip on staffing budgets. They want him to turn the extra  gold for the  NHS into extra  capacity and lower waiting lists. They want the NHS through a combination of vaccines, better treatments and extra capacity to show it can handle a realistic volume  of covid disease going forward.

I did not ask another question as so many of my questions recently have not produced informative answers. My advice to Secretary of State is simple. Go through all the main issues with the CEO of NHS England so you can tell us how the money is being spent, how you will increase capacity, how you will improve  infection control, how you will expand the range of covid treatments, how you will bring down the waiting list anD  then come back to the Commons with a plan to get better results. If the CEO cannot supply you with decent answers you need to consider how this can be brought about.

The public regard you as responsible. The CEO is your chosen person to run the NHS under  your supervision, so make sure you know what is happening and are  able to defend it.

The Chief Executive of the NHS was rarely present at the news  conferences to present the actions being taken to handle the pandemic. That was a pity, as  many of the most important matters were for those running the NHS. One of the main aims of the policy generally was to avoid  placing too much strain on NHS capacity. We needed to know how staff were going to be protected and helped to tackle this big challenge. We needed to know how all the extra money and resource was going to be deployed, how the hospitals would cope and how the virus would gradually be brought under control.

The scientific and medical advisers usually present have a close working relationship with the NHS senior administrators. They did not however see fit to give us presentations about work on finding drugs that could abate symptoms or avert  serious developments in a covid patient. They did not comment  much on why the NHS put in substantial extra  bed capacity for the pandemic, used it little and then closed it all down again before the pandemic was over. They did not comment on the underuse made of the private hospitals whose capacity the NHS bought up for the first year of the disease.

They were reluctant to be tempted to discuss improving infection control. We did not get regular reports on how they were changing and improving air extraction, UV filtration and better air management though they told us  it was an airborne disease.They decided against creating isolation hospitals that just handled covid, living with cross infection dangers in all DG hospitals. They allowed early discharge of elderly patients to care homes in the first weeks of the pandemic which may have increased the wave of infection that visited those homes.

On the whole the news conferences stuck to a routine of presenting figures for cases, hospital admissions  and deaths, and forecasts of grim news to come, followed by announcements and comments on various lockdown policies being followed. They did not do a good job bringing out the need for strong action on treatments, infection control and improving NHS capacity. They told us little about how the senior management of the NHS were using their staff and facilities, how they were managing the  covid workload or how they were ensuring fairness and safety for their medical employees facing the pandemic dangers.

I have had enough of news conferences of the PM or some senior Minister flanked by a scientific and a medical government adviser setting out policy. It is a distortion of our constitution, blurring the roles of both Minister and senior official. The format chosen also gives a very lopsided view of what should be happening in government when making difficult decisions over how to respond to a pandemic.

At the peak of the first wave of the virus I wrote about the questionable  use of some figures and charts and the unreliability of some of the data. The media mainly played the game of accepting everything the “experts” said as true and acting as interpreters of their wisdom to the rest of us. Ministers seemed to add little to the narrative.

It was wrong that the only experts in  the room were of one mind with one purpose, beating the virus. Their advice is rightly bound to be ultra cautious over the virus as that is their sole preoccupation.  Where were the other health experts worried about what might happen to people with other conditions who might lose out on hospital and GP capacity? Would we get more deaths from  other causes? Where were the experts worrying about mental health and the impact on people  that lockdown could bring. Where were the economic experts asking about ways of limiting the damage to jobs, investment and incomes whilst wishing to assist with controlling the disease?

Responding to the virus is a cross government large task. It needs the inputs of many departments and many different areas of expertise. It is the job of Ministers within their departments and acting collectively across government to reconcile conflicting needs and pressures and come up with a  balanced package of measures for the circumstances. The best way of then reporting would be to Parliament with MPs challenging government and putting forward issues and problems they wished to highlight. We should not see the individuals providing  advice on the  scientific, medical, NHS, economic, business and social policy issues, but Ministers should draw on it to support their final decisions. Government would publish relevant data to help us monitor progress. Outside experts would be free to query what the government was doing to inform a better debate.

Tomorrow I will look at some of the important questions that got little air time thanks to this style of presentation.