Recent experiences with delayed and cancelled deliveries of medical equipment and clothing from abroad should lead us to ask whether we should source more of these important items from home.

Procurement and state aid rules has required us to source many things through open tender globally or within the Customs Union of the EU. Today there are many UK companies that could make medical machines, offer clothing and  produce drugs and vaccines. Some can do so already, some would need to invest in  capacity and would want reasonable assurances of sustained contracts.

The challenges posed by the virus are leading many countries, governments and companies to reconsider their arrangements. There was always an override to procure the most sensitive and potent parts of defence equipment nationally,  with further limitations on buying from outside friendly states and the NATO alliance for things we do not make for ourselves. It looks as if these arrangements can be widened to cover more goods.

Recent experiences will re open the case for Chinese involvement in our digital systems and networks. Delays with PPE will lead to a wish to have more capacity here in  the UK that can be scaled up in times of emergency.

I have always argued that our defence policy requires us to own the relevant technologies and to have plans to produce  much more of our requirement at home against the day we have no wish to see were  we to get into a larger war where enemies tried to throttle supplies from overseas.

It would also be a good part of strategic and emergency planning to make sure we have the capacity at home to handle medical emergencies, which must include the supply system to provide the drugs, medical supplies and equipment needed for any given pandemic or other  disaster.

I am pleased that Parliament is to meet today and in the following days, with new rules encouraging  participation from remote locations. I had made an early request for our return, and am delighted the Speaker has been so active in securing a way of bringing it about.

In the meantime there have been various routes to make points to Ministers and to contribute to the policy debate, as I have been doing.

The government has decided to continue the lock down for another three weeks. They are afraid that an early relaxation would allow the virus to spread more rapidly again, losing some or all the gains  seen in fewer patients going to hospital in recent days.

In response to past representations by myself and others  the government is now doing more work on a timetable for getting more people back to work. It is unfortunate  there may be no early arrival of a vaccine to protect the population in large numbers,  nor even an early medical agreement on a  treatment which makes it much more likely patients with severe cases on Covid 19 survive. For that reason  we need  to plan to live with the virus whilst still being  able to run our economy at a reasonable level of output with more people in jobs and more companies generating revenue than today.

I have suggested to the government that a back to work plan should encompass new ways of working with better protection for employees. Office based businesses could encourage much more homeworking, with limited numbers of staff in the main office observing social distancing. Factories and warehouses need to operate at levels that do not require staff to be close together, with additional automation where necessary. Any business staff in touch with the public should be given protective screens or personal protective clothing suitable to the risk level.

We should continue to give strong advice to at risk groups to stay at home, and do more to support them with remote technology to ensure deliveries and safe social contact. The protection of care homes needs more work. I supported moves to ensure all patients to be discharged from hospitals back to care homes should be tested . We need to  avoid introducing the virus into a home  through the return of a patient . I am pleased the government has now promised to do this.

Yesterday saw the Furlough scheme to subsidise employment which I have long championed open for claims. It is vital as many jobs as possible are saved by this means, to keep them in being until their employers can re open and afford the wages again. The self employed package still excludes some groups who deserve support and is still on the low side so I am asking the Treasury to look again at it.

Let us hope the positive trends in cases and deaths continues as a reward for the sacrifice many are making. On the latest figures too many people are still dying, but our death rate in relation to total population is still well below Belgium, Spain and Italy who have suffered particularly badly. The next few days are important. If the rate of death and of new patients to hospital continues to decline we should be able to start to relax controls. In the meantime I am conscious there are pressing needs like getting more dentists to work on emergency treatment, and tackling some of the backlog of medical appointments that were cancelled or delayed to make way for Covid 19 patients.

I would like to say another big thank you to all of you who have volunteered to help in so many ways. Some are delivering food parcels, some tackling loneliness of those staying at home alone, some are making protective clothing. I also wish to thank all who are going to work to care for people, to treat people in hospital, to provide us with food and to keep basic services and deliveries going.

Yours sincerely

John Redwood

There have been difficulties scaling up the NHS response to the virus outbreak. The NHS is a vast institution with a huge budget and many staff. It rightly needs some well paid managers to run it and deliver on the general tasks set for it by government.

In England we have NHS England and Public Health England at the top. I have written recently about the senior management of Public Health England. NHS England is run by seven executive directors on salaries of around £200,000. In 2018-19 NHS England made 31 people redundant in the band £100,000 to £150,000 and made 29 redundant in the band £150,000 to  £200,000. This implies it was not short of management. It had 24,000 employees  to manage and direct its £114 billion budget.

It would be good to  hear more from them about how they prepared with Public Health England for the kind of emergency we now are living through, and to learn more of how they organise their supply chains to scale up deliveries of PPE and medical equipment when needs demand.

There is also considerable management skill in the operating parts of the NHS at local level. Each area has a Clinical Commissioning Group with senior management to acquire and provide health services locally.  A local District General hospital is organised as a Trust with a team of Executive Directors, as are the Mental Health and Community services through a separate Trust.

So the NHS has senior CEOs, Finance Directors, Medical Directors, Nursing Directors, Strategy and Operations Directors at the England level, and at the local level by main activity. The issue today is how they work together to ensure the smooth delivery of crucial supplies to hospitals, surgeries and care homes, and where ultimate management responsibility lies in each case. We need well paid high quality management, but we do not need excessive overlap or too many advisory rather than truly executive posts.

Given the numbers and the pay levels of these managers shouldn’t we expect them to take some  responsibility for delivery on PPE, equipment and capacity planning.

I have some questions for the senior managers at the top of the NHS.

Why did they decide that all the main District General hospitals should become the isolation and treatment centres for Covid 19?

Why did they decide to add several mega hospitals in open Exhibition space, but prefer not to use them as specialist and isolation units all the time case numbers could be absorbed by General hospitals?

Why didn’t they opt to hire hotels with separate bedrooms with individual bathrooms for virus patients? Wouldn’t it have been easier to control infection through simple modification of airflow systems for each room in such a configuration?

How do they  keep enough non emergency surgery and treatment going when the general hospitals are so preoccupied with virus cases? What has happened to workloads for non virus patients?

Isn’t  preventing  cross infection from the virus for people needing other emergency treatment in a general hospital more difficult than if there were specialist virus hospitals?

What are plans for handling the backlog of other work as the virus subsides, bearing in mind obvious pressures on all staff involved fighting the virus cases.

We have all got used to the initials PPE, meaning  protective clothing for people working in the NHS and social care. The government has told us it wants there to be a plentiful supply, and Ministers have authorised spending to provide one. Despite this there is a persistent issue over whether supplies and stocks are adequate in a range of Health and Social care establishments.

I have spent time each day on this problem for the local organisations that report insufficient supplies and stocks. I have  badgered the government through Ministers and the Cabinet Office. I have asked the Local resilience Forum for help, as we were told they had an important role locally. I have worked with Wokingham Borough who want to source more clothing for their social service responsibilities.

As a result of the strong MP and media interest and the demands from various hospitals and care homes the centre and the regions have set up organisations to try to ease the shortage. As an alert reader will have noticed, so far I have only mentioned organisations that are trying to buy or obtain PPE. The problem of course lies mainly  with the supply. The world is short of PPE because there has been a big surge in world demand.

I have been able to pass on some leads to public sector bodies who need to buy more PPE. There are various manufacturers and stockists out there who can provide more PPE, and who want the extra orders. Some potential manufacturers say they are experiencing delays in getting their product approved and registered as suitable for purchase and use. Clearly the public sector needs to make rapid decisions, though it should see and test a sample of  the goods first.

It should not be a logistics problem. The army is doing great work strengthening public sector delivery systems. There are plenty of laid up trucks and  vans in the private sector needing work, and plenty of us would volunteer to drive a load in the backs of our own vehicles to an individual local care home if needed.

Given the will to provide more, the money to pay for it and the flexibility of manufacturers in need of work, it should  be possible to crack this problem. Companies wanting to supply need to send in urgent samples, and the buyers in the public sector need to respond quickly with orders.

The response to the virus crisis has in many ways been an essay in world government. The World Health Organisation has stood at the top of the decision tree on how to handle this crisis, acting as a source of information, a clearing house for the ideas of   those seeking to understand and tackle it, and a strong influence and guide on governments on what to do.

Most governments worldwide have followed the main precepts of the WHO advice. There have been attempts by some in the media and some in various governments to differentiate, yet the remarkable thing is just how similar responses are. The differences are largely ones of timing, subject to differing timetables dictated by the rate of spread of the virus to different locations from other hotspots or disease centres.

Most have begun with efforts to track and trace, with testing, to try to contain the spread via the isolation of early cases and their contacts. Most lost that battle and went on to the second phase, total lockdown of all but food, healthcare and some other essentials.

Now there are issues over how much success a country needs to record before it starts some relaxation of controls, and what the dangers are of a second wave or flare up in the virus if relaxation occurs.

President Trump is very critical of the WHO . He thinks they were too tolerant of China who failed to notify early or to let in WHO experts at  the beginning. He also seems impatient with their approach to treatment and medical analysis, turning  to a range of US specialist companies and experts to try to get earlier breakthroughs in treatments and prevention. He also points out that in his view the USA carries a disproportionately high burden of paying for the Organisation.

Do you think the WHO has done a good job so far? Has it given best advice?  How does the mantra of more and more testing work once the disease is well spread throughout a nation? How often does an individual have to be retested for the system based on tests to work?

As we all adapt to life at home, so the way we do things changes. Many more people buy items on line and grow use to not visiting shops other than the main  supermarkets for food. Many conduct business meetings on line through web based meetings. People turn to on line services. Families learn to talk to each other through video links.

It is boom time for  services like Zoom, Webex and the download  home entertainment providers. Suppliers of laptops and smart phones I am told have plenty of demand as families extend their range of equipment to conduct life digitally, and as firms provide employees with the kit to work from home.  Our domestic broadband capacity is being tested with much more use.

So today I am asking you to write in and tell me how you have changed your lives to live with the stay at home guidance. Which new services or activities have you found most helpful? Have you acquired any new hardware to help? What things are you now doing on line which you used to do by going out to a gym or sporting event or meeting or party?

I would also be interested in how you think people will react when we do start to see the relaxation of the lock down. Will many of you stay with more on line shopping and digital entertainment, or will you be back to shops and the events as soon as they re-open? Will your attitude to public transport be different all the time the virus lurks without  cure or vaccine?

How much damage to personal incomes has this all done so far, and what impact will that have on people’s capacity to spend again when there are more businesses able to sell us goods and services?

Once we start the relaxations of the lock down, new patterns of trade and business are likely to emerge.

There will be more suspicion of reliance on imports, given the disruption to international trade and travel we have experienced. More people are likely to want local food and products, and more businesses will take some travel risk out of their supply chains.

There will be more concerns about Chinese technology and our dependence on a lot of Chinese manufactures, given the history of the virus and the rows over Chinese involvement in 5G programmes.

There will also  be a governmental  wish to promote overseas trade again after the  big decline, with a more balanced range of counterparties. People will remember which companies and countries were most helpful during the period of virus need.

It is good to hear that the EU/UK trade talks will resume this week by teleconference. I trust the government will also pick up the pace again with the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. These are all important partners, with an enthusiasm to improve trade terms mutually once we are out of the EU customs union.

With governments wanting to promote more trade and with more customers concerned about overseas sourcing, the stage is set for better deals to act as inducements. The better deals will come from the friendlier countries, which in turn will be the more reliable trade partners.

The government has long held the view that the best way to combat poverty is to help people into jobs. It is easier to get to a better paid job from a starter job than from no job at all.

The government had been very successful at creating the right conditions for many more jobs to be created. This Parliament was meant to  be about securing more and better training for the many, so they can get better paid jobs. Business will work smarter as the workforce becomes better trained, and  better supported with technology.

The current surge in unemployment is a most unwelcome interruption in this policy. People who lose their jobs or who are told they can no longer earn from their self employed businesses are suddenly plunged into poverty through no fault of their own. Many did not earn enough to save for a rainy day, and have no other sources of cash or income to fall back on. It is all very well for senior civil servants and Ministers with well paid jobs to tell them they  must not work. They can afford to because they will still be paid, and can work from home in many cases.

It is vitally important we end the rise in unemployment as soon as possible. If we can start the return to work soon  we may be able to retrieve the position more quickly. If we stay in Lock Down Britain for too long more of these  jobs will be lost for good. The UK needs more productive capacity. We need to make more things for ourselves and grow more of our own food. This needs more all the companies and entrepreneurs we now have and more besides.