My Lords, the regulations we are discussing today came into force on 29 August. On 21 August, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care announced that, due to a significant Covid-19 outbreak at Greencore Food to Go Ltd, regulations would be laid requiring the workforce and their households to self-isolate for 14 days to contain the outbreak and avoid the need to impose restrictions on the wider community.
The concern about the risk of transmission across the workforce at Greencore and out into the wider community of Northampton was significant, and engagement with local leaders and company directors was extensive, repeated and productive. I thank Greencore, Public Health England, the joint biosecurity centre, Defra, DHSC, Northampton Borough Council, Northamptonshire County Council and Lucy Wightman, the council’s director of public health, for their constructive engagement with each other.
The decision to act was not driven by numbers only. It was a judgment about the overall situation. It was necessary to make this change as quickly as practicable, in recognition of the immediate risk of a continued increase in the incidence of Covid-19 among the workforce at Greencore as the main cause of wider community transmission. Action had already been taken to protect Greencore employees. The whole workforce was tested, the factory layout was amended to make it more Covid-secure and deep cleaning was carried out. We hoped that these interventions and the work of the local public health teams would get the infection rate down without us having to take more drastic action.
However, a large percentage of the workforce continued to test positive for the virus. It was likely that this was due to their socialising together outside work; for example, sharing accommodation and car sharing to get to and from work.
At the local action committee meeting on 20 August a decision was taken to require Greencore to close its food manufacturing site in Northampton and to require the workforce and their direct household contacts to self-isolate for 14 days. Those actions were supported by Greencore’s leaders, who told their workforce. As many of the workers do not speak English as a first language, they provided guidance on what was required in the relevant languages.
Current government guidance advises that anyone who tests positive for the virus should self-isolate for 10 days from the date of the test. Anyone who has been in close contact with them is advised to self-isolate for 14 days. Requiring household members of Greencore
workers to self-isolate went further than current government guidance. However, this measure was necessary due to the scale of the outbreak and the risk it posed to the wider community if further transmission was not contained and stopped.
I recognise and commend the local authority’s response to this outbreak. It worked closely with Greencore throughout and engaged in following up with workers and their households to ensure compliance.
NHS Test and Trace organised additional test sites which were set up at local centres, and mobile testing units, and the military provided a team of four people to support the incident management team.
I turn now to the data provided that informed those decisions. Mass testing at Greencore started on 10 August 2020. Following that first round of testing, nearly 300 members of staff tested positive for coronavirus. Greencore commenced retesting all staff who previously tested negative on 19 August, detecting further positive cases. In total, 317 staff who worked in different units tested positive. The final positivity rate was over 20%. The weekly incidence rate for Northampton peaked at 125 per 100,000 people and positivity rose to 9.2%. The background incidence rate for Northampton, by comparison, excluding positive tests in the Greencore workforce, was 38 per 100,000 for the same period.
These regulations required Greencore staff who had worked at the company’s designated production sites since 7 August, and members of their households, to self-isolate for 14 days from 21 August or for a shorter period in certain specified circumstances. Those dates were calculated to reflect the incubation period of Covid-19. Given that this was the first time we had imposed a legal requirement to self-isolate, it took time to develop the regulations. Although they came into force only on 29 August, the workforce and their households were able to start self-isolating from 21 August, when the site temporarily closed.
The regulations specified exactly who was required to self-isolate and for how long, recognising that some workers had already started to self-isolate following earlier positive test results. They also made provision to exclude members of households if the Greencore worker chose to isolate separately. Provisions were included to enable those self-isolating to access or provide emergency care and support or obtain basic necessities such as food or medical supplies.
Given the urgency of the situation at Greencore, we used the emergency procedure provided for by the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 to make the present set of regulations as soon as we could. The regulations will expire 28 days after they came into force, on 25 September—today.
Regulations 7 to 11 set out how the provisions will be enforced. It is a criminal offence to breach the requirement to self-isolate. As with the national regulations, there is the possibility of fixed penalty notices or a fine following conviction. We also published guidance on GOV.UK for Greencore workers and their households to help them understand what they could and could not do under the regulations.
We always knew that the path out of the lockdown would not be smooth. It was always likely that infections would rise in particular areas or workplaces and that we would need to be able to respond quickly and flexibly to those outbreaks. Greencore should be commended for acting so promptly, closing voluntarily and going above and beyond its role as an employer, to support the wider community. Rates in Northampton have reduced to a weekly incidence rate of 38 per 100,000 of the population during the period of 7-13 September. We will, of course, use the experience of the Greencore restrictions to inform and help us develop our responses to any future local outbreaks.
I am grateful to noble Lords for their continued engagement in this challenging process, and in the scrutiny of the regulations. We will, of course, reflect on this debate as we consider the response to any future local outbreaks. Lastly, I thank those employees and members of their households who completed the required periods of self-isolation and who have responded well to the measures put in place. It is thanks to their continued efforts that we were able to contain the outbreak and avoid the need to impose restrictions on the wider community. I beg to move.
1.41 pm