My Lords, I remind the House of my membership of the GMC board. We meet while the NHS is under huge pressure, with a record 53,000 Covid cases reported yesterday. Yet the Government’s record has been one of delay, indecision and vacillation.
The errors in the spring were compounded by the Government’s decision to ignore the advice of SAGE given in September for a two-week circuit breaker. Then on 2 December, a consensus statement signed off by SAGE warned that additional mixing to be allowed at Christmas could have a large impact on prevalence. Again, this was ignored by the Government. On 9 December, the Health Service Journal was reporting a rise in admissions. Yet still Christmas plans remained unchanged. On 14 December, the Secretary of State updated the Commons on the new variant associated with the faster spread in the south-east of England. The next day, the Health Service Journal and the British Medical Journal called for the Government to respond to this worsening situation by cancelling their plans to allow household mixing over Christmas and tightening the tiered restrictions immediately. This was ignored. On 16 December, Boris Johnson dismissed concerns raised by Sir Keir Starmer. Three days later, we saw the U-turn which sent thousands of people on to overcrowded trains, exporting the new variant far and wide.
Have the Government finally learned their lesson? I hope that this afternoon they will show they are prepared to act decisively. I also hope that, with the fantastic news today of the approval of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, the Government are able to raise the weekly vaccination rate up to 2 million a week, as Professor Neil Ferguson has recommended. I also hope to hear from the Minister what plans they have to reduce the immediate pressures on the NHS. Are the additional nearly 30,000 doctors who were brought on to the GMC’s supplementary list really being used sufficiently to help the NHS?
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