My Lords, to pick up from where I left off: as my noble friend Lady Noakes quite rightly pointed out, the effect of the virus is not limited to those who catch the disease; it has a profound effect on the entire healthcare system. We are going to work extremely hard to catch up; £1 billion of funding has already been committed, with £325 million on diagnostics. These are massive commitments, and we want to use the catch-up as a forcing agent for important improvements to our healthcare system. It will make it more efficient and deliver a better patient outcome.
I know many noble Lords have been focused on social care. The pandemic has certainly hit the social care of both adults and children extremely hard. Any pandemic is going to hit the most vulnerable. But we have moved emphatically to meet the challenge of the pandemic. We have done everything we could to keep the infection rate down, with a huge cost to the Treasury. We have put special measures in for PPE, for care workers and for diagnostics, and we have put in a strict vaccine prioritisation scheme which saw those living in social care at the front of the queue.
On illegal immigrants, I reassure all noble Lords that anyone who is in the UK, whether they have a passport, NHS registration number or any other administrative practicalities, can have the vaccine under any circumstance. They do not need to be plugged into the formal structures of the NHS. It is, however, a terrific opportunity for the NHS to upgrade its patient records and its systems, and the NHS is grabbing that opportunity with both hands. It is also an opportunity for patients to engage with their own patient records, as I discussed earlier.
There are many reasons the pandemic has hit the healthcare system so hard. But there are also many reasons for us to use this immense disruption as an inflection point for improving the healthcare system we have got. The launch of the UKHSA, which was announced yesterday, will combine test and trace, PHE and the JBC in a new pandemic protection agency, with a huge impact in resources. The NHS Bill will, as I said earlier, bring together a new collaborative approach between the different arms of the healthcare system. There will be an overall pivot from late-stage acute medicine to early-stage preventive medicine, which was already outlined in the NHS long-term plan. The vaccine itself is the ultimate icon and metaphor for the preventive approach. We are going to be working extremely hard on that agenda.
There are also terrific behavioural changes in the public, who are embracing new technologies such as telemedicine, have appreciated the value of tests such as the Covid test and will, we hope, take a more positive approach to vaccines such as the flu vaccine. We are preparing for a very large flu vaccine season in the autumn and winter.
A number of noble Lords raised the question of private enterprise and the accusation of corruption. I completely and utterly, once again, reject the baseless accusations the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, and others have made of corruption and cronyism. Yes, we made a national call to action for everyone to step forward to help us out. Yes, thousands replied, including hundreds from this House. Yes, the quality was variable, to put it politely. Yes, we triaged that list. But that was not
fishy; that was efficient. His accusations are without evidence; they are corrosive, and they are demeaning to those who have served this country so well.
To the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett and Lady Bowles, the noble Lord, Lord Desai, and others who have alluded to the role of private enterprise in this pandemic, let me say this: it is completely dreamy to think that we could have dealt with this pandemic without the enormous support of private enterprise. The vaccine was provided by AstraZeneca. It was only because of its innovation, manufacturing skills, reach and expertise that we are where we are today. Manufacturing is done by a large number of private firms, including for diagnostics and PPE. The surge capacity of major outsourcing companies is absolutely essential when stepping up to a pandemic of this kind. I do not need to remind noble Lords in this Chamber that the services of GPs, dentists, radiographers and a large amount of the NHS’s capacity are provided by those who own their own companies. Many of the contractors who build and clean our hospitals and care for the people we love are from private enterprise. Those who denigrate the contribution of private enterprise do those who care for us no service at all. Rather than demonising the private sector and those who work in it—