(Urgent Question:) To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make a statement on the Metropolitan Police and the inquest into the deaths of Anthony Walgate, Gabriel Kovari, Daniel Whitworth, and Jack Taylor.

I am sure the thoughts of the whole House are with the families and friends of Anthony Walgate, Gabriel Kovari, Daniel Whitworth, and Jack Taylor. The stories we have all read, of their lives and terrible deaths, have moved and horrified the country.

The Government and the people we serve expect the highest standards from the police as they carry out their vital work protecting the public and investigating serious crimes. The conclusions of the inquest have shown that those standards were not met, and that investigative failures probably contributed to the deaths of three of the young men. The Metropolitan police has accepted as much. There are now serious questions for it to answer. It is profoundly important that the force takes responsibility for past failings and makes sure they are not repeated.

The primarily accountability body for the Met is the Mayor of London and the London Assembly, but the Metropolitan Police Service has assured us it is putting in place significant improvements, including: more and better trained investigators; new structures so that intelligence teams, specialists and officers on the ground can work more closely to identify and link crimes much earlier; and work to develop a greater understanding of the drug GHB and its use as a weapon in sexual assaults. It is also essential that the police build trust with all London’s communities and that includes LGBT+ community. I know that the Commissioner and her team are committed to doing so, at a time when the trust the public have in them has been seriously shaken by recent events.

It is, of course, right that the police handling of cases such as these is subject to independent scrutiny. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services has been asked by the deputy Mayor of London and the commissioner to conduct an inspection into the standard of the Metropolitan Police Service’s investigations, and the Independent Office for Police Conduct is now assessing whether to reopen, either in full or in part, the investigation into the way that the Metropolitan Police Service handled the inquiries into the deaths of these young men.

The police perform an enormously important function in our society. It is a job that, on the whole, they do with skill, courage and professionalism. Only last Thursday, I attended the police bravery awards and heard stories of selfless heroism, but when things go wrong, it is profoundly important that lessons are learned and applied. We will continue to hold the Metropolitan police service and the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime to account in making sure that the failures highlighted by these truly awful cases are addressed.

I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker. I have to say to the Minister that this happened in London, but it might and could have happened anywhere in the country, and therefore, it is a matter for him. The premature deaths of four young, gay men, who were robbed of their lives, is an unspeakable tragedy, especially because six years after it happened, it has now finally been publicly conceded that the deaths of three of them—Gabriel Kovari, Daniel Whitworth and Jack Taylor —could have been avoided if the police had properly investigated the killing of the first victim, Anthony Walgate.

The litany of police errors is simply horrific, including the refusal to check the murderer’s laptop because it was too expensive; the failure to engage appropriately with the partners and families; the failure to check the authenticity of a fake suicide note; the failure to check CCTV; and the incomprehensible failure to link the deaths when three of the bodies were found in or close to St Margaret’s churchyard in my constituency.

Does the Minister agree with the friends, partners and families that the Metropolitan police service is prejudiced and institutionally homophobic? Does he at the very least agree that, given the facts of the cases, homophobia must have been a factor that influenced the actions and inactions of the police? In these circumstances, will he please order a full public inquiry to examine whether there is institutional homophobia in the police service? Does he agree that such an inquiry is vital if the police are to gain the trust of the LGBTQ+ community? Does he further agree that the inquiry is also vital to ensure that such a tragedy never happens again?

Seventeen police officers were investigated by the IOPC in 2015. None was sacked and five have since been promoted. Is the Independent Office for Police Conduct fit for purpose? What action has the Minister taken to ensure that all police officers treat gay partners in the same way as they would any other partner, with appropriate respect and a proper duty of care? Action by the Home Office, the Metropolitan police and the Mayor is essential if the homophobia in our police service is to be properly and thoroughly investigated and addressed.

I agree with the right hon. Lady that this was an unspeakable tragedy, which has moved all of us in its dreadfulness. I cannot imagine what those families have gone through, not least in living through the deaths of their loved ones, but also with the investigation and this dreadful but necessary process of an inquest and investigation thereafter.

Although there have obviously been shortcomings in this investigation, which the Met has admitted and on which it has expressed a profound desire to improve, it is not my experience that the Metropolitan police is institutionally homophobic. Obviously, however, the commissioner and the Mayor have commissioned Baroness Casey to look at the culture of the Metropolitan police in all its aspects following the awful killing of Sarah Everard. I understand that her work will include examining whether prejudice such as the right hon. Lady outlined exists in the force. It is definitely the case, as I think is recognised by City Hall and Metropolitan police leadership, that there is a job of work to be done to rebuild trust between that organisation and the people it serves in all their great tapestry in the capital that I had the honour to serve for eight years.

On the Independent Office for Police Conduct, as I said, it is considering whether to reopen, in full or in part, the investigations that it undertook in the light of any new evidence that may be presented as part of the inquest. As the right hon. Lady will know, there were recently reforms to the IOPC when it replaced the Independent Police Complaints Commission and there was a change in regulations last year to try to improve its performance. I have confidence in it as an organisation to try to get to the bottom of these often difficult and complicated issues. As I say, however, until we see whether it is going to reopen the investigations, I cannot comment on that further.

My reading of the apologies from senior Met officers is that they are very heartfelt—from Helen Ball, whom I know well and who is an officer of great commitment, and from Stuart Cundy, who leads on homicide for the National Police Chiefs’ Council across the country—and they recognise that there were serious failures in this case. I know that they are all committed to facing those failures and improving in future.

All right-thinking Members of the House support our police and understand that they do a tremendous job, often in difficult circumstances, but cases such as this leave us in an awful position because as the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) outlined, there are some incredibly difficult questions to be answered. Does the Minister agree that police up and down the country need to be held to the highest standards, whether on homophobia or any other issue? We need to tackle and root out any prejudice and ensure that this sort of case can never be allowed to happen again.

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. Although it is possible for us to hold inquiries, make structural changes and urge the organisations to examine their internal cultures, in the end, it is a matter of leadership and the signal that is sent by senior police officers about how junior officers should comport themselves and the confidence that officers should have internally to call out bad behaviour, whether that is homophobia, racism, sexism, misogyny or whatever it might be.

The inquiries that are under way, the work that the National Police Chiefs’ Council is doing, and the inquiries within the Metropolitan police, will put us in a better place to face those unpleasant phenomena within the organisations. My hon. Friend is right to point out that every day, up and down the land, thousands of police officers do remarkable things and we should never forget that.

I welcome shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper back to the Front Bench.

It is good to be back, if sadly on such a difficult issue. All our hearts will be with the family and friends of Anthony Walgate, Gabriel Kovari, Daniel Whitworth and Jack Taylor, because these were vile murders by a man who targeted young gay men. They were all found close to each other and close to his house. It is incomprehensible that the dots were not joined.

The jurors’ verdict that fundamental failings in the police investigation probably contributed to three deaths is extremely serious. Three young men might otherwise have been alive today. The jurors heard damning evidence about lack of basic checks, lack of professional curiosity, serious workforce pressures, long delays on digital forensics and serious failures in leadership. Crucially, the victims’ families have raised serious concerns about homophobia blighting the investigation and the way that they as partners and relatives were treated, though the jurors were directed not to consider that.

Rightly, the Met has recognised failings and is making changes. We await the coroner’s prevention of future deaths report. Given the seriousness of the issue, however, does the Minister not agree that a further independent inquiry will be required to get to the truth of how and why it was possible for things to go so badly wrong? Does he accept that the families need answers, which they do not have right now, on how far homophobia, prejudice or unconscious bias affected the investigation?

The Home Office response is too weak, given the seriousness of the case. The Minister and the Home Secretary have a responsibility to be relentless in pursuit of the truth to ensure that the families get the answers that they need and deserve. The IOPC will look at individuals, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services at homicide procedures and Louise Casey at the Met culture, but none of them is addressing the full scale of what went wrong in this case—whether homophobia was involved, and what changes are needed not just in the Met but in police forces across the country to make sure that this can never happen again. May I please urge the Minister to take another look at this case?

Obviously I recognise the deep concern about these investigations, not least in regard to—the right hon. Lady, whom I welcome to her new position, drew attention to this—the seemingly incomprehensible nature of the dots not being drawn together. I have to say that that has often been a problem not just for the Metropolitan police but for other police forces, when seemingly obvious patterns of behaviour have failed to be linked together in other types of crime. We saw it previously in the Met in the case of John Worboys, a serial rapist whose pattern of offending was never pieced together. However, I am reassured that they have made significant changes structurally, aligning their homicide teams with their basic borough command units so that there can be better co-ordination, and making sure that there is better analysis of patterns of offending to establish at an early stage whether there are a linked series of crimes.

As for the right hon. Lady’s primary question about the independent inquiry, as I have said, the Deputy Mayor has commissioned Her Majesty’s inspectorate to look at the investigative practices, while the Met have themselves commissioned Dame Louise Casey to look at their culture internally and the IOPC is considering whether to reopen any investigations. In the light of those three steps, we will obviously have to keep the situation under review, but for the moment we want to see how they conclude.

I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement. Everyone is rightly horrified at the deaths of these young men. Reports of alleged institutional homophobia in the Metropolitan police must be taken seriously, so can my right hon. Friend reassure the gay community of London that he will support every effort to root it out?

I certainly can give that reassurance, and we will stand four-square with the commissioner herself as she seeks to do exactly that. The Met have not stood still in seeking to address this issue. I understand that they have a new LGBTQ organisational improvement group, and that there is a network of 125 volunteer advisers across the whole of the Met. Officers who are posted to particular boroughs or areas are now being trained and briefed much more coherently about the nature of the community with whom they are dealing, including LGBTQ members of that community. They are making big strides. Nevertheless, there will be lessons to be learned, particularly from Louise Casey’s review, and we look forward to seeing its conclusions.

My constituent Sarah Sak, Anthony’s mother, was on holiday in Turkey when the Metropolitan police contacted her to say that her son had been found dead. From that very second, when speaking to me, Sarah has accused the Met of prejudice and throughout all these proceedings she has constantly made the point that there was discrimination. Sadly, the coroner chose not to look at that. I make no criticism of the coroner, but when I spoke to Sarah last night, she asked me, “What can the Home Secretary do to persuade me that this can never, ever happen again?”

Of course I offer my profound condolences to Sarah. As a father myself, I cannot imagine ever having to go through that kind of experience: it must have been terrible. I am aware, in particular, that there were failings in the posture of the family liaison officers who dealt with some of the bereaved, and that is also being addressed by the Metropolitan police.

Those who know Baroness Casey will know that she will be unrelenting and forensic in her examination of the culture of the Metropolitan police. I have confidence in her to do a good job in examining the overall culture in the Met, and an examination of this issue will be part of that. Once she has concluded her examination, we shall be able to draw some lessons about the future.

There is always a danger that an entire institution will be damaged by the failures of a few. However, what action will be taken against officers who are found guilty of such an abysmal failure of investigation and drive? If action is not taken, does that not create a narrative that there is something wrong with the institution as a whole?

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that people need to have confidence not just in the force as a whole but in individual officers. He may know that 17 officers were originally investigated by the IOPC. That investigation concluded some time ago, but I understand the IOPC is considering whether to reopen it, in full or in part, in the light of the evidence from the inquest.

My Vauxhall constituency is home to one of the largest LGBT communities in the country, and I share my constituents’ feelings about the Met’s response to these horrific murders. How can my LGBT constituents trust the Met when they failed to link the three deaths that were so close together? How can my LGBT constituents trust the Met when they refused to rule out some of the horrific homophobic presumptions about these young gay men? How can my LGBT constituents trust the Met when, 12 months after the first murders, they ignored the pleas from family members, friends and partners?

The Minister says he is reassured by the Met but, respectfully, I do not think my constituents are reassured this afternoon. As with some of my black and minority ethnic constituents and some of my female constituents, my constituents and communities seem to have experienced a catalogue of failures from the Met police. Will he please show the leadership that he says is needed and call for a full public investigation to get to the bottom of this?

I understand the hon. Lady’s anger and frustration, which many of us feel. However, as I said, I am reassured that the Met are taking the three steps required to learn the lessons of this issue. First, they acknowledge that something went wrong and have apologised. Secondly, they are being transparent about that and about what needs to change. And thirdly, they are seeking independent advice on their internal processes and internal culture to make sure change happens and sticks. Although I can understand the doubts that many in the LGBTQ+ community may have about the Metropolitan police today, I hope this means that, over the months and years to come, the Met can rebuild the trust that is needed.

The long-term partner of one of the murder victims was not allowed by the police to read the forged suicide note, which was of course written by the murderer, because he was not considered to be next of kin. We left that most appalling attitude behind in the 1980s. Given this is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) says, the latest in a catalogue of abysmal failures by the Metropolitan police that indicates a rotten culture at the Met’s heart, why did the Home Secretary recently extend the commissioner’s tenure by two years?

Obviously the Home Secretary, along with the Mayor of London, felt the current commissioner is the right person to do the job for the next two years. Of course these awful events happened when she was not in the employ of the Metropolitan police. However, the right hon. Gentleman makes a strong point about the culture of the Metropolitan police, and importantly that is something the leadership has acknowledged, hence the appointment of Dame Louise Casey.

An Ipsos MORI poll suggests that trust in the police has fallen from 76% to 63%, especially among marginalised groups and the LGBTQ+ community. Will the Minister agree to the Liberal Democrat call for mandatory, UK-wide awareness training for the police on prejudice and unconscious bias?

The police have extensive training on many of these issues. Although I acknowledge that trust and confidence in the police have taken a battering over the past few months, it is worth remembering that the people who are most profoundly upset by this are the thousands of police officers, of all types, across the country who want their profession and vocation to be held in high esteem by the people they serve, not least because that was the primary motivation for their joining.

The police service in this country is changing very significantly, not least because, as the hon. Lady will know, we are recruiting a new generation of police officers who will massively expand capacity and bring a new mindset into the organisation. This presents an enormous opportunity to diversify the police and to see the kind of cultural shift that, to be fair, has been ongoing for the past 20 years.

Something as appalling as this deserves more than to be tacked on to an existing inquiry. It surely requires a public inquiry, as other colleagues have called for, to look at the totality and horror of this event.

The Minister mentioned the idea of specialist officers within the force. I understand the need for them and can see some value in the idea, but is there not a greater problem in the general attitudes throughout the force? The danger of having specialist officers is that things get shoved on to them and ignored by everybody else. What we need is a change of culture as a whole right across the Metropolitan police force.

Obviously there is a strong role for specialist officers in particular aspects of investigation or in investigations that have particular characteristics. The key thing is that those officers work hand in glove with other officers, particularly those based in a borough, who very often are able to piece together the investigation in a way that a specialist officer is not. One of the improvements the Metropolitan police are putting in place is better training for frontline response officers to make sure that they are able to follow an investigation from start to finish, basically, much more and that only the most serious of crimes are handed off to the specialists, in a way that is co-ordinated. Therefore, the chain in intelligence and the appreciation of the full picture, if you like, of what has happened in a related set of offences will not be lost to the organisation.

It has been a terribly sad few days. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) said, we did not expect in this day and age for a partner of a gay man to be treated in this way. Although progress has been made, it can still be extremely difficult for members of the LGBT+ community to speak confidently about partners or relationships. What protocols has the Minister put in place since these tragic events, not just in the Met but across all police forces, to ensure that friends, partners and families of those in the LGBT community are treated effectively and sensitively in any form of investigation? What will he do to ensure that those protocols are implemented effectively, and are not just a piece of paper?

As I hope the hon. Lady knows, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which is currently in the other place and is due to return to us in the new year, will place in law the provision of a police covenant, one of the key themes of which is family support and welfare. As part of our engagement to build that picture, I was very pleased to participate with a number of groups on different aspects of policing. As I say, there is a great tapestry these days; there is not just a monoculture in British policing. I spoke to those who are in an LGBT+ relationship, a key group, to understand the particular relationship they have with policing and the particular support they may need for the future. I hope that, as the covenant lands, we will be able to flesh out more widely what that support looks like, and that she will be able to support us in doing so.

The response from the Government smacks of the same old, same old response of shutting down shop when the police are criticised in this way. The IOPC investigated 17 officers involved in the investigation and only two were disciplined, despite the scale of the failures in the investigation. Now we hear that the IOPC has been invited back to have another go. That really is not good enough. What is needed is a fully independent inquiry. It is time the Government recognised that that is the only response that is acceptable.

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s frustration, but I am sure he will understand that it is extremely important that the IOPC relies on the “I” and that it is the Independent Office for Police Conduct. It therefore cannot be ordered by Ministers or anyone else to investigate or not investigate. I am given to understand that in this case, in the light of the evidence that has come through, it is considering whether to reopen the investigation. It would not be proper for me to influence its decision either way, in the same way that it is not for me to order the police to investigate any individual or otherwise. We should wait and see what the IOPC has to say and wait for the other inquiries commissioned by City Hall and by the Met, and see what the picture looks like after that.

I call Chris Bryant.

Just to finish, Mr Speaker, the Government take this incident extremely seriously and we want to do everything we can to make sure that it does not happen again.

That seems to have been aimed at me, but I just say that I granted an urgent question because there was no statement.

And well done you, Mr Speaker.

The Minister has said repeatedly that he has reassured himself, but he has not reassured me—if anything, quite the opposite. He keeps referring to this as a “tragedy”, but it is not a tragedy; it is a double-layered gay hate crime. I wish he would actually use those words. It has been a double-layered gay hate crime. First there were the original murders, and then there was the refusal to investigate them, which in itself is a gay hate crime. It is about time we took this seriously, not least because homophobic hate crimes in the past three years have risen to 1,833 a month. That is why a lot of gay men in this country are beginning to feel frightened. The Government have got to do something. Get on with it!

First of all, my apologies, Mr Speaker. I was not aiming any particular comment at you. It is just that the microphone went off as I was finishing.

I acknowledge the terrible nature of this crime, and I acknowledge the prejudiced, homophobic nature of it—[Interruption.] Yes, I do; of course I do. As the hon. Gentleman will know, we are doing enormous amounts of work on violence and murder in all their forms across the whole country. We have set murder specifically—irrespective of the nature of the murder—as one of our national priorities to push it down. Obviously this murder is particularly heinous and unpleasant, not least because of the botched investigation that took place around it. What I am saying to Opposition Members is that we are determined to help the police to learn the lessons from this. We will do what we can to help them to do so, and we will push them to do so. At the moment, we do not believe that a full public inquiry is the way to do that, not least because of the time required, but there are some extremely useful and assertive investigations ongoing, independently, around this case that give us cause to believe that there will be change in the future. If there is not, we can come back to it, but I honestly hope that nobody is implying that either I or the Government do not take these kinds of crimes extremely seriously. We absolutely do. Every single murder that happens in this country, no matter the complexion or the demographic of the victim, is of extreme importance to us and to me personally.

Homophobia is a lived reality for thousands of gay people up and down the country every single day. These avoidable murders of gay young men will be broadcast around the country, and LGBT people will be looking at the Minister’s response and saying, “They do not value my life because I am gay.” A full public independent inquiry will give LGBT people the reassurance that something will be done to stop this ever happening again. Will the Minister reconsider his refusal to have that independent inquiry?

I have to confess that I object to this characterisation that I do not care or that we do not care about these individuals. It is completely unfair and completely untrue, not least to those members of the Government who happen to be of that description themselves—[Interruption.] No, many of us have worked on these issues addressing all sorts of communities, whether it is domestic murders or murders in minority communities. The murders of all sorts of people are profoundly important to us. That is why we have set murder as a national priority. If it is of interest to the House, last week I got the police chiefs of the seven biggest contributors to the murder total in this country around a table to talk about how we can further drive murders of all types down. This is a particularly unpleasant murder—[Interruption.] I understand the alarm and distress it will have caused across the country. We need to learn the lessons from it and we are determined to do so.

The Minister’s response to the urgent question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge), which should have been a statement from the Home Secretary, is extremely disappointing. I have dealt with the Met for more than 30 years, as a lawyer and as a politician, and I can remember few cases as serious as this, both because of the callous incompetence of the investigation and because of the consequences in the loss of lives of those young men.

All I have heard from the Minister today, and from the senior members of the Met—London MPs are just about to go to talk to them—are platitudes. I have heard platitudes specifically because they will not address the homophobic nature of these murders. That is not being addressed because it will not be included in the inquiry, and the Minister will not establish a full inquiry. He needs to order that now. A BBC series on this issue is starting on 3 January; it is not going to go away. He is entitled to his view that the Met is not institutionally homophobic—I would take a different view—but he is not entitled not to investigate that and to sweep this issue under the carpet.

First, it is not the case that this matter is not being investigated further. As I have outlined several times, a number of lines of inquiry are being pursued, both about the Met’s investigation generally and its culture more specifically, and the IOPC may or may not reopen the investigation into the officers. So it is not the case that this has reached some kind of dead end, as some Opposition Members seem to be implying. It is simply not true to say that we are not bending every sinew to try to identify those who are likely to murder, in all different circumstances, whether domestic or through drugs—whatever the circumstances are. As I say, just last week I sat the seven biggest forces down and we had a three-hour session to look at what more work we could do to identify those who are likely to go on to commit such crimes: what their precursor behaviour is; what indications there are in their background; what data pools we could put together, whether that is their background offending or intelligence about them, that would give us clues towards what they were likely to do and allow us to intervene before. That enormous project of work has been under way for two years, and I hope and believe it will drive down murder numbers in the next few years to come. It is very unfair to accuse us of not taking these murders extremely seriously—that is exactly what we are doing and we are determined to make sure that they do not happen again.

We have seen the Daniel Morgan, Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman cases, the Sarah Everard case and then the resulting vigil, the fiasco at Wembley and now this shocking set of gay murders—the Minister has not said that word.

I have.

I do not think the Minister has said it. In any case, the list of bunglings under this Metropolitan Police Commissioner this year alone seems endless, and they date back to 2005, with the shoot-to-kill Jean Charles de Menezes operation. May I ask that as well as the inspection that the Minister mentions, he undertakes a full statutory inquiry, with teeth, into the entire Met police and, although it may sound unsisterly to say so, its leadership? That should be a priority for whoever steps into the shoes of my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) as Chair of the Committee on Wednesday.

For the avoidance of doubt, let me say that these were very obviously horrific gay murders, targeted against men because they were gay and driven by who knows what—homophobia or some kind of depraved sexual practice; I do not know. Some monster perpetrated these awful acts against these poor gay men. I am happy to say, without reservation, that obviously they need to be investigated and we need to get to the bottom of this. As I have explained, there are inquiries ongoing into the culture of the Metropolitan police, and I would like to see how they land before we seek to duplicate them by some other means.

We should not, ever, underestimate the very real concerns of the LGBTQ+ communities across this country about these dreadful failings by the Met police. Is the Minister satisfied that police forces across the country, not just the Met, have sufficient time, resources and leadership to ensure that the complete breakdown of oversight described by the jury in this hearing cannot ever happen again?

As I said, much of my work over the past two years has been devoted to bringing the focus of the whole of UK policing and, in particular, its leadership on to murder as a specific issue. That means improving processes, improving forensics, improving their investigation techniques and improving their prior identification. Crucially, it means improving the leadership, and that is what I was doing last Thursday with the police chiefs from across the country.

I thank the Minister for his response to the questions. Having read some of the details of this case in the news recently, I was, like others in this Chamber, very shocked. I am anxious to understand why normal procedures do not seem to have been followed. Can the Minister affirm that, in every case, regardless of the crime and the motivation, the inquiry and the evidence procedure is the same, and that there are no levels of importance in the allocation of cases in any of our police forces in the United Kingdom?

That is definitely the consistency that we seek, but there is a category of deaths that have thus far needed some focus, which is unexplained deaths. For example, the circumstances of this case are that these deaths were originally classified as unexplained or non-suspicious. Since then, I understand that the Metropolitan police have put in a step-by-step guide for officers to make sure that, in contemplating these deaths, no stone goes unturned in trying to connect them, and that they are forensic and curious about whether they could be linked. In the very obvious way that many of us have read about in the papers, these murders were in fact linked, whether by geography or by causation. I hope that that will improve the investigation of the cases and that we will see that consistency that the hon. Gentleman seeks across the whole country.

Before I call the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, I want to put on record my disappointment that the Prime Minister is not here to make this statement. Last night, in fairness to the Secretary of State, he phoned me to say that the Prime Minister felt the need to make the announcement to the country yesterday. I am surprised, though, that he did not therefore think it appropriate to come to this House to answer questions on the important announcement today. I have respect for the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, but I am really, really disappointed that, once again, this House has come second to TV news. It is not acceptable. If this is the game that we are going to play, we are going to have to play hardball.

With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to update the House on covid-19.

Since the UK became the first country to approve a vaccine against covid-19, almost exactly a year ago, we have been locked in a race between the virus and the vaccine. The success of our national vaccination programme has moved us ahead in that race, but now, with the new omicron variant, we have to work even harder to stay ahead.

Since last week, we have learned two things about this variant. The first is that no variant of covid-19 has spread this fast. There are now 4,713 confirmed cases of omicron in the UK. The UK Health Security Agency estimates that the current number of daily infections are around 200,000. While omicron represents more than 20% of cases in England, we have already seen it rise to over 44% in London, and we expect it to become the dominant covid-19 variant in the capital in the next 48 hours.

There are currently 10 confirmed people in England who have been hospitalised with omicron. It is vital that we remember that hospitalisations and deaths lag infections by around two weeks, so we can expect those numbers to increase dramatically in the days and weeks ahead. In preparation, the UK’s four chief medical officers raised the covid alert level to 4—its second highest level—over the weekend. NHS England has just announced that it will return to its highest level of emergency preparedness—level 4 national incident. This means that the NHS response to omicron will be co-ordinated as a national effort rather than led by individual trusts.

The second thing we have learned in the past week is that two jabs are not enough to prevent symptomatic infection from omicron, but a third dose—a booster dose—provides strong protection, with analysis by the UK Health Security Agency showing a third dose is 70% effective at preventing symptomatic infection. We expect the booster to take effect more quickly than the second dose. We are already running the most successful booster campaign in Europe. More than four in 10 UK adults have now received a third dose or booster and Saturday was a record, with more than half a million boosters given across the UK.

However, with the race between the virus and the vaccine so close, we must move faster. Two weeks ago, we announced that we would offer every eligible adult a booster by the end of January. In response to the omicron emergency—and as the Prime Minister announced yesterday evening—we are bringing that target forward by a month and launching the omicron emergency boost. We have opened the booster programme to every adult who has had a second dose of the vaccine at least three months ago to offer them the chance of getting their booster before the new year. From this morning, anyone over 18 can walk into a vaccination centre and, from Wednesday, they can book online via the NHS website. The UK Government will also provide whatever support is needed to accelerate vaccinations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. We have the jabs. The challenge now is to get them into arms.

To meet our ambitious target, the NHS will need to deliver a record number of jabs. Until now, the highest number of jabs we have delivered in a single day in the UK was more than 840,000. We will not only need to match that, but beat it every day. We can, and we have a plan to try and do it. We are opening more vaccination sites—including pop-up and mobile sites—and they will be working seven days a week. We are training thousands more volunteer vaccinators. We are asking GPs and pharmacies to do more, and we are drafting in 42 military planning teams across every region of our country.

This collective national mission will only succeed if we all play our part. Those who have not had their booster should find their local walk-in vaccination centre or book an appointment on the NHS website from Wednesday. Those who have had their booster jab should encourage their friends and family to do the same. Those who have or have recently had covid should wait 28 days from their positive result to get their booster.

To those who have not yet had their vaccine at all, I would like to say this: whatever has held you back in the past, please think again, and book your jab as quickly as possible. By acting together to get boosted now we can protect ourselves against omicron this winter.

I acknowledge that our national mission comes with some difficult trade-offs. We are redeploying NHS staff away from non-urgent services. That means that, for the next two weeks, all primary care services will focus on urgent clinical need and vaccines, and some non-urgent appointments and elective surgeries may be postponed until the new year while we prioritise getting people the booster. These are steps that no Health Secretary would wish to take unless they were absolutely necessary, but I am convinced that if we do not prioritise the booster now, the health consequences will be far more grave in the months that lie ahead.

Our omicron emergency boost is a major step, but I am not going to pretend that this alone will be enough to see us through the difficult weeks ahead. Because of the threat of omicron, we are moving to plan B in England, subject to the will of this House. That means that: we must use face coverings in indoor public places; people should work from home if they can; and, from Wednesday—again subject to this House’s approval—people will need to show a negative lateral flow test to get into nightclubs and large events, with an exemption for the double-vaccinated. Once all adults have had a reasonable chance to get their booster jab, we intend to change that exemption to require a booster dose.

Even with plan B, we still have far fewer restrictions in place than Europe. I can also confirm that from tomorrow, fully vaccinated contacts of a covid-19 case will now be able to take daily lateral flow tests instead of self-isolating. This is a vital way to minimise the disruption to people’s daily lives and to avoid a so-called pingdemic. I can assure this House that the UK has sufficient lateral flow tests to see us through the coming weeks. If anyone finds that they are unable to get a kit online, they should check the website the following day or they can pop down to their local pharmacy and pick up a kit. From today, I can confirm that the NHS covid pass is being rolled out to 12 to 15-year-olds for international travel, allowing even more people to be able to prove their vaccine status for travel where it is needed. [Hon. Members: “When?”] From today. Taken together, these are proportionate and balanced steps keeping the country moving while slowing the spread of omicron and buying us more time to get more boosters into arms.

We are also taking steps to keep people safe in adult social care. We know that, sadly, people in care homes and those who receive domiciliary care are more likely to suffer serious health consequences if they get covid-19, so we are expanding our specialist vaccination teams to get more boosters to the vulnerable and those providing care. But even as we do so, we must go further to protect colleagues and residents from omicron. So we are increasing the frequency of staff testing and, with a heavy heart, we must restrict every resident to just three nominated visitors, not including their essential care giver. This is a difficult step, and I understand that it comes with an impact on physical and mental wellbeing, but we know from previous waves that it is one of the most effective things that we can do to protect vulnerable residents. We are also increasing our workforce recruitment and retention fund with £300 million of new money. This is in addition to the £162.5 million we announced in October. The funds will help to pay bonuses, bring forward pay rises for care staff, fund overtime, and increase workforce numbers over the winter.

I know that hon. Members had hoped that the days of this kind of covid-19 update were behind us. After our successful reopening in the summer, it is not an update that I wanted to deliver. But the renewed threat of omicron means that we have more work to do to stay ahead of this virus. We can, if we all play our part, and boosters are the key. We have achieved so many phenomenal things over the last two years. I know we are weary, but it is on all of us to pick up, to step up and do some phenomenal work once again to play our part and to get boosted now. I commend this statement to the House.

Can I suggest to the Secretary of State that we could be a pop-up site for all the staff that work here to get them boosted?

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement.

Today we learned of the first death in the UK as a result of the omicron virus, so on behalf of the whole House I send our condolences to the friends and family of that person who has lost their life. Their death puts this statement and the task at hand in context. It is a stark reminder that the pandemic is not over, that the new variant is a clear and serious risk to our public health, and of the urgency of getting Britain boosted and protecting us against this threat.

The Labour party will always act in the best interests of our NHS, our public health, and our nation. Having repeatedly called for the booster programme to be ramped up, we will give our full support to this effort. Labour Members will make every effort to get the message out that vaccines are the best tool we have at our disposal to protect ourselves, those closest to us, and our NHS. The target of getting 1 million people a day their booster vaccine is unprecedented and may even prove impossible, but we applaud the ambition. If anyone can do it, the NHS can, and the whole country will be willing them on and will not knock them for trying.

What people will not accept is the Government moving the goalposts. The Prime Minister is now famous for over-promising and under-delivering. In his televised address last night, he said that people

“will have the chance to get their booster before the new year.”

But, as we heard from the Secretary of State, the aim is instead to “offer” the booster to every adult by the end of the month, meaning that the delivery will wait until January or even February. Are the Government rowing back on the target set yesterday? If so, why has it changed overnight? What hope do we have of achieving the necessary level of booster jabs if the public and those delivering the vaccines are told one thing one day and another the next day? The Prime Minister has got to learn to be straight with people, because he is undermining public trust and confidence in the Government and in public health measures at a critical time. What discussions has the Secretary of State had with local authorities, GPs, pharmacies and other delivery partners who will be crucial to that effort?

Then there is the shambles of testing. I thought the Secretary of State might be living on a different planet when he described the availability of testing, because the Government’s website states today that home testing kits are unavailable, pharmacies across the country are out of stock and, even here in Parliament, no home testing kits are available from Portcullis House. No doubt, that is due to a surge in demand ahead of the new testing requirements this week, but surely that should have been foreseen. This is a serious problem. Those coming into contact with positive omicron cases will not be able to follow the rules and get themselves tested daily, those who require tests to undertake home visits risk being left short, and many others need them for work. How does the Secretary of State plan to ensure that enough tests are in stock and available for everyone who needs them, when they need them? When will the problem be resolved? It does not appear that he was even aware of it.

Absent from the Prime Minister’s address last night was any plan to speed up the vaccine roll-out for 12 to 15-year-olds. On current trends, some teenagers will not receive their vaccine until February, five months after the Government’s initial target of October half-term. Children have already faced significant disruption to their education, so will the Secretary of State update the House on the vaccine roll-out for 12 to 15-year-olds? Will they receive their vaccines by the end of the Christmas holidays, as Labour has called for?

Of course, patients will be concerned by the news that appointments will be delayed to accommodate the booster roll-out. There is no doubt that the booster programme is the right priority. If we do not get ahead of omicron, the pressure on the NHS will be unbearable and the disruption to people’s appointments in the new year will be severe. But, let us be honest: the challenge is made so much greater as a direct result of the Government’s mismanagement of the NHS for 11 years. We went into the pandemic with record waiting lists and with six-figure staff shortages in the health service and the care sector. Where is the NHS workforce plan? Where is the plan for the recovery of elective care? Why can the Government not understand that their continued failure to fix social care is piling even more pressure on the NHS at the worst possible time? On social care visits, I ask the Secretary of State to think again about limits on care home visits. That feels like the wrong decision at the wrong time.

Mr Speaker, I will conclude, if I may, with some words directed to the public. We on the Labour Benches realise that the Prime Minister has tested patience by asking people to follow the rules when No. 10 did not. The Prime Minister’s actions in recent weeks have under-mined trust at a critical moment. I say to people feeling let down or lied to that I trust the chief medical officer, I trust the chief scientific adviser and I trust the NHS. The Prime Minister might not lead by example, but the rest of us can, and we—the Labour party—trust you, the British people, to do the right thing to protect yourselves, to protect the ones you love and to protect the NHS.

First, may I say that I heard your request, Mr Speaker? I am happy to take that up with you directly, if that is okay. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his support of the need to accelerate the booster programme. I join him, as I am sure the whole House does, in expressing condolences for the individual who was the first in this country to die with the new variant.

I turn to the hon. Gentleman’s questions. First, he asked about testing capacity. I would like to share more information with the House. There is no shortage of tests held by UKHSA—tens of millions of tests are in stock and millions are arriving each week. The limiting factor, because of the hugely increased demand—I am sure hon. Members understand why demand has suddenly surged—is the ability to deliver tests. The current arrangements with Royal Mail alone are not enough, but new arrangements have been reached with Amazon and other delivery methods. There will still be many hundreds of thousands—record numbers—delivered each day, but also the number of access points is being increased, including many more through pharmacies, and we are rapidly looking at other access points. The hon. Gentleman is right to raise this, but I hope he and others understand that there has been a huge surge and increase, and this is not just about the number of tests available but getting them through and delivered; both are equally important.

The hon. Gentleman raised the issue of the booster programme timing. He is right that just a couple of weeks ago the plan was to give everyone a booster before the end of January. That was after the change in advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation that the dosing gap should be reduced to three months and that it should now include everyone over 18. For the reasons I have explained and that the Prime Minister shared in his national broadcast yesterday, we want to bring that forward. That involves working hard with the NHS, which has done phenomenal work already to reach four in 10 adults with boosters and in the vaccination programme in general.

This is asking a huge amount of our colleagues in the NHS, and it is our joint view that we can try to offer adults a chance to get boosted by the end of this month. That does not mean every single person can necessarily get that booster; it requires them to come forward and take up the offer as well as everything going right in this huge expansion plan. But again, I hope the hon. Gentleman can respect that the NHS is doing everything it can, with the full support of every Department of Government, and is throwing everything at this to offer as many opportunities as it can and the maximum possible capacity for delivering on that commitment.

The hon. Gentleman also talked about the challenges facing the NHS. I remind him and the House that this year the Government have put an extra £34 billion into the NHS and social care, £5.4 billion of that in the second half of this year, and over the next three years there is a commitment to at least £8 billion extra going into the largest catch-up fund the NHS has ever seen. In the last year almost 10,000 nurses and almost 3,000 doctors have joined the NHS; the NHS is increasing workforce and capacity, is looking at new ways to do electives, and is putting a huge amount of effort into its electives programme and its non-covid work as well.

Finally, I do understand what the hon. Gentleman said on adult social care and the limit on visitors, and it is important to get the balance right. We all know the problems and the sad deaths not long ago in care homes with this pandemic, and it is right to take balanced measures to protect people in care homes. We are working with, and listening to, those who run care homes and trying to take a balanced approach that allows visits to take place but also protects vulnerable people.

One year and five days ago the UK administered the first properly approved covid vaccine in the world, and the Government are absolutely right to focus on immunisation, but Israel approved booster jabs for all adults in September, France approved jabs for teenagers in June, both long before us, and the United States has already approved jabs for five-year-olds, again long before us. Is the Secretary of State worried that our regulators, having been the nimblest in the world, are now taking too long? They are brilliant scientists and they are rightly totally independent, but what can he do to speed up this crucial decision making in a pandemic?

My right hon. Friend makes an important point, from experience. We can be proud of so much of what our regulators have achieved and done. As he said, we were the first in the world to approve a covid-19 vaccine, but he is right to challenge on this and ask what more can be done, especially in light of the circumstances we face. The JCVI is not a regulator but it is an important part of the approvals process, and I hope he will also commend its swift response since the emergence of omicron in changing the rules around boosters.

It is worth putting on record that Scotland is the most vaccinated nation in the UK, and I certainly encourage everybody to continue to take up the booster. Does the Secretary of State share my outrage that last week his Back Benchers were literally cheering the proposition that he needs to wait until more people are hospitalised before they will countenance the wearing of masks in public places? That is absolutely reckless, and it sends the wrong message to the public when we are trying to tell them to take the risk of omicron seriously.

Tragically, we know that people are now being hospitalised and, sadly, we have already recorded one death from omicron. Based on evidence elsewhere, what kind of upward trajectory does the Secretary of State think there will be in hospitalisations? Why in the plan B measures being brought forward—all already in place in Scotland—is there a pub exemption? That makes no sense.

Given that LFTs are only 50% accurate, what risk implications has the Secretary of State assessed in using the LFTs to keep people from self-isolating? Surely he needs to consider the minimum being a PCR test, following the more cautious approach adopted by the Scottish Government. Why, with LFTs as their key guidance, have the Government put themselves in this ridiculous position of the website saying it has run out of LFT kits?

If we are talking about supporting people to self-isolate, we need to revisit and extend the levels of statutory sick pay. What discussions has the Secretary of State had with the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions about that? Critically, does he support calls from the devolved nations that they need Treasury support to put in place what restrictions they believe are required to control the spread and impact of omicron and support livelihoods at the same time?

The Scottish Government have already put in place more generous rates relief for hospitality venues than the UK Government did but, with trade dropping, suppliers and the trade itself need further support, especially if further restrictions are required. Will the Secretary of State take that up with the Chancellor? Is the Cabinet considering support for the travel industry? Does he agree that targeted sector restrictions, with full financial support, is a better long-term strategy than the “all or nothing” approach we seem to be taking, and praying that the booster programme alone will be sufficient? It will need a lot more work than just that alone.

The hon. Gentleman is right to point to the lag between the point of infection and hospitalisation. That emphasises the need to act early and strongly. That is why the booster programme and that response is so important in Scotland, in England and throughout the UK, and it is good that all four nations are working closely together on it.

On lateral flow tests as an alternative to self-isolation, I think they are the right approach. They can be taken daily, so the individual is tested each day for seven days, whereas a PCR would be a single test at a single moment. This is much more flexible and it is based on advice Ministers have received. On the hon. Gentleman’s questions on economic support, that is something we keep under review.

I congratulate the Government on the roll-out of the vaccination programme—it is impressive—but what does my right hon. Friend say to my constituent who says she is now less afraid of covid than she is of intrusive and incoherent Government regulations?

I would say to my right hon. Friend that I hope her constituent would appreciate that the Government have to act on the information they see before them on the rate of spread of this new variant and what we now know about its degree of vaccine escape—not just to protect my right hon. Friend’s constituent, but to protect that constituent’s loved ones and her community.

May I say to the Secretary of State that I was deeply shocked, when he was in this House recently and I said that all sensible Members of Parliament will be supporting any measure to save lives, to hear boos and catcalls from the Government Benches? I will repeat my view: does he realise what great potential we have as Members of Parliament in our communities, working for this, rolling our sleeves up, working cross-party with local councillors and volunteers? This House of Commons is a real resource. Please, please will he use us effectively?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his call for all hon. Members to do their bit to help the nation in this time of crisis. It is not just about what we can all do in this House; I am sure he agrees that it is about what we can do in our local communities.

My right hon. Friend rightly talked about protecting the NHS. Can I ask him to ensure that we protect our children as well and that the Government set out a plan to keep schools open in January? Given that The Sunday Times suggested that primary school children will be vaccinated, will he or the Secretary of State for Education make a statement about the vaccination programme for younger children and ensure that there is 100% parental consent?

I agree with my right hon. Friend on the importance of protecting our children. We in this House all know how children have suffered throughout the pandemic and the impact on their education, mental health and socialisation with other children. He is right to talk about that importance. One reason to take the measures that we have set out, especially around expanding the booster programme, is the ensure that we prioritise children. On the issue of vaccinations for younger children aged five to 11, the JCVI is considering that. When the Government hear back from the JCVI on that, we will bring it to the House.

I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement. Having listened to it and having studied the matter in some detail over the weekend, I will be supporting the Government and the measures that they are introducing tomorrow night. What would he say to those in the community who are saying, “If the rule makers can’t be trusted to obey their own rules, why should we?”

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his support. It is important to emphasise that the rules that we are discussing—all rules of any type, really, but he is talking about those around the pandemic—are there for all of us and apply equally to all of us.