Following your announcement of a major incident in London on 18 December 2020 due to the Omicron wave, how has bringing together the emergency services helped the situation?

Previous waves of the pandemic have shown that early and decisive action is key to limiting the spread of infection. It was important to be proactive as the wave of Omicron surged through London in December [2021].

Declaring a major incident not only brought Londoner’s responders together through the Strategic Coordination Group (SCG), but also highlighted the seriousness of the situation we faced to everyone in our city. The SCG reviews whether it is still appropriate to have the major incident status in place every meeting, in its meeting this morning, and will be considering the implications of the Government’s decision to end Plan B measures.

The SCG has brought together the emergency services, the NHS, local authorities, Government colleagues, the UK Health Security Agency and the Office for Health Improvement [and Disparities]. It enables services to cooperate and coordinate in an agile manner, sharing a joint understanding of the risks to London as the situation with Omicron changes rapidly. It has allowed all agencies to share information on the impacts on their services, as well as to identify interdependencies between them and the possible options for interagency support if needed.

The key difference between the Omicron wave and previous variant waves is that significantly higher infection and potential absenteeism rates limited the options for interagency support, which made this sharing of situational awareness between the agencies even more important. Through invoking a major incident and reforming the London SCG, we established direct and senior routes into central government policy teams and were able to engage directly on the policy changes that are being made nationally.

With the declaration of a major incident underlying the seriousness of the situation, it also encouraged Londoners to take the personal action needed to protect our frontline services. Both the National Health Service (NHS) and the London Ambulance Service (LAS) reported an immediate reduction in service pressures in the week following the announcements. This was a vital reduction in service demand that London needed at that time. Meanwhile, Londoners answered the call to get their booster and first and second dose of vaccines and continue to do so. As always, Londoners supported each other and our emergency and frontline services throughout what was another difficult festive period.

Many thanks, Mr Mayor, and thank you again for your support of our emergency services. I would like to thank them as well.

I am just wondering if you know what the current levels of staff absences are in frontline services, and what challenges that creates at present?

Sure. I have data, Chair, that is a couple of days old because there is a lag between them giving us the data and so forth. Forgive me if they are a couple of days out of tune.

The NHS absence rate at Christmas [2021] was approaching 8%, and it has now stabilised between 5% and 6%. London Fire Brigade (LFB) absences approached 15% on Christmas Eve, and 6% by mid-January [2022]. TfL has reduced from 6% to about 4.4%. The MPS is at amber status for staffing and has now returned to a green rating. We are talking about a reduction from about 13.5% to about 10%.

The key point to make is this. Aggregate figures do not really give you a true reflection of the picture because in certain parts of an organisation there could be a control room or a department where you have big numbers being absent. That is why it is really important to look below the numbers. That is why the major incident being declared and the greater cooperation and working meant we could share data in real time.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Have you been able to share this approach you have taken with other cities? It was important, especially ahead of the holidays as we saw the rates going up, that you had taken that action early.

Yes, we have. Just so you know, one of the advantages of declaring a major incident is that we get plugged into central Government’s thinking as well. That led to not only me being able to speak to Secretary of State for Health, [the Rt Hon] Sajid Javid [MP] but also, because we were a week or two ahead of the rest of the country, we could cascade our experience to the rest of the country. That is a really invaluable thing we have learned over the last 22 months and it is a good example of London helping - not in a patronising way - other parts of our country via our systems, which is important.

Thank you, Mr Mayor.