Health Protection (Coronavirus, Local COVID-19 Alert Level) (Very High) (England) Regulations 2020

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Wednesday 14th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, to your Lordships’ House. For someone who has extensive experience in railways, he was pleasingly on time, something this House greatly appreciates. He is most welcome.

On these Benches, we have said for several months that assessments of the proportionality of measures must be up to date, based on the latest scientific evidence, and formulated as a result of a precautionary approach to minimising overall loss of life. The Government must be transparent in justifying their decision-making, including in explaining how they have balanced the competing interests and the evidence on which the balancing decision has been made. Today, yet again, they have not done so.

Six months ago, the Secretary of State said that test and trace was the “single most important thing” that we could do to conquer the virus. Then, on 22 September, the Prime Minister made a statement which was, at times, very odd. He said that test and trace had “little or nothing” to do with transmission of the virus. I wondered then what was going on. We now know that on 21 September the SAGE group had advised the Prime Minister that he needed to introduce harsher national restrictions on the spread of the virus. Instead, the Government, or Mr Johnson, decided to ignore that and opt for much lighter measures, such as the rule of six and the 10 pm closure of pubs. And here we are: infection rates are going up, lives are at stake and businesses are in trouble.

It is telling that the scientists who have been advising the Government have been damning about this “world-beating” test and trace system, which is having only a “marginal impact”. We said from the very beginning that the fundamental basis of the Government’s actions was wrong. They believed that they did not have to take into account the expertise in local government, public health and public services such as the police. They could build and introduce their own world-beating tech system. We now have more evidence than we will ever need of how wrong that is. They have just been winging it.

On top of that, we have had confused messaging for six months. Even today, noble Lords could go on to GOV.UK and read an explanation of the three different tiers that is utterly confusing. When will the Government publish the contracts given to companies run by friends of Dominic Cummings and Michael Gove to advise on messaging? Taxpayers appear to be paying a lot of money for old rope.

When the Government are in a corner, they always pray in aid the Joint Biosecurity Centre as the source of the intelligence on which their actions are based. We have now got to a point where they can no longer shield themselves behind that organisation. It is now time for them to release more of that intelligence, so that local directors of public health and environmental health—people who have detailed knowledge of their populations, who know what is about to happen in their areas that could have an impact on the transmission of the virus—have it to work with. Examples are the presence of students in Liverpool and the knowledge that the next three months are the run-up to a holiday season in which people will want to celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah and mark other religions. That is the sort of thing that people on the ground are used to doing and have a great deal of expertise in.

People want a break from gimmicks such as marshals, world-beating bluster, blunt instruments and lockdowns being inflicted on wider and wider areas and impacting on greater numbers of people. When will the Government build on the expertise of local civic leaders and public service professionals, and build resilient public health test, trace and isolate systems that can maintain people in isolation safely for the weeks that will be needed? Only then can we get to a point where we are not merely in another short lockdown, to contain a curve and prevent admission to hospitals, but can begin to build a level of community containment with which we can all live safely live.

It will be no surprise whatever to the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, that we will not be supporting his amendment. We sometimes end up in the same place, but for entirely different reasons. We do believe that there is a role for evidence-based, proportionate restrictions on businesses and individual movement in these dangerous times. If the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, chooses to test the opinion the House, we will on this occasion support her.

However, all this is immaterial. We need to take some of the money away from this track and trace system which is not working and put those resources into the hands of local professionals, where they can make a real and lasting difference and where we really can begin to beat this virus on a sustainable basis.