COVID-19 Variant: Travel Guidance for Local Authorities

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Wednesday 26th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I completely object to the false premise of the question. I cannot tell you how hard we are working in collaboration with local authorities, directors of public health and the incredible rhythm of regional partnership teams, regional team updates and the huge amount of data and interaction between all parts of government. It is absolutely phenomenal, and the characterisation by the noble Baroness is just not right. Where I completely agree with her is that we are working as hard as we humanly can to get the vaccine out to everyone, we are doing absolutely all we can to spread testing to all areas where there are outbreaks and we are working extremely hard to improve all those systems.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

Does the noble Lord agree that in one regard, government communication has been brilliantly successful? In Laura Dodsworth’s new book, A State of Fear, she exposes how the nudge unit, behavioural scientists and SPI-B weaponise fear. She quotes the statement:

“The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging.”


I genuinely want to know: can the Minister explain why the Government are so adept at deploying huge resources to communicate scary messages but seem so inept in communicating the trust and common-sense messaging he has just explained here but did not manage to explain to local people, which is why they are so confused?