Coronavirus Act 2020

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I want first to register that the no-vote on the Coronavirus Act in the other House last week, with the seemingly glib statement that the House was not in the mood to vote, was unsettling. Although a majority of the most illiberal and worrying uses and abuses of the law over the last 18 months have been acted through public health legislation, none the less the Coronavirus Act remains as a legislative symbol of the state accruing enormous and unprecedented powers to deal with the public health emergency.

To be clear, when the Act was brought in there was an emergency. Whatever my own reservations or those of fellow civil libertarians, we could see that a worldwide pandemic gave an excuse to the Government in having to act quickly and respond in the way they did, and it explains some of the extreme measures. But that was then, and whatever possible excuses there were for little parliamentary scrutiny when the Act was initially passed, since then there is no excuse for the lack of post-legislative scrutiny and for accountability being so woeful. I echo the thoughts and concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath.

When, every six months, the House of Commons is asked to vote for or against, there is no option to amend or expire individual provisions. Sufficient time is never allocated to renewal debates to allow detailed scrutiny. It becomes more or less a fait accompli. By the time the renewals arrive here in this House, it feels, like now, that we are going through the motions and making speeches for the sake of it, which is why I assume many of us are trying to make speeches that might say something beyond nodding something through.

Let me say this: the urgency of the initial stages of the pandemic has passed. There is no longer a public health emergency. Of course Covid is still a serious challenge and needs to be managed carefully. I do not underestimate it; a family member sadly died of Covid only recently. However, the crisis stage of the pandemic has passed, and this legislation is just not needed. Its continued existence and the Government’s reluctance to revoke it represents another kind of crisis: the undermining of the rule of law in democratic decision-making under the auspices of Covid.

It really does feel as though Ministers have grown rather too accustomed to the Covid-related ease with which laws can be made, now that the Government have enhanced legislative control and seem reluctant to relinquish newly accrued powers. To quote Big Brother Watch,

“the emergency mode and its perks—rapid law-making without scrutiny and a ratcheting of executive powers—has persisted”.

Perhaps most galling for me is that the Government seem reluctant to provide impact assessment statements for legislation, which means that Parliament has often not had the information it needs to properly scrutinise measures that have profound social, economic and health impacts—let alone assaults on our liberties.

This lack of transparency also blindsides public debate. Too often, citizens are left to speculate as to why certain laws are being introduced when there seems so little evidence of their efficacy. Undoubtedly this has fuelled conspiracy-mongering and undermined trust in politics and institutions. Look at the egregious way in which proposals to mandate vaccines for care home workers was dealt with. There was a rushed 90-minute debate in the other place and a cavalier use of secondary legislation to interfere with workers’ hard-won employment rights that is likely to create a huge staff shortage crisis in care homes. All this was done in the face of a wide range of opponents pointing out the shortcomings of the proposals—I am thinking here of everyone from trades unions to Tory Back-Bench MPs agreeing—and despite a lack of evidence that this policy will lead to any extra protection for vulnerable residents, as alleged.

Now the Government are doubling down and targeting NHS staff. Just when we are told that one reason why the Government might bring in further restrictions is if the NHS cannot cope this winter, the Department of Health and Social Care has the brilliant idea of implementing a policy that will mean effectively sacking thousands of front-line health workers, creating a staff shortage crisis that could have—guess what?—catastrophic implications for healthcare and make matters worse.

Here is my great dilemma for the Minister. We have all—or almost all—welcomed the shift from legal restrictions to public health guidelines and trusting the public to take personal responsibility for weighing up risks. That was, and is, it seemed to me, the message from the Prime Minister and the Cabinet—or that was what I thought. So it is unfortunate that, despite assurances and even promises that 19 July was the terminus date and the pledges that relaxing restrictions would be irreversible, and despite the good news of extremely high vaccine take-up and levels of antibodies, and evidence, as we have heard, of the virus being under control, Ministers keep threatening the public with really quite draconian measures again. It is totally demoralising and disorientating.

What we really need to hear from the Minister today is that the Government will no longer use the criminal law to manage public health. Instead, what we have is another attack on freedoms hanging over us in the form of vaccine passports. Despite a range of U-turns and contradictory ministerial public pronouncements on vaccine passes, despite the findings of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee that Covid passes have no basis “in science or logic”, despite leaked but not publicly available cost-benefit analysis from the DCMS that passes will decimate hospitality, arts and sports event venues, which I read about in a newspaper rather than in anything produced by Ministers, despite the fact that the Prime Minister inadvertently admitted that immunity from vaccination was not the same as a guarantee that you cannot contract the virus or pass it on, hence rendering vaccine passes irrelevant in containing the social spread of the virus, as was well explained by the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, despite the fact that the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine’s vaccine confidence project has found that the introduction of vaccine passports will most likely reduce vaccine take-up among the already hesitant and will more likely consolidate a loss of trust in pharmacological interventions in general, as well as in political institutions—despite all this, we still hear the misinformation from the Government that vaccine passports as a policy will protect others. They just will not.

Where is the opportunity for Parliament, never mind the public, to debate all this fully, without fear of being demonised or silenced by big tech, and discuss the implications of an illiberal, divisive, show-your-papers culture? As we talk here today about the renewal of the Coronavirus Act—the emergency, allegedly temporary Coronavirus Act—my dread is that we are signalling the permanence of a state of emergency embedded in law by even contemplating a two-tier checkpoint society. When Jacinda Ardern, the New Zealand Prime Minister, smirked as she stressed that vaccine passes would mean two classes in her country, I was chilled—and I realise that such open discrimination is also the new normal much closer to home, in Wales and Scotland.

The truth is that our Health Ministers need to move away from vaccine passes because they have enough on their plate. Rather than getting embroiled in these politicised rows over Covid-related laws, surely it is time to move on; goodness knows they now have some real public health emergencies to sort out. From the now-understood catastrophic impact that lockdown measures have had on the late diagnosis of everything from cancer to dementia, to backlogs, waiting lists for treatment and the unhelpful actions of GPs—not only are they seemingly hesitant to resume face-to-face contact; there is also the BMA’s truculent behaviour in instructing surgeries to close their lists to new patients and threatening industrial action—Ministers have a lot on their plate.

There are also reports in primary schools that the lack of social interaction during the pandemic will affect young children’s speech, language and general development, and that those problems are likely to persist for several years. Then there is the ongoing and frankly inhumane treatment of care home residents, who are still being deprived of normal social contact with loved ones by risk-averse, short-staffed residential homes, leading to entirely preventable extra health issues.

I have a lot of sympathy for the Minister because he has a lot on his plate. In this context, the now-diminishing threat of Covid as an emergency should be low down on the priority list. All legal sanctions brought into being to deal with Covid now need to be revoked for the sake of the health of the body politic and so that the noble Lord can get on with being a Health Minister for non-Covid health emergencies.