Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Self-Isolation and Linked Households) (England) Regulations 2020
Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, when vaccines are developed, they go through clinical trials to check on efficacy and any damaging side-effects. What would happen if the same process were applied to lockdowns and other draconian measures? We would have to ask: do they work? Do the serious side-effects outweigh the alleged benefits of keeping Covid at bay? The Government will not be able to answer this, because they have not even asked the questions. Indeed, when one asks such questions, one is often met with a sneer—“Oh, you are one of those lockdown sceptics”—but despite the tragic numbers dying and our being told that the Government have no choice, I do not think that any of us should be cowed into fatalistically accepting the efficacy or morality of this perpetual lockdown strategy. There are always other options.
Scepticism is branded dangerous and irresponsible. Some are even lobbying big tech to censor sceptical questioning, demonised as “misinformation”. If this Government declare that it is illegal to leave one’s home without a reasonable excuse and accumulate a colossal amount of state power, with unintended but devastating collateral damage inflicted on society, it would be irresponsible not to ask sceptical questions. Remember that scepticism, historically, is what has driven scientific progress, medical breakthroughs and radical change. We are urged to listen to medical experts, so let me quote CMO Chris Whitty, speaking at a parliamentary committee last month:
“At a certain point, society, through political leaders, elected Ministers and Parliament, will say that this level of risk is a level of risk that we think it is appropriate to tolerate”.
This is a key debate, moving forward, and I urge the Government to avoid fear-mongering or boosterism, but to have the courage to admit what they know and what they do not know, and make sure they have the means to be held to account. Will the Minister tell us precisely what measure is being used to decide when freedoms will be restored? How can the public know what success looks like if the goalposts change? Is it cases, hospital admissions, deaths, how we deal with so many catching Covid in hospitals, or the numbers of vaccines? What is it that gives us that hope, really?
There seem to be some irrational aspects to this, with 80 year-olds I know demoralised and confused that they have not received even a letter, never mind a jab, and others demoralised that they have not had the second jab. Finally, if the Government can tear up the rulebook on civil liberties, surely they can tear up the rulebook on risk-adverse regulations when it comes to vaccines. It is the only hope. Be brave.
Care Quality Commission Report
Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts(3 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Bethell (Con) [V]
I completely endorse the noble Baroness’s observations. She is entirely right that the 66 case studies in the report make very harrowing reading. That is why the report was commissioned in the first place, as an acknowledgment that the current state of affairs is not acceptable and needs to improve. Overall, £4.5 billion is going to primary care and community health services, and that is additional money to be committed by 2023-24. It is part of the Government’s overall commitment in this area, and we look forward to publishing a White Paper on mental health shortly.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, for tabling this Question. The Care Quality Commission report is deeply shocking reading—the utter cruelty of using seclusion and segregation in care settings for people who cannot advocate for themselves. I note that the report recommends that families and advocates are involved in the development of care plans, and I fully agree with that.
Would the Minister comment on the unintentional consequences of Covid regulations in care homes, which means that there has been a huge expansion of the numbers of those who are secluded and segregated who cannot advocate for themselves? For example, there are those with dementia who have been locked away, deprived of contact with their advocates and loved ones and, equally, treated with undignified and inhumane measures. Will he look at the harrowing examples detailed by the Rights for Residents campaign, which will show him that it is not just a small number now but many more, sadly, as an unintentional consequence of government policy?
Lord Bethell (Con) [V]
My Lords, I would be grateful to hear from the Rights for Residents campaign, which sounds like an important and valuable contribution. I reassure the noble Baroness that the numbers of those who have undergone restrictive practices who have autism or learning difficulties do not appear to have risen during the pandemic. That is not to say that the current numbers are acceptable.
Puberty-blocker Drugs
Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts(3 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Bethell (Con) [V]
I reassure my noble friend that people with gender dysphoria cannot access gender reassignment surgery under the age of 18, so young people are not eligible for the type of procedure that she describes. Gender identity services are clinically led and focus on enabling the young person to choose the path which suits their needs. They support children to explore their feelings, recognising that there is not a one-size-fits-all approach. This seems an appropriate approach in the circumstances.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I warmly welcome the court ruling that children cannot consent to treatment to suspend puberty. Will the Minister join me in saluting the bravery of Keira Bell for taking this action and echo her message that being a tomboy or not liking stereotypically girly things does not make girls or young women any less female? Crucially, will he clarify that this ruling does not undermine the 1985 Gillick judgment giving young women the legal right to reproductive healthcare without parental consent and that the false and scaremongering misinformation circulated by certain organisations, including Amnesty International and Mermaids, is driven by a particular agenda rather than a concern for trans- gender people’s rights?
Lord Bethell (Con) [V]
My Lords, I salute the court’s thoughtful and lengthy judgment, which brought enormous clarity to an area which is very important but which has also caused concern and ambiguity. The court has made it clear that children under a certain age are not ordinarily able to make the kind of decisions that have previously been asked of them, but there are openings. No one under the age of 16 can now be referred on to puberty blockers unless a court rules that it is in the child’s best interest. These are helpful clarifications and we look forward to further work to clarify this area.
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers) (England) Regulations 2020
Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts(3 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I will indeed consider voting for either the fatal or a regret amendment. Despite this, I want the Minister to note that many of us here understand that he and the Government are under huge pressures. I also appreciate that in a period where “gotcha” blame games are the way we go in politics, politicians can become terrified, defensive and reactive. They often will not admit mistakes and therefore cannot learn from them. They make every pronouncement black and white, delivered with a definitive certainty with no nuance and certainly no room for disagreement. One tactic is to avoid blame by attempting to hide behind the science, and the reliance on what passes for irrefutable evidence. As we all get bamboozled by data, graphs, charts, forecasts and infection rates, no mention is made of the wider principles undermining decision-making. When evidence substitutes for judgments, policies are ring-fenced off from accountability and it can create a fatalistic mood in society where people are told that there is no choice.
It was not ever thus, even in this Covid period. Remember that, at the start of all this, hundreds of thousands of people were mobilised as NHS volunteers, eager to help to take on Covid. Even if lots of them never received an email, they showed that there was a willingness to actively create a shield around the vulnerable and act in social solidarity. Contrast that with now, when people are at the end of their tether. The Government’s policies have demobilised people, demanded passivity and compliance. People are told, “Shut up and put up—we know best”, but is that true? Surely in an emergency more than ever, politicians could do with a hand. I urge Ministers to draw on the resources, intellect, intuition, common sense and intelligent criticisms of millions of people in order to move forward.
I want noble Lords to imagine, for a minute, what it feels like to be in Wales at the moment. The people have endured a lockdown, and their reward from Welsh Labour is a 6 pm curfew—more puritan prohibition than science—with utter indifference to the destruction of hospitality jobs. By the way, I give a shout-out to the 100 north Wales publicans who banned the First Minister from pubs for 18 months—hear, hear to them. This illustrates the infuriating way that citizens are treated: they are victims of arbitrary diktats from on high and never involved in any debate—
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
You think I am mad? That is a good start to a civilised debate. Anyway, all this is unnecessary and not the way we should move forward, because I think that the technocratic approach is bad for science and democracy. Science is in danger of being turned into a dogma set in a stone tablet; the very strength of the scientific method is challenging and testing hypotheses, and it is being corrupted by an adherence to “the science”.
Those scientists who raise concerns about the official narrative have their professional reputations traduced as fake experts and shills, have their interviews censored and dubbed misinformation—and are heckled as “mad”. Surely with a new virus, we need to hear all scientific views, not just those of SAGE. All scientists, pro and anti lockdown, should be prepared to have their work rigorously scrutinised and critiqued. None should be silenced, or important questions will not even be asked, let alone answered.
The technocratic approach is also bad for democracy because it narrows down the debate to solely assessing responses to Covid through quantifiable measures. I confess that we all get dragged into reducing the debate to its most narrow parameters. We have all wasted hours on the minutiae of the differences between tiers 2 and 3 and what they allow. That crude, utilitarian approach even means that we are all tempted to parade death figures to make our case: pro-lockdowners state Covid deaths while anti-lockdowners emphasise neglected cancer patients, heart disease victims and suicides.
This counting-the-bodies approach is available only if the Government allow us to think of health, longevity and safety as the only value in this debate, but it means that we miss the bigger picture. Yes, we can count the horrifying number of job losses due to lockdowns, not Covid, but there are more immeasurable aspects to this: unemployment, losing one’s savings and bankruptcy. It is not just about money; it robs people of dignity, agency and sense of worth. It demoralises people: they feel useless.
Yes, we can count the number of elderly and vulnerable lives allegedly protected by lockdowns, but how do you measure the cruelty of locking up so many people in, effectively, solitary confinement, deprived of love and stimulation? You can count the rising number of Covid cases, but it is not a sign of libertine recklessness that millions are bereft because they are denied conviviality, civil society and time with their mates in the pub, football and so on—it is called civil society; it is called society.
However, the greatest value sacrificed is our attack on freedom: it is not just the frightening number of new laws, micromanaging our lives, or the relentless attacks on freedom of association in churches, our own homes or on protests; it is worse than that. It is political leaders behaving like little emperors, throwing the public scraps of freedom for good behaviour, expecting them to be grateful and then grasping them back for misdemeanours. Citizens are rendered helpless, expected to be happy that they have been given a mere five days as a Christmas dispensation. Do you know how demeaning and frustrating it is to feel that one’s destiny is in the hands of SAGE behavioural psychologists who believe that board games and Christmas shopping are an existential threat to society?
All this seems so counterproductive—that is my point. Remember, politicians are asking society to do something historically unprecedented.
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, I need to remind the noble Baroness of the time limit.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
I am sorry; I lost track of time. I got distracted. Noble Lords have got the gist. Some people say I am mad; I appeal to the Government to turn back to the people—the citizens—to trust them and not be distracted by the opposition.
Coronavirus Act 2020 (Expiry of Mental Health Provisions) (England and Wales) Regulations 2020
Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts(3 years, 12 months ago)
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Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
I warmly welcome the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton. I know that he is well respected by trade unionists outside this place and he will bring to us a refreshing brand of politics. We will not always agree, but I like someone who gives us a feisty challenge. He cannot possibly have got lost here as often as I have done as a new girl in the past few weeks, so if I find the noble Lord, I will try to put him on the right track, although that will probably get him even more lost.
For once, I want to congratulate the Government on rolling back a piece of legislation. Indeed, I hope that we will see a lot more of this because it seems that so much of the Coronavirus Act 2020 is draconian, disproportionate and frighteningly illiberal. Even the assurance that it is temporary or for an emergency is of little consolation. I would personally expire the whole Act, but perhaps the Minister could start by looking again, as has already mentioned, at the provisions in Schedule 12 that also severely weaken the statutory protection for the vulnerable.
The need to protect the vulnerable against an overweening and arbitrary state power is exactly why Schedule 8 was always such an egregious and frightening position. For good reason, sectioning people is made difficult. The power to deprive individuals of their liberty under the aegis of mental health and for their own good has a sinister history: think of the lunatic asylums of the past, the Soviet use of psychiatric hospitals, and so on. We are right not to section people lightly, but perhaps the Minister could reflect on a number of unresolved ironies.
Lockdowns themselves are an example of the state depriving the whole citizenry of their liberty under the veil of public health. Locked up and locked down is a thin line in my view. Can the Minister assure us that when the lockdown ends on 2 December, it will not happen again? One worry about Schedule 8 has been the extension of the length of time that the mentally ill can be incarcerated on the say of one doctor. My worry is the endless and never-ending extension of the length of time that society is incarcerated on the say of one—dare I say?—Matt Hancock.
Will the Minister comment on the devastating impact that we have heard about so eloquently from fellow noble Lords that lockdown measures have caused a lot of damage to mental health in the community. Many, both young and old, are consumed with anxiety, deprived of their autonomy, subject to a form of solitary confinement and feel lonely and isolated. There is also fear not only of the virus but about the cataclysmic effect of lockdown on jobs and livelihoods.
Sufferers of dementia in care homes are locked away from families and stimulation, leading to a deterioration in their mental capacity, and in some instances, tragically, to premature death. In other words, lockdown and its ugly sister, tiering, are bad for the mental health of the well, let alone the mentally ill.
I have a final question. I note with horror that the Welsh Government are not expiring Schedule 8. Will the Minister do what he can to cajole or persuade his counterparts in the Senedd as soon as possible? I declare an interest as I am from north Wales, but I find it rather shameful that the mentally ill in Wales seem to need safeguarding from their own Parliament.
Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions) (England) (No. 4) Regulations 2020
Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts(4 years ago)
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Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, it is hard to follow that. We have heard important and shocking contributions, exposing the flaws in the reliability of the evidence and forecasts used, but I want to make a plea that we do not just get trapped in evidence wars. We have just heard a fine example of why values matter, along with principles such as freedom.
I have been nervous about how enthusiastically and gleefully so many government Ministers have taken to drafting draconian measures, selling them to the public as though their belief in freedom could just be dispensed with. I have been disappointed by the opposition Benches in the other place, whose only regret at the illiberal measures is that they were not brought in sooner, harder, longer and scarier. A tax on freedom appeared to be fine if it is funded. I say this because it is important that we do not let values get forgotten and find ourselves trapped in seeing the world only through Covid eyes and evidence eyes, discussing things only in relation to science.
The Government need to shake off the mindset of the technocrat. They completely overlook the real lives of ordinary people. That was brought home to me by that public health pundit on the TV recently who raged at the stupidity of those members of the public who wanted to breach regulations for the sake of a roast dinner. When we get people in charge who cannot tell the difference between a roast dinner and Christmas Day, we are in trouble. He did not understand that the priorities that scientists might have, in a narrow way, might be different from those of the rest of us. Individuals are not reducible to data points on a graph, whether it is a dodgy graph or an accurate one. Lived lives are more than statistical talking points.
I urge government Ministers to talk to people, and I want them to note that that is not the same as polling them. Noble Lords might notice that polling people does not get accurate evidence or results. Many who are scared that their loved ones might catch the virus want to balance risk themselves. They want to say that there is more to life than physical health and that saving lives is not the only end, but that quality of life matters. Often the elderly are being robbed of their agency and used as a stage army to justify this lockdown, when their quality of life is completely compromised as they are cruelly denied access to their families—they are lonely and neglected.
The Minister mentioned in his introduction that these measures are time-limited, but my problem is that the wrong-headed measures will have long-term impacts on the community. They will rip the heart out of civil society if the Government are not careful, and they will not be able to roll it back. What could the impact be if we coerce people to turn their backs on their neighbours, families and friends and leave people cruelly isolated? Saying to the young and the fit, “Don’t go near the elderly or you’ll be accused of killing Granny” will have a long-term demoralising impact. Talk to the public; do not blame them, but realise that this measure of lockdown is knocking the stuffing out of people.
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 2) (England) (Amendment) (No. 5) Regulations 2020
Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to speak for the first time in your Lordships’ House. I thank all the wonderful staff here, especially the security guards, who have taken me under their wing and ensured that I have found everywhere from the Salisbury Room to the smoking outpost, and of course to the doorkeepers, who have gone out of their way to find me a seat each day so that I can watch the Chamber close up and learn.
I am particularly honoured that my two supporters are both renowned public intellectuals whom I have admired for years: the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, whose invaluable educational research has ensured that those young people who do not go to university are not forgotten, focusing on the importance of training and the further education sector, where I lectured for many years; and the noble Lord, Lord Glasman, who has long been an inspiration, with his advocacy of communities and their values, and who never shies away from speaking truth to power.
And I thank you, my Lords, for being gracious enough to accept me. Let us be frank: my appointment is not uncontentious. I believe in speaking frankly, but mainly I stand before you as a democrat. While I am not formally accountable, I consider myself answerable to over half a million voters who elected me as a Brexit Party MEP for the north-west, and to the millions who recently declared forcefully, “We want more control over our laws, our lives, our liberties”.
These aspirations might have been temporarily suspended by emergency measures such as those being discussed today. However, the new normal should not mean riding roughshod over people’s freedom. Civil liberties, hard fought for by our forebears, should not be dismissed as a secondary inconvenience, some libertarian eccentricity. Regulations that pose a threat to the livelihoods, social bonds and public life of our fellow citizens need the fullest possible debate.
Debate is the bedrock of democracy and close to my heart. In 2000, inspired by the Enlightenment slogan “nullius in verba”—“on the word of no one”—I set up the Academy of Ideas. Since then, we have organised myriad conferences, salons, the annual Battle of Ideas festival and an international school debating competition, all to expand the boundaries of public debate.
However, debate is increasingly threatened by the mantra, “You can’t say that”. Friday’s barbaric beheading of a teacher in Paris is an extreme example of a growing censorious climate in which saying, “I find that offensive”, is used to silence people. I hope I will find allies in this House, with centuries of debate to its name, who will challenge this new cancel culture, which makes many fearful of speaking their minds.
Meanwhile, the assumption that there is only one correct view, whether on statues or lockdowns, makes a mockery of freedom of conscience. There is not only one way to deal with this pandemic, in fact, so let us not shy away from difficult conversations. Physical lockdown should not mean that free speech is locked down. I hope this House will lead robust national debates on Covid, but also on threats to freedom of expression itself. I am glad to be with you.