Living with Covid-19
Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
I entirely agree with my noble friend and, as I said, we will be producing further guidance in advance of the end of March, when free testing, for the vast majority of the general public, comes to an end. We will also be publishing further details about the high-risk settings and groups who will be eligible for continued free testing.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, good riddance to the draconian Coronavirus Act, but could the Government commit to reviewing public health laws which have been used so damagingly to attack civil liberties? Secondly, beyond rolling back laws, how are the Government planning to counter disproportionate fears and risk aversion? The nudging seems to have been rather too successful in frightening people. For example, so many in care homes are still not allowing family members to see relatives and there are miserable rules in place which are the opposite of homely and welcoming. This matter is beyond laws—there is a lot of encouraging to do.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
I agree with the noble Baroness, and that is why we will continue with public health campaigns, as we have seen in the past. We will also be reiterating to the public the safe behaviours we have learnt: the washing of hands; improved hygiene; ventilation; and all those other measures that we can take which do not involve restrictions on people’s lives but which can help ensure we keep Covid at bay—which is what we all want.
Covid-19
Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts(4 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
As I have already said in answer to previous questions, almost 8 million tests are being made available to pharmacies in this week alone, and we are increasing our supply of lateral flow tests from 100 million to 300 million over January and February.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, there is a slight panic in the House about the non-affiliated. I am glad to hear a new emphasis that lockdown is not cost-free, but that devastating toll is present with these restrictions too. Can the Minister comment on whether there is an impact assessment on, for example, working from home guidance and effectively closing down city and town centres and the impact that this has on jobs and livelihoods for the people who work there? On the pressures on the NHS, is there more detailed evidence of how many people are actively being hospitalised by this new variant of Covid rather than being in hospital already and testing positive for it? That is not at all clear in the Statement but it makes a difference as to how frightened people might be of it.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
Of course we understand that the rise of omicron has been very challenging, particularly for certain sectors and businesses, which is why we have announced a £1 billion support package to help those affected. We have provided £683 million for targeted grants of up to £6,000 per premises for hospitality and leisure businesses, and provided an additional £30 million for the Culture Recovery Fund. We have also given a £100-million boost to the additional restrictions fund for local authorities in England. We are well aware of the issues, and obviously that is within the context of the huge economic support that we have provided throughout the pandemic. The pressures on the NHS are indeed considerable but we need to remember that we are in a much better position this year, not least because of the 133 million vaccine doses, including 34 million boosters, that have been administered. We need to keep that going forward in the right direction so that we can try to relieve the pressure on the NHS as much as we can.
Procedure and Privileges
Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I came into this House during the hybrid measures, so for me, this has been normal. Despite the nightmare descriptions of bullying, bear-pit Question Time—although I am not sure why the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, thinks that women are always the victims of this—I do not want the hybrid House, however ingeniously conceived or executed by the wonderful staff, to ever become the new normal again, because it is bad for democratic accountability.
I have attended physically as much as possible. As I have been focusing on apprenticeships in preparation for the skills Bill, it has reminded me that no matter how much you study the theory or the rules, it is best to learn on the job. May I take this opportunity—it is cheating, I know—to say that as an apprentice Peer, I have made every mistake in the book? I have stood at the wrong times, faced the wrong way during Prayers, made Second Reading speeches in Committee, confused Committee stage with Report, missed my supplementary questions and voted against my intentions by pressing the incorrect button. I apologise, and noble Lords might think that I would be glad to cover my embarrassment by having a near-empty Chamber, but actually it was the graciousness of those physically here in person—Peers, clerks and doorkeepers—who took me to one side and gently corrected me, that helped me get the hang of it; slowly. My point is that through real-life interactions, you can learn the ropes. Zoom will never replace the pressure of human interactions or the importance of informal chats.
This is perhaps a clue as to why, if you want to encourage Valuing Everyone—or, indeed, anyone—mandating a tick-box online training course is a shoddy substitute for creating an offline culture of open discussions about difficult and challenging behaviour. By the way, whoever thought that the punishment for non-attendance of a course allegedly designed to improve relations with staff should be to ban those Peers from all face-to-face communications with the same staff perhaps needs to attend a course in valuing common sense. Crucially, the fact that the controversies about Valuing Everyone and the punitive and unfair responses to non-attendance have not been fully debated or argued about in this House feels like the epitome of what has been lacking here in recent months.
In a scathing article in the Times, Iain Martin wrote of a “ghost Parliament”. He quoted one MP who talked of Chambers “full of negative energy” or “drained of energy”. I agreed with the article’s critique that some were too keen to treat Parliament as a normal workplace and not keen enough, even now, to return to normal. If ever there was a good excuse for an “us versus them” rule exemption, surely it would have been to honour the public by ensuring scrutiny and pushback against the Government removing people’s liberties so easily. I therefore wish that the proceedings had been less hybrid and that these Chambers had been packed.
At the very time when the Executive needed to be prodded, probed and interrogated over the 457 statutory instruments controlling every aspect of public life, Parliament was reduced to stultifying and formulaic set speeches read out—and, yes, I am reading mine out; it is a bad habit—often non-sequiturs, with no ability to push each other for clarity or to dig deeply into Ministers’ answers or explanations. What has been lost is the meaningful, interactive spontaneity that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and so many other noble Lords have discussed. That has been a loss for democracy. In that, we need to change. Even now, I worry about a slothful return to spontaneity and normal. Should not these Benches be packed to the gunnels on 19 July, rather than waiting until September? Even in that last week, surely there are plenty of worrying developments that need our fullest attention, with renewed talk of vaccine certification via security data collection and surprise votes on mandatory vaccines for care workers.
Do we not need to be here—all of us—to hold the Government’s feet to the fire on all this? Surely, it would be a real show of leadership in encouraging a full-time return to work among the public if we led by example.
Finally, speaking of the public, I relish the return to the estate of the banished public. Both Houses need to feel the presence and pressure of hordes of lobbyists—not the paid variety but the constituents, lobbying MPs and Peers on matters of urgency, and the grass-roots activists denied the right to look parliamentarians in the eye and challenge them to account for decisions. I look forward to filling the place up with groups of sixth-formers, full of awkward-squad teenagers stroppily asking why the House of Lords should not be abolished —a fair enough question—and activists from across the country and across political divides demanding answers and actions. Without the public valuably putting both Houses under pressure, Parliament is denied its lifeblood and raison d’être. We owe it to the public to resume normal business as urgently as possible on their behalf.