Covid-19: One Year Report

Baroness Jolly Excerpts

Thursday 25th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jolly (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I too support the regret Motion in the name of my noble friend Lady Brinton, and I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, speaks for many of us.

Many of my noble friends have covered the legislative points that I would have made. Trusting in their liberalism, I will look at this from a practical viewpoint. As things stand, overseas travel for pleasure is illegal. From 15 February, all arrivals at English, Scottish and Welsh airports and seaports are required to undertake two mandatory Covid-19 tests: one on day 2 and another on day 8 of their 10-day quarantine. All passengers, no matter which country they have travelled from, are already required to provide proof of a negative Covid-19 test, taken no more than three days before departure, and must self-isolate on arrival. A passenger locator form must also be completed, with fines ranging from £5,000 to £10,000 for failing to quarantine in a government-approved hotel or at home. Can the Minister tell us whether local government are leading on this work? How many quarantining arrivals slip the net? How many people are required to pay those eye-watering fines?

This system is not peculiar to travellers arriving in the UK. My son, who holds dual British and Australian nationality, has just quarantined in a Sydney hotel, at his own expense, prior to starting a job. After leaving the plane, he and all the other passengers were marched to a bus and delivered to the hotel. I understand that the plane was nearly empty of passengers. Can the Minister tell us what overseas examples were examined when our quarantine and test and trace systems were being set up? There are plenty of examples to look at, yet we ended up with a botched app which failed to work. Not once was I sent a warning notification via the app, yet I cannot believe that I never came close to a Covid risk.

We did not need to start from square one with this. There were plenty of good examples from across Europe and beyond, and I am sure that many noble Lords saw the “Panorama” programme broadcast last Monday. Several south Asian countries are acknowledged as good examples in dealing with Covid. The state of Kerala in India gave local, non-clinical community support to those extended families who were self-isolating, and the population at large were given out umbrellas that doubled as parasols but which, more importantly, were also automatic self-distancing devices.

The approach by South Korea was impressive. President Moon Jae-in spoke of the need for trust and calm. I am not sure how much trust and calm were around in the Department of Health and Social Care during the last year. The South Korean approach to Covid-19 was helped by experience in 2015 of MERS, another coronavirus, which claimed 38 lives. There was no lockdown, no businesses closed, and no hospitals were overwhelmed. Their track and trace systems were ready to go, but so were the regulations introduced for small and medium pharmaceutical companies to produce test kits very quickly. This measure meant that 120,000 tests could be carried out daily almost straight away, whereas the UK struggled to hit its initial target of 10,000.

Countries that have implemented successful test, trace and isolate systems have seen fewer cases and far fewer deaths and have built the trust needed to encourage a culture of voluntary compliance with the rules. It might be worth looking at this as, despite their best efforts, many think that a third wave is inevitable. An isolation policy will only work with an effective long-term local test and trace system, which will need to be in place to handle any outbreaks, whether small or large.

I echo the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, in congratulating the hundreds of volunteers who have delivered vaccines on their days off to countless older and vulnerable people. Those of us who have received our first vaccine know the sense of relief, which was almost instant; it is the first real step out of this bad dream. In light of the new truce, is the Minister confident that we can get our second AstraZeneca jab in early May? There is much concern in the community of older people. What is the department’s plan B? I hope that we will be back to business as usual next year, but I would not place a bet on it.