Covid-19

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

I am grateful for the noble Lord’s fascinating mathematics, but there are other principles at stake here and I am not quite sure that his arithmetic can be leaned upon. One of those principles is personal responsibility. We cannot pay the entire nation a huge wage to stay at home for the entire epidemic; we have neither the cash resources nor the value base to do that. We must look to people to do the right thing. If we do not, we will end up with a country that is dependent on the Exchequer for its money and has the wrong values for the kind of enterprise economy that we need to build to get out of this epidemic.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Does the Minister realise that the imposition of a 10-year prison sentence for providing an inaccurate travel history on Covid forms is wholly disproportionate? Existing powers should not be misused for this purpose. Such a measure would require proper reflection and parliamentary debate, and it should therefore be in a new Bill if the Government wish to persist with it. In the meantime, will the Minister amend the present proposals significantly?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

I do not agree with my noble friend on this in any way—fraud is fraud. If you put people in danger, you deserve to serve the consequences. It will be up to either the magistrate or the Crown Court to determine the sentence. The sentence is laid out in law, not by me or any new measure. Those who put the entire nation at risk by bringing variants of concern into the country should be aware that the courts may take an extremely dim view of their actions.