Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme: BAME Communities
Debate between Baroness Penn and Lord Dobbs
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, the Government take the issue extremely seriously. A number of different factors feed into this. On the vulnerability of people from black and minority-ethnic communities to the virus itself, work was done by Public Health England and there is follow-up work being undertaken, including asking every NHS trust to undertake risk assessments and then take action to mitigate those risks. On the equality impact assessment, an assessment was done under the Government’s public sector equality duty of both the CJRS and its successor schemes.
Lord Dobbs (Con) [V]
My Lords, we are using lockdown to fight Covid, but lockdown itself costs lives, costs jobs and denies futures. Those damaged most by lockdown are the poor, who include so many among the BAME communities: it is the poor who pay so much of the price. Does my noble friend accept that there is at least a case—one that some of us feel is increasingly persuasive—that we cannot simply carry on with the endless cycle of lockdown after lockdown, which effectively does far too much of the disease’s dirty work for it by putting the poor in BAME and other communities at greatest risk?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, of course the Government want to move forward from that approach. That is why we have invested so much in the development of vaccines and why we are working on improving test and trace. The reality is that there are health costs to lockdowns as well as economic costs, but at the same time there are economic costs if we do not get the virus under control. People do not have the confidence to go out and participate in our economy. We are seeking to find the right balance between those, at all times, in our response.
Economic Outlook and Furlough Scheme Changes
Debate between Baroness Penn and Lord Dobbs
Baroness Penn
My Lords, the Government are providing more support to businesses to reopen safely. A specific fund is available for getting high streets open safely. We are also putting additional funding into the Health and Safety Executive to ensure that any enforcement action necessary can be taken.
Lord Dobbs (Con) [V]
The furlough system is delaying rather than solving the epidemic of unemployment about to hit us, particularly among our young. A prime cause of this disastrous loss of jobs is the two-metre rule, which is increasingly ignored by many and in any event is based on science that is widely questioned. May I beg the Government to take their courage in their hands, balance one risk against another, scrap the two-metre rule and in its place issue guidelines that rely primarily on the great common sense that the vast majority of people always show?
Baroness Penn
My noble friend will be aware that the PM has commissioned a comprehensive review of the two-metre guidance. It will take advice from a range of experts, including the CMO, the CSA, behavioural scientists and economists. That work will be completed in the coming weeks.