Covid-19: Removal of Restrictions

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Tuesday 21st April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell]

The noble Lord is right that the British public have been incredibly diligent, and I commend all those who have followed the guidelines to stay at home for the impact they have had on the infection rate and the mortality rate. However, we cannot fool ourselves into thinking that the epidemic is over. We have to be clear with, and level with, the public that any changes in the guidelines are some way off, and that they will be presented to the public when our understanding of the medium-term strategy is clear.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for the answer that he has just given, but it still begs the question of why the Government are treating the British public as if they were children. I am sure that it would be possible for them to share their thinking, even at this stage. My question concerns testing. Professor Paul Nurse, director of the Francis Crick Institute, said on 19 March about the way to deliver vital testing at scale:

“Institutes like ours are coming together with a Dunkirk spirit—small boats that collectively can have a huge impact on the national endeavour.”


Does the Minister agree with that approach? Can he tell the House when the Government will be able to utilise all the laboratory capacity, which will ensure mass testing and tracing, and will speed up the likelihood of an exit from the current lockdown?

[Lord Bethell]

The noble Baroness is entirely right. I have spoken to Paul Nurse and commend the Crick Institute on the work it has done to build up the remarkable capacity of 2,000 tests a day. However, there are practical issues with the “Dunkirk spirit”. There are enormous logistical challenges in getting swabs and serology to laboratories. There are logistical problems with them registering the correct patient details and then getting the responses back. We have made substantial advances—the Crick Institute has been a pioneer in this—in bringing industrial levels of organisation both to the very large number of tests done each day and to the logistical backbone necessary to process those results.