Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2020

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Monday 15th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing these Covid-19 regulations and all the speakers this evening. Tonight’s debate is taking place at the wrong time. We are being asked to approve amendments retrospectively for the second time. We will have a third lot in about a week and possibly a fourth at the beginning of July. These are the second amendments. We will take the third amendments on 25 June. If the JCSI manages to get through the fourth set of amendments we might get to take them on 25 June, but it is more likely that it will be at the beginning of July.

The regulations before us were created and signed into law on 13 May and discussed in the Commons on 10 June. As noble Lords have said, it is far too late to make any difference to these regulations. Indeed, they include the closure of zoos and safari parks—a decision that the Government have now reversed.

While Parliament did not hear a Statement about the changes in May, as several noble Lords have remarked, the media did from the Prime Minister. That might not seem like a big deal in the middle of a crisis, but it means that we have seen neither the supporting scientific advice nor the impact assessment. The Government have not laid a document setting out how their five tests on relaxation have been met, and the joint biosecurity centre has not reduced the threat level. The MoD’s chief scientific adviser, Dame Angela McLean, has stated that changes to lockdown as modelled need a highly effective track, trace and isolate system to be in place. This does not fill me with confidence.

In global terms, the UK has experienced one of the highest death rates for Covid-19. While the official total is just over 40,000, ONS data suggest that there were more like 50,000 excess deaths during the crisis period. The mortality rate has been more than twice as high in the most deprived areas of England compared with the wealthiest. The Government have been criticised during the debate over PPE and ventilator procurement, and the timing and implementation of lockdown. Older citizens appear to have been sacrificed in their care homes, with a slow lockdown and lack of testing. Children’s education and mental health are in jeopardy because of the lack of leadership and resources in education. Today, we learned that 1.5 million children might be hungry over the summer because free school meals will not be available.

Meanwhile, the state of the economy is deeply worrying. Indeed, Covid-19 has laid bare the structural inequalities at the core of our democracy. Hidden under the headline figures are huge differences in the death rates among specific groups, as several noble Lords mentioned. An early report by the Intensive Care National Audit & Research Centre found that BAME people, who comprise only 14% of the population, constitute 35% of the fatalities from Covid.

We are all aware that these regulations come during yet another crucial phase in the fight against coronavirus and, of course, we all wish that they were not necessary, but sadly we know that these restrictions are required due to the ongoing and serious threats to public health. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, said, the original regulations were not debated for many weeks after they were introduced, despite the fact that Parliament was sitting. Debating them weeks after the event, when they have already been superseded, as we have heard, is frankly a bit of an insult to Parliament, and yet further evidence that the Government are not doing things in a timely fashion. There is no excuse for this. Surely we can have a clear timetable.

May I ask the Minister for sight of the reviews? My honourable friend Justin Madders MP asked in a Written Question whether the Secretary of State would publish the reviews carried out on 16 April, 7 May and 28 May. He received this Answer on 9 June, the day before the debate in the Commons, which said:

“The Department of Health and Social Care has indicated that it will not be possible to answer this question within the usual … period.”


This is not accountability. There is a failure to allow Parliament to do its job of scrutiny. Here we have the most far-reaching impositions on the life of this country in peacetime—necessary actions that are not being properly scrutinised by Parliament. Will the Minister commit to putting the reviews in the Library?

I hope that on this occasion, the Minister will not say again how hard everyone is working. We know that he is working incredibly hard. We know that everybody is working incredibly hard, and we would all commend that. Labour has been pretty clear that we want the Government to succeed in tackling this horrible virus. So, I implore the Minister to take these questions about accountability, effectiveness and leadership as not undermining the national effort but as legitimate scrutiny.

Given all of the above concerns, a crisis of this scale will of course warrant a full public inquiry, but that will be complex and take time. In the short term, and as a precursor to that inquiry, perhaps we need a rapid exercise in learning the lessons to ensure that the Government are better prepared for a potential second wave of infection and to understand better how to hold it at bay. Does the Minister agree?