Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (North East of England) Regulations 2020

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Monday 12th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, I share the sentiments of the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, about the weight on the Minister’s shoulders, and I have every sympathy with him. However, I share the qualms of the noble Baroness, Lady Morrissey, that we might be pursuing the wrong course, inflicting untold damage on our country in misguided efforts to fight the virus. But having embarked on this course, the Government have done so in a manner that has just caused confusion, because they themselves act in a confused manner. It is no wonder that the country is bemused.

Others have stressed the unsatisfactory test and trace system. Back in May, when the system was launched, we were told that test and trace was going to be the way that we would solve this problem. It was crucial. We were going to have a world-beating system. When that did not appear to be the case, the Prime Minister stated on 22 September:

“Testing and tracing has very little or nothing to do with the spread or the transmission of the disease. The spread and the transmission of the disease is caused by contact between human beings and all the things that we are trying to minimise.”


He went on to say:

“Of course NHS Test and Trace is vital”.—[Official Report, Commons, 22/9/20; col. 822.]

Test and trace is vital, and simply changing the rhetoric does not mean that it is any less important than it was in May, when it was launched. We need to get it working properly, which certainly is not the case at the moment.

The lack of logic in what the Government do is what really leaves people puzzled and often failing to comply with the regulations. For instance, we know that we are about to hear some fairly drastic changes to the way in which the Covid regulations are working, with a three-tier system. But we first got wind of that three-tier system a week ago. Seven days is a long time in a fight against a virus. Why did we have to wait seven days listening to rumour and conjecture before this becomes operative? If it is important and it needs doing, why not have a sense of urgency and move fast?

The lack of logic is in every aspect. We have heard time after time in this Chamber how local authorities, which have to cope with the 10 pm curfew, would like to see a clamp-down on off-licence and supermarket sales of alcohol, instead of encouraging people to leave restaurants and pubs at 10 pm and simply go drinking in groups elsewhere. There is no logic in that. We need to start applying common sense.

Finally, how can we expect anybody to stick to regulations that simply resort to gobbledygook? In those that we are currently looking at, it states that

“food or drink sold by a hotel or other accommodation as part of room service is not to be treated as being sold for consumption on its premises.”

This is nonsense. How can we expect anybody to comply with such gobbledygook?