Health Protection (Coronavirus, Wearing of Face Coverings in a Relevant Place) (England) Regulations 2020

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Friday 18th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton. As I said in previous debates, we should not be debating these regulations so long after their introduction. Nevertheless, the debates we do have are important. I am convinced that the persistence of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, in helping the Government shift their position on face masks, albeit grudgingly, has saved lives. One just wishes that face masks, like so many other measures, had been introduced earlier than they were.

I have recently been travelling by train quite a bit and taking the tube. From my experience, South Western Railway is not doing a bad job. At present, trains are long enough to socially distance and there are regular announcements by guards on the trains. Mask wearing is now the norm on station concourses such as Waterloo, as I asked the Government for in July. One thing I will ask the Minister to take a look at is that you never see sanitising gel dispensers anywhere near ticket machines. It might be advisable to carry your own bottle, but not everyone will.

Most people comply with mask wearing, at least in the locations so far legislated for, but a minority still do not, even considering exemptions. This week, I counted four separate individuals in one uncrowded tube carriage not wearing masks. Some railway workers and shop workers, who often stack shelves and are therefore out in the open, are not doing so either. It is not mandatory, but it is inconsistent.

Wearing masks protects others. One wishes that the Government believed in this measure more, but the equivocal stance they take makes room for naysayers, including celebrities. The science is not ambiguous, as the Minister quoted the CMO as saying this week. I ask him to look at the summary by Jeremy Howard and Trisha Greenhalgh of more than 100 studies concluding the effectiveness of masks. In March, the head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said that the mistake Europeans were making was not wearing them. This week, the virologist Robert Redfield, director of the United States CDCP, said that face masks might be a more effective tool in limiting the spread of Covid than a vaccine. This begs the question of how masks could be deployed further to tackle the increase in cases we are now seeing. I suggest this could include groups of schoolchildren walking to and from school.

I also ask the Minster to take a look at a new study from Florida Atlantic University, which concludes that cloth masks are significantly more effective than either visors or masks with valves. Droplets get in under visors. Visors look smart, but too many are using them as an alternative, rather than an additional form of protection, as is mandatory for hairdressers. The Government’s guidance does not say much about visors; it could say more.