Coronavirus Act 2020: Temporary Provisions

Earl of Erroll Excerpts
Monday 28th September 2020

(3 years, 6 months ago)

Lords Chamber
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Earl of Erroll Portrait The Earl of Erroll (CB) [V]
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My Lords, I want to talk quickly about the problems arising from this great lockdown. It is bankrupting businesses at the moment. People are losing money as they have to cancel with no compensation. The fine versus the average wage is quite enormous, and for ordinary people that must be crippling. Families are being torn apart. A dying 96 year-old who I have been told about cannot see his granddaughter. What a miserable way to die. It is not the hospitality industry that fuels the growth, it is the fact that people have a need to socialise, which will overrule many things. Cromwell cancelled Christmas and ignored Parliament. Do this Government want that to be how they are remembered?

I know this sounds a bit one-sided, but the trouble is that you cannot just deal with diseases by trying to shut everyone away. They will spread. I am interested that Sweden still appears to be on track—with a few blips, but in general it is trending downwards. Perhaps there is something in the fact that the human body can build up immunities to the virus, as with many other diseases, and populations can build up immunities slowly. Sadly, not everyone will be able to, but what is the greater good? The other big problem for people is that no one can plan. It is very unsettling and upsetting, particularly for people with Asperger’s, autism and Down’s syndrome, like one of my daughters. They usually see certainty in their plans and get very upset, which affects their mental health, if they cannot.

As for the problems with the ways around the virus that the Government are looking at, with test and trace you find out four days later and you have been close to hundreds of people. That soon gets unmanageable if you are to lock everyone down the whole time. Mass testing means more false positives. Would people be resistant or would there be more positives? Some people will be resistant with T-cells and immunity. We do not know much about it. Locking everyone away is not necessarily the solution. It is interesting: if you tested all 68 million people in the UK and you got just 1% false positives—that is what people think—you would have 680,000 people locked down unnecessarily, plus their immediate bubbles. It will cripple us.

I was thinking about the effect on climate change. There is very good advice about opening all the windows: get the air moving through. It takes the disease away— quite right. What about EPCs and all the buildings that are hermetically sealed now? I think we may have been building wrong for a while.

I shall run through some figures very quickly. We have 68 million people, as I said, with 23 million tested so far, 435,000 positives, and only 42,000 deaths. New cancer drugs are being delayed in the meantime, and diagnoses are declining drastically. I read that on 21 April the Covid daily death toll was 1,166; yesterday it was 17. Are we not winning the battle to a large extent? Around 450 people a day die of cancer. Is that not a bigger problem? The trouble is that government regulations have, as far as cancer is concerned, halted or drastically delayed drug development. Which should we be worrying about? Why are we destroying the future for what was our population of whatever it was—33 million with 5 million self-employed? This could end up being a pyrrhic victory, and that is what worries me.

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

Earl of Erroll Excerpts
Friday 25th September 2020

(3 years, 6 months ago)

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Earl of Erroll Portrait The Earl of Erroll (CB) [V]
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My Lords, like many others, I am very worried about the long-term wider effect of these regulations. I have been talking to friends in Northumberland. All their plans lie in tatters. Money has been spent that is now wasted. Hard-earned income has been destroyed. They are feeling rebellious. We must let our citizens know that they can plan ahead with certainty. People are asking whether Christmas will happen. For many people, quality of life is more important than pure safety, but it is the job of the public service to treat safety as paramount, and this leads to predictions of doom. This is why we must involve politicians who realise that these restrictions must be balanced against the long-term damage that the regulations cause. For instance, in the Times I read in early April said that the Covid daily death toll was 854. At the beginning of this week it said it was 17. On the same day 450 people died of cancer, but government regulations have, for cancer, halted or drastically delayed drug development. Where is the sense of proportion in the priorities? Are the Executive ordering us into a Pyrrhic victory?

Covid-19: Response

Earl of Erroll Excerpts
Tuesday 19th May 2020

(3 years, 10 months ago)

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Lord Bethell Portrait Lord Bethell
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My Lords, we work extremely closely with the devolved Assemblies, the four CMOs and the four nations to have a consistent four-nations approach to Covid. We very much welcome Nicola Sturgeon’s support for this consistent approach.

Earl of Erroll Portrait The Earl of Erroll (CB)
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How are vaccines going to work if, as the Government say, the presence of Covid-19 antibodies in a test do not mean that a person is immune? I think that quite a few people are confused.

Lord Bethell Portrait Lord Bethell
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My Lords, the noble Earl is stretching my scientific knowledge with his question. All I can say is that different vaccines work in different ways. Anyone with antibodies who has beaten the disease has the capability of beating the disease, but vaccines ensure that that capability lasts longer, hopefully for life.

Covid-19: Personal Protective Equipment

Earl of Erroll Excerpts
Thursday 23rd April 2020

(3 years, 11 months ago)

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Lord Bethell Portrait Lord Bethell
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The noble Lord makes an entirely reasonable and common-sense request. It is one that I have put to officials myself. The practicalities of PPE are that you have to be prepared to be covered in large amounts of human fluids and for the garments to be waterproof against their impact. Staff are uncomfortable with wearing garments that may have been used in that way previously. In order to maintain levels of hygiene and to rid them of disease, it is very difficult to reuse them. However, we have a committee looking at the potential for reuse, which will be reporting shortly.

Earl of Erroll Portrait The Earl of Erroll (CB)
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How does the NHS expect to be able to buy PPE when it insists on paying 30 days after delivery, when everyone else is paying upfront, especially internationally? This applies both when we want to import and to pre-empt export. It might explain the interruption in the Turkish supply chain.

Lord Bethell Portrait Lord Bethell
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My Lords, the question of payment is a relevant one. We have put in place new facilities for different means of payment, but I just alert noble Lords to the very large amount of fraud that exists in this marketplace at the moment. I am aware of several police inquiries into situations where providers have sought early or upfront payment. We have to protect both the patients from failure to deliver and the taxpayer regarding value for money