Gaza: Humanitarian Situation

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Thursday 8th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice (LD)]

My Lords, how should one wind up a debate of such passion and complexity? Jesus summed up the whole of the law and the prophets by saying:

“Love God with all your heart … Love your neighbour as yourself”.


When you next look into the eyes of one of your own children or grandchildren, you will see the miracle of a wonderful human being. You do not want them to suffer, be beaten, shot or blown up, have their limbs amputated without anaesthetic, live in misery or die in agony. That is too awful to contemplate. When you next look at a picture of a child—a Jewish child, a Palestinian child, Muslim or Christian or any other child—are you reminded of your own children, or have you lost that sense of our common humanity? With the killing of innocent children, much less the killing of thousands and thousands of them, there can be no excuses, no exceptions, no caveats and no shifting of the blame to someone else for their deaths. Does the Minister agree that it is not just “the other” who is being killed? Our common humanity is being destroyed.

Living in a COVID World: A Long-term Approach to Resilience and Wellbeing (COVID-19 Committee Report)

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Alderdice (LD)]

My Lords, I will say a word of appreciation on my and the whole committee’s behalf to our chair, who went to enormous lengths to try to make sure that we had the resources, time and staff that we needed. As she has done, I thank them as well. This was not an easy time to produce a substantial report. All of us, the country as a whole and the world community faced all sorts of challenges, but I think we produced something that will be useful, as long as we take it and build on it.

We can learn lessons, but the question is whether we learn the right lessons. A couple of days ago, my wife was talking to a friend in our local village, who realised that she probably had Covid. She did a test and the two red stripes came up, so it was absolutely clear. She then said, “What are the rules for what I do?” As a doctor, I would say that in a situation like this the question is not what the rules are but how you do the right thing for your health and that of those around you. If you have Covid, it is absolutely clear: keep yourself away from others, to protect yourself and them. However, the lesson that this friend had learned from the experience of Covid was not that we should take those reasonable precautions but that we should check out the Government’s current rules. Of course, there are no rules at the moment, because they have understandably left that to the side. For me, the importance of that experience was that we must learn not just lessons but the right lessons, as we might end up learning not necessarily the right ones.

One problem with the way we think in situations of existential threat is that we do not weigh up cost-benefit analysis. The parts of your brain that you use in situations of relative stability—quite literally; you can do fMRI studies of this—are those that weigh up cost and benefit, but the parts that you use when under existential threat operate on the basis of rules that you have previously imbibed. They may or may not be suitable to the situation you are in and the challenges you face. This was one of the many problems we faced in this situation that we could generalise to other situations, including current situations of violence and war. In such circumstances, people do not necessarily weigh up the wisest things to do; they react off how they feel and the rules that they have learned previously.

These changes and challenges are a real problem for the way that we govern. For example, there are some suggestions in our report that we should have more devolution in how we operate. As a good liberal, I entirely agree with that proposition, but I do not agree that that solves all the problems or that it is the only thing.

There are many problems in your Lordships’ House occasioned not just by Covid but by some other developments—for example, the development of digital. The speed with which these changes are taking place is something our whole legislative process simply cannot keep up with. If you begin to develop an idea to address some kind of problem with new technology, then you put out a discussion paper, produce some consultations and then start taking it through the parliamentary process and eventually start putting in some regulations, by the time you have done all of that it has all moved on to another problem. There are very real problems with the whole structure and way we operate and govern. We need to find some way of addressing that. This committee’s report adverts to it but does not study it in detail; it was not the committee to produce answers to those questions. If there is a place where those questions ought to be considered, it is in your Lordships’ House, and I hope we have an opportunity to do that.

There are some things that changed at the time quite remarkably and quickly, and for the better. Noble Lords will all recall that it took no time at all to get through a very thick Bill on Covid at the start, with all the things we had to do and make sure of. As we rushed through all of it—obviously there was a time imperative—I went to the clerk at the end of Third Reading and asked how long it was going to take us to get Royal Assent. He said, “Oh, about half an hour”, and I said “How is that possible? She”—because it was she then—“is out at Windsor Castle”. “Ah”, they said, “she’s agreed to sign it digitally”. I thought to myself, outside of Covid, how many decades of discussion it would have taken to do something like that. But Her Majesty simply decided—quite wisely and sensibly, as she often did—to just do it; she did it, and it was absolutely the right thing to do. There have been helpful advances during Covid that might not have happened or would not have happened so quickly had it not been for the exigencies of the circumstances. That was perhaps one of the more delightful examples.

There were some other examples that were not so encouraging and reassuring. There were some things we had to do at the time but have to find a way back from. I will refer to two medical papers and a book. The first is a paper published in the BMJ in 2021 about face-to-face GP consultations. It says:

“The latest NHS England letter to general practices states that face-to-face appointments should be offered at patient request, which is a U-turn on the previous policy of total virtual triage during the pandemic and”—


this is important—

“potentially conflates patient preference and clinical appropriateness”.

Sometimes the patient will want something that is not appropriate, or vice versa. Those two requirements were not reflected in the revised recommendation. In addition, it said that

“the rapid shift to physical closure of surgeries, digital appointments, and virtual or form-based online triage presented challenges for marginalised patient groups, who already face major barriers to accessing primary care”.

Some of you will have heard of a report from the BMJ, reported in various newspapers today, on how it is quite clear that there are major problems and disadvantages. People’s healthcare is not being as well addressed as it ought to be. I think any of us who have tried to make a GP appointment in many areas—not in every area; there is quite a variation—will know that you are having to wait up until midnight to go online because all the appointments are sorted before then. You then have to go through a completely inappropriate questionnaire on all sorts of things, which leads to completely the wrong outcome. We have to understand that some things had to be done in the emergency situation, but we also have to go back and look at them again in the light of the new circumstances and try to see if they are still appropriate—if ever they were.

It must be said that sometimes we have to pay particular attention to the individual requirements of a patient. A book was published shortly after all this called Psychoanalysis and Covidian Life, which I thought was a marvellous title. It had therapists from various parts of the world talking about their experience and their work. There was one very interesting chapter entitled “Where does the analyst live?”, where the psycho- analyst described how she

“continued her work with a very young autistic girl using mobile phones”,

which she would not necessarily have tried to do previously. This form of communication actually made clinical progress much more possible than face-to-face work, because of the nature of this girl’s disorder. It seemed a really interesting example of how real clinical advances actually were able to result from the challenges of Covidian life. So it is not all bad news—there have been positive and good things happening.

But there were also serious downsides, not least in terms of performance of government. For example, there were lots of strategies and papers produced well in advance of all this about all the kinds of things that we should have available—lots of PPE and lots of ways of operating and so on. The problem was that, when we were not in the middle of a pandemic, they were not actually done. They were all agreed and all on paper, and people had responsibilities for them, but they said, “The budget’s tight at the moment, and I just hope it doesn’t happen on my watch”. When eventually the problem did arise, all the strategies had been prepared but had not been implemented. So when we get a response from government that says that it has this plan, this plan and this plan, it is good to hear that there are plans, but it is not enough. How can we be confident that, faced with another pandemic, or one of the many other frightening circumstances that we are likely to face, things are actually in order and not just there on paper? To say “on paper” is a little bit old hat, really—“digitally available”, perhaps one should say.

In that regard, I want to speak to the Government’s response. I find it disappointing, on a number of fronts. To refer to a few of the recommendations, recommendation 5, for example, is about the problems of disinformation, misinformation and people being misled. Quite rightly, it points up that there are rules that need to be adhered to and developed, but nothing is said about the fact that leading public figures sometimes make misrepresentations that confuse people and create problems. There is nothing in it about how public figures need to be responsible in how they react to things. It is not just a question of rules.

In recommendations 7 and 9, we say that there is an importance to having some redundancy of provision in public services—in other words, that hospital beds are not 100% full, or even 98% full because, if you do that and something happens, you get all the problems that you have seen with people being unable to get into hospital because there is no built-in redundancy. I remember that, when my wife and I came into the health service and started working, we were talking with her father, who was a bank manager, and explained about the staffing system—that, at best, we would have 100% of the staff places filled. He said, “That’s crazy. In the bank, we have an extra 15% to 20% of staff, because you always know that some people will be off ill or off training, and some people will be doing other things”. I told him that we did not even have the 100%, never mind 120%. So there needs to be more built-in redundancy. The notion that the highest level of efficiency is making sure that there is absolutely nothing wasted means that, when it comes to a crisis, you have absolutely no possibility of addressing it properly. However, the Government’s response to the recommendation goes through all the things that the Cabinet Office says, and so on. I get the sense with that response, as with a lot of the others, that they were cut and pasted from some other document, because there is absolutely no reference at all to the specific recommendation for redundancy.

Then we come to the question of continuing professional development—for example in recommendations 19 and 20, where the report talks about

“preparing teachers and medical professionals to deliver online”.

So again, from somewhere or other, there are a number of paragraphs in response about the continuing professional development of teachers, but nothing about medical people and nothing about their development online. Again, it just looks as if something has been cut and pasted from somewhere else. This is really not the kind of response that we would hope to get to a report that we took quite a lot of time to prepare, and which many organisations from around the country contributed to.

There are some pieces of progress. The one I would refer to under recommendation 21 is the NHS app, which has been rather good and has made a lot of things available to people. It is, say the Government,

“a simple and secure way for people in England”—

it is quite true that it does not apply to everybody in the United Kingdom—

“to access a range of NHS services”.

People can look up their test results and make appointments, and so on. So that is an advance. It is not that I just want to be critical of everything; if there are areas of progress, let us recognise them and recommend them. However, let us just also understand that our NHS, on which we are so dependent, simply is not working at the moment, and we need to try to address that.

I have already taken up far more time than I ought to have. That is because we felt quite passionate about all this and therefore felt pretty disappointed when the response that we got back from government did not pay attention to the recommendations that we had made.

Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland: Follow-up Report (European Affairs Committee)

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Monday 11th September 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Alderdice (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Jay, admirably fulfilled his challenging role as chairman of the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland Sub-Committee in achieving a considerable level of agreement across the wide range of views in the committee about the impact of the Northern Ireland protocol and, in the second report, the Windsor Framework.

The first report found, wholly unsurprisingly, that businesses reliant on trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland had been negatively affected. Contrarywise, businesses trading with Ireland and the rest of the EU found that the protocol had had a beneficial impact. The committee caveated its observations by noting that the overall impact of the protocol on the Northern Ireland economy was perhaps uncertain because of all the other things that have been happening: the Covid pandemic, labour shortages, rising costs from the war in Ukraine and so on.

Interestingly, the committee noted that those from whom it took evidence could reach opposite conclusions from the same information. That is characteristic of our problems. It is not surprising: those who are unionists but supported Brexit, which they did not all, will naturally look for something other than Brexit to be the main reason for their undoubted problems. Those who are nationalists, who were mostly opposed to Brexit, will see any development towards an all-Ireland economy as in their long-term political interest. Businesspeople, of course, will simply try to do the best that they can, whatever circumstances they work in.

The committee tried to avoid judgments on these issues of deep difference, but we need to address them if we are to take our thinking forward. Those who supported Brexit did not pay much attention to what were quite predictable consequences for Northern Ireland. They thought that it would be relatively straightforward and easy, but it has not been.

A number of realities need addressing and, given my professional background, noble Lords will not be surprised that the first reality I suggest is the psychological one. When a relationship breaks up because one side wishes to walk away from it and the other does not, there are inevitable emotional consequences. The one who is leaving minimises the consequences and says, “We can still be friends”, and the one who is being abandoned feels anxious and angry. The EU was never going to respond with equanimity to Brexit for these reasons, so even where there were some problems that could be mitigated in the early days, it was not going to happen immediately until people had begun to settle down to the reality of what had happened.

There were some problems that I would characterise as real-world problems. It is ironic that those who most fervently upheld the importance of taking back control of national borders were the very ones who dismissed the importance of the national border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. That was never a coherent position. If national borders are not important, there was no reason to leave the EU; if they were important enough to leave the EU, they were going to be important and problematic in respect of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, particularly given the historic, and even current, matter of dispute about that border.

Let me be clear: Brexit was an entirely legitimate ambition and, when it was voted on by the people and the people supported it, it had to be implemented. However, it has consequences. If I jump off a windowsill I will fall and there is no point in me saying how unfair it is that gravity will result in me being crippled. There are certain consequences to our actions, especially in relationships.

One of the other consequences was for our relationships with the EU and the United States. When Prime Minister Sunak took over the reins of government, he realised that the key challenges for his Government were resetting the relationships with the EU and the US. They had been damaged by Brexit and the UK cannot afford to be at odds with its most important trading and security partners. That is why the Windsor Framework was a dramatically successful initiative in resetting relationships with the EU and the United States. I think it extremely unlikely that the current UK Government or any successor Government will embark on an unstitching of those relationships and these arrangements.

There can be some window-dressing about the constitutional position of Northern Ireland, but that position and the devolved settlement of Northern Ireland are of less consequence for Britain as a whole now than relationships with the EU and the United States. The emotional attachment, which was very strong when I came to this House more than a quarter of a century ago, does not feel the same now. For example, I was struck when John Simpson, a very distinguished journalist, on seeing what had happened with the Scottish nationalists, said that the “union is now safe”. I could not help but think to myself that he was not thinking very much about the union with Northern Ireland and that he is not the only one on this side of the water who has that perspective.

Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland: Border Controls

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

I strongly agree with the tone of the noble Lord’s remarks and recognise his experience and wisdom in this area.

[Lord Alderdice (LD)]

My Lords, some of the disarray of recent days is a result of the insistence of the EU and the acceptance by the British and Irish Governments that all significant bilateral issues must be dealt with by UK-EU meetings instead of British-Irish meetings. How many times has the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference established under the Good Friday agreement met since the triggering of Article 50? What were the dates and venues of those meetings? If the Minister is unable to provide that information at the moment, which I would understand, will he write to me and put a copy of the letter in the Library?

[Lord True (Con)]

I certainly undertake to do that. The noble Lord has asked a number of detailed points and I will write to him, but while I am on my feet, I will say that I believe that the Irish/UK strand is an important one that might help in assisting to resolve some of these problems.

Customs Miscellaneous Non-fiscal Provisions and Amendments etc. (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Liddle (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am a member of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee which considered this instrument. It caught my attention not because I am in any way an expert on customs rules or the technicalities of these regulations but because it touches on the relationship between Northern Ireland and Great Britain post Brexit, which has been highly political and, I would argue, will be extremely sensitive in future.

It is only just over a year since the general election campaign, in which the Prime Minister declared before a group of Northern Ireland businesspeople that there would be no barriers to trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. This position was somewhat revised when Michael Gove presented the Government’s proposals for implementing the Northern Ireland protocol, when he said that there would be no checks between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, although there would inevitably be some checks the other way as a result of goods entering what would in effect be the EU single market.

It was then also stated that there was to be no customs border in the Irish Sea and no new infrastructure to enforce that border. As I understand it, £300 million or £400 million has been allocated to putting in place what can only be described as infrastructure, and therefore I really do not understand what the Government think their position is on this. Here we have a statutory instrument that specifically imposes some requirements and constraints on unfettered trade in goods between Northern Ireland and Great Britain—I am sure the Minister will confirm that. There are goods for which there will not be unfettered trade as a result of this instrument. When it is said that there would be no customs border, it sounds to me as though the second part of this instrument is actually putting in place regulations for a customs border. I should like to get some clarity about what is happening: is wool being pulled over someone’s eyes or is it not?

The entry summary declarations from Northern Ireland to Great Britain will be required only for non-qualifying goods. I have two questions here: how significant are these non-qualifying goods in terms of total trade, and, secondly, who makes the qualifying decision? Is it a question for the United Kingdom customs authorities or for the joint committee between the EU and the UK that is there to implement the protocol? Was this matter fully discussed at the committee before this regulation was laid?

I have a second point on the customs question. The great merit of the trade and co-operation agreement is that there are no tariffs or quotas on trade between the EU single market, including Northern Ireland, and Great Britain, except in two circumstances: first, where goods do not qualify under the rules of origin, and, secondly, were there judged to be offences against keeping the level playing field in place, as provided for in the agreement. In that situation, one side or the other can impose tariffs. The question then becomes: what happens to these customs regulations were tariffs to be imposed?

The Minister may say that this is an entirely theoretical question, but the truth is it is not, because, within days of the passage of the trade and co-operation agreement, the Government let it be known that they are launching lots of reviews of regulations and workers’ rights, and making lots of moves which could be interpreted by the EU as deregulation and could be thought to be offending against the principles of the level playing field. We may end up in a difficult situation quite quickly, unless the Government act with prudence.

My purpose in speaking is to ask the Minister—politely, I hope—what he thinks about my questions, but also for us to start thinking about what the consequences of all this will be for the Northern Ireland-British relationship and the future of the United Kingdom.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Alderdice) (LD)]

The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, has withdrawn from the speakers list. I call the next speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Dodds of Duncairn.

EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Friday 8th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Wharton of Yarm, to the House. I commend him on an excellent maiden speech, and I hope he will enjoy a long and fruitful membership of this House.

The Minister referred to the Second Reading debate. Speaking last Wednesday, he graciously acknowledged that in taking a very brief break to bolt down his fish and chips he missed my question, so I will put it again, along with another one.

Brexit and the debates that led to it have seen the release of powerful nationalist forces that will not be put to bed by Brexit. The Prime Minister’s ambition to take back control is now being turned against him within the United Kingdom, for the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish do not want to take back control from Brussels only to hand it to London. That is why the Minister had to acknowledge in that debate that the Government are unable to get legislative consent Motions passed in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. The appearance of a de facto border down the Irish Sea is a practical example of the fissures opened up by the powerful centrifugal dynamic that Brexit has released. Can the Minister tell us what the Government will do to hold the UK together?

In asking my second question, I draw the House’s attention to my interests at the University of Oxford as declared in the register. Post Brexit, as the TCA makes clear, we are outside the previous ready access to the larger territory and population of the EU, but we are fortunate that cyberspace gives us a new environment in which to operate, less hindered by our reduced territorial footprint. The pandemic has also demonstrated how the creativity of our people and businesses can benefit not only our own country but the whole world through the production of an excellent vaccine and effective treatments.

How will the Government enable our people and businesses throughout the country to exploit the possibilities of the digital world when, as Meg Hillier, chair of the Public Accounts Committee of the other place, has reported on its behalf, they are failing to deliver on their promises of digital connectivity? When Brexit and Covid make high-speed broadband essential, how will the Government address these shortcomings so that they do not compound and exacerbate the inequalities and isolation of our population and businesses post Brexit?

European Union (Future Relationship) Bill

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

3rd reading & 2nd reading & Committee negatived & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 30th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice (LD)]

My Lords, today we are debating a Bill to implement the Brexit agreements with the EU. I want to focus on one aspect of the Prime Minister’s comment that, despite the agreement, the UK would

“remain culturally, emotionally, historically, strategically and geologically attached to Europe”.

Those cultural and emotional questions are fundamental. I have no doubt that the Prime Minister identifies with elements of historic European culture; we have all noted how often he quotes from pre-Christian Greek and Roman sources. While Jean Monnet, one of the great architects of the European project, may not have made the comment often attributed to him that

“If I were to do it again from scratch, I would start with culture”,


the question of culture is fundamental for Europe.

Supporters of the European project emphasise the transnational commonalities of European culture, and I share that perspective, but many people identify more with the culture of their own historic national community. They are prepared to sacrifice economic and social well-being to protect it when they feel it is under threat; that is much of what Brexit is about. Immigration, for example, is felt by people like that to be changing the culture of their communities more quickly than they can accommodate. Within the EU, constant effort is required to contain the historic cultural and religious differences between the north and the south, and the east and the west. Those who promoted Brexit, like those who are trying to undermine the European project from within and without, have released powerful nationalist forces that will not be put to bed by Brexit.

The complaints that the Prime Minister laid against the EU and his solution of taking back control are now being turned against him from within the United Kingdom. The Scots, the Welsh and the Northern Irish did not want to take back control from Brussels in order to hand it to London. That is why he is having such a problem with the passage of legislative consent Motions. Mr Johnson may see himself as the British Prime Minister and wrap himself in the union flag, but in Edinburgh and Belfast, and even in Cardiff, he is increasingly seen as an English Prime Minister. My wife and I moved from Belfast to Oxfordshire a couple of years ago. We are very happily settled there, but we immediately sensed the depth of the cultural differences between the community that we had left and the one which is now our home.

Our United Kingdom has held together deep historic cultural differences that are now being exposed by Brexit. The appearance of a border down the Irish Sea, so clearly described by the noble Lord, Lord Empey, and the decision of the Irish Government to offer Erasmus and EHIC benefits to British citizens in Northern Ireland are significant straws in the wind. If, or perhaps when, Northern Ireland leaves, it is the end of the United Kingdom—for, as noble Lords will recall, it is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The impact on Scotland could be profound. Are Her Majesty’s Government as blind as their former Brexit-voting allies in the DUP to the fragmentation that may be triggered by the powerful centrifugal dynamic that they have released? Can the Minister tell the House what Her Majesty’s Government are going to do to hold our United Kingdom together?

EU: Customs Arrangements

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True]

My Lords, I am in that invidious position where advice is shortly to be published and I am not going to pre-empt what is in it. But I can assure the noble Lord that the position regarding Welsh ports, which he has raised before—I am grateful to him for that—is certainly something the Government are well aware of, and it is under consideration.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Alderdice) (LD)]

Lord Caine?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

The noble Lord needs to unmute.

[The Deputy Speaker]

There seems to be a problem with the hub. We shall move on to the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley.

[Viscount Waverley (CB) [V]]

[Inaudible.]—to the continent by some key players. Are the Government expecting UK manufacturers to adapt to government policies, or are the Government adapting to the needs of industry? After consultation with those at the sharp end of supply chain issues, and the clarion call for certainty, what change of policy might the Government feel obliged to consider, should the US remove itself from the WTO, thus compounding uncertainty?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord True]

My Lords, I hope that the arrangements will be as smooth and swift as possible. This will be a matter for discussion and elucidation, but the Government intend to sustain our right to border controls and to facilitate the effective transit of goods.

[The Deputy Speaker]

My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed.

Covid-19: Wedding Venues

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True]

My Lords, I said that the Government have no time for primary legislation on this matter, and that is the position. As for private commercial arrangements between citizens and venues, I cannot give any guarantee that the Government will interfere in those.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Alderdice) (LD)]

My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed. That concludes the hybrid proceedings for the present.

Covid-19: Scientific Advice

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True [V]]

My Lords, the noble Baroness does not characterise correctly even what I said in reply to the last question. I said that we must learn as we go. Lessons are being learned. Indeed, yesterday, there was the remarkable news of a drug that would help in therapeutics. That is a piece of learning. Actions are adapted as learning progresses. However, I repeat that any inquiry into past events is best conducted ex post facto, not while the crisis is continuing; learning, yes, recrimination, no.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Alderdice) (LD)]

My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed.