Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 2) (England) (Amendment) (No. 5) Regulations 2020

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to add a bit of nonsense for the noble Lord, Lord Mann. My noble friends Lord Blencathra and Lord Moylan, if I understood them correctly, said that we would have to learn to live with the virus. That is now the bottom line. The increase in infections is quite different from the increase in deaths and serious infections. The fact that the average age of death is 82.4 and that people have underlying conditions has not been lost on the young, who widely regard themselves as being pretty well exempt—and, if they do get it, it is a bit like a cold; they will sniff it off. I am sorry to say that this may not be lost on the young, but it is also not lost on the old that the health service is in a state of virtual collapse when it comes to treatments for cancer, heart problems, colonoscopies and many other things. We cannot carry on, and I would like the Minister to go back to his department and say, “Look, we really have to rethink this.”

The press and the public, and in particular what I think of as the “thinking classes”, are turning against the Government. You have only to read today’s Times— and I am told that there are similar things in the Daily Mail—to work out that the Government are gradually losing the confidence of the commentariat, because these measures are seen as not working. I would ask for a coherent strategy, because local authorities are not enforcing; I do not think that the police in Cambridge have issued a single penalty notice, and they do not show any sign of wishing to do so. So it is time to reconsider, and maybe Professor Heneghan should be brought in to lead the Government’s analysis of the science.