Covid-19 Update

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Monday 30th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My noble friend is entirely right about the hospitality sector. It is a sector that we care about greatly and we recognise how hard hit it has been. None the less, we have to be considerate of the fact that the best epidemiological studies suggest that this is an environment where infection hits hard, so we are trying to hit the right balance between the two. As for local areas and trying to be more precise and focused in our tiering, that sounds like a sensible suggestion. However, we experimented with it quite thoroughly during the summer, and I remember standing here at this Dispatch Box week after week running through tweaks to various local tiers, only to find that the virus very quickly leaped from one area to another. It is a frustrating fact that the virus spreads from city to surrounding rural area and from one town to the next with alarming speed. It is also true, as discussed in response to the earlier question, that for communications it is important to keep things simple. For those reasons, we are not envisaging a change to the tiering structure at the moment.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB) [V]]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that just a few minutes ago, before the Statement, a press report questioning the accuracy of lateral flow antigen tests said that 140,000 tests were carried out in the Liverpool City Region, and yet the Statement says that more than 300,000 people were tested in Liverpool and, with the mass testing, cases have fallen by three-quarters and Liverpool has now gone down from tier 3 to tier 2? Why can we not get the communication right so that people can have confidence in mass testing so that it can be rolled out nationally, and show the evidence that it actually works?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to remind the noble Lord that earlier today we published a fulsome programme of community testing. I would be very glad to send him a copy of it, because it lays out exactly the plan he has just described; I am hopeful that he will celebrate its publication. He is entirely right that infection rates have come down in Liverpool—not just because of mass testing but it has made a contribution—and I pay tribute to the mayor and people of Liverpool for their approach in recent months.