Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers) (England) Regulations 2020

Lord Birt Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Birt (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I support the regulations. We understand well that neither this Government nor their predecessors prepared adequately for a pandemic of this nature, and initially the Government responded to the threat in slow motion. The result is one of the world’s highest death rates. However, I shall be more generous than others. In the last month or so, there has been a surer touch, with less bombast, more measured decision-making and a sense, at last, that the many cogs of the public sector—public health, local authorities, the Armed Forces and the NHS—are now finally meshing. As one who has been responsible for many challenging projects in the course of my career in both the public and private sectors, I do not underestimate this achievement.

There are those who bridle at the constraints that the Government impose on their freedom, like the man I encountered last Friday evening, who joined me in an orderly, rules-compliant takeaway queue and stood two feet away from me, breathing squarely in my face, defiantly maskless. To him and others like him, I say that we all value our freedom and, thankfully, we live in a country that over centuries fought for it and won it, but we also agree to constrain our freedoms when their exercise harms others.

The maskless man threatened my health. We do not allow cars to drive fast in pedestrian areas, we constrain freedom of expression with libel laws and we do not allow people into crowded pubs with loaded guns—and, for some, this virus can be as deadly as any gun. If you are over 75 and catch Covid, you have a one in 10 chance of dying: not great odds.

Infection rates have increased again since the summer because insufficient people have observed the rules. Swale in Kent is an area marked by lovely countryside, picturesque villages and handsome market towns, yet in November it had the second-highest infection rate in England, with 565 cases per 100,000—more than one in 20 of its population. The council’s leader, understandably, bemoaned that the rules in Swale were being “wilfully disregarded”.

The Prime Minister has acknowledged—I applaud his bluntness—that pre-lockdown tiers 1 and 2 failed to reverse the pace of growth of the virus and that even tier 3 did not succeed in reducing cases in all areas. So we must, with relief, welcome the fact that this second lockdown has put a foot on the brake and that across the country the R rate is probably now below one. But beware, my Lords: the ONS estimates that something close to 650,000 people currently have the virus, and they will not all be self-isolating.

I well understand why the Prime Minister did not want to be the Grinch that stole Christmas, but we will surely pay a price for this relaxation of holiday rules, for most certainly the virus itself will not observe a Christmas truce. Public Health England has warned that subsequently we will need five days of belt tightening for each day of Christmas loosening.

My parents lived through the Second World War—my father in the RAF, my mother working in a Liverpool Docklands canteen, bombed out of her home four times. But my mum and dad never complained. Like almost all their generation, they were stoics. With vaccines now in clear sight, we need to rekindle some of that wartime stoicism. Let us be tolerant of the inevitable anomalies created by blanket rules, and let us accept that, until a vaccine kicks in, we can surely endure a period of limited social interaction, for that short-term sacrifice will mean fewer victims of Covid, fewer deaths and fewer threats to the NHS.

If we can keep the lid on the pandemic until the vaccines ride to the rescue, more of the economy can continue to function, as we see in Asian countries. Those parts of the economy adversely affected by limiting social interaction, such as hospitality, deserve, and should receive, adequate and sufficient support to enable them to bounce back once the new normal returns, which it will.

Let us give thanks in this debate for the brilliance of our and the world’s scientists. Let us hold our nerve. There is every reason to be hopeful.