Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Steps and Other Provisions) (England) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2021

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I reluctantly support this extension for the reasons my noble friend the Minister has given. Personally, I would have taken the risk since, although the number of cases is rising, deaths are not. There is no danger of the NHS being overwhelmed and, in any case, I always thought the NHS was there to save us, not the other way round.

But I am afraid the Government had to do this or else they would have been accused of not following the scientific advice and we would have yet more rent-a-quote professors from SAGE, NERVTAG or whatever these groups are called popping up in the media, spouting about catastrophe. Like my right honourable friend Michael Gove, I am heartily sick of scientists now. From even the first press conference way back last March, as soon as Vallance or Whitty sat down, the media—both TV and press—produced a professor from SAGE who contradicted them and said it was too slow or too fast, or few would die or half a million would die. Will my noble friend not insist on collective responsibility from these advisory organisations and sack those who do not accept it? They are frightening the public unnecessarily with their one-off, individualistic views.

I must congratulate the Government again on their masterful handling of the vaccination programme. The NHS gets the credit for sticking needles in arms, but there would be no needles or vaccinations to stick in arms if the PM had not given Kate Bingham the instruction to save lives, and she pulled together a fantastic private enterprise team to do just that. Then we had the brilliant decision of the Secretary of State for Health to tell Oxford to go with AstraZeneca. AstraZeneca deserves our everlasting praise and thanks.

Look at the top 20 countries in the world for percentage of population vaccinated; nine of them are the United Kingdom and our overseas territories. Look at the countries that have done the most injections overall; we are in the top three. Therefore, in terms of population vaccinated and sheer numbers, we are the first in the world and I congratulate my noble friend and all Ministers on that magnificent achievement.

I was pleased to read today that the Government will make it compulsory for care home staff to be vaccinated—and about time too—but what about NHS staff? It is utterly unacceptable for there to be refuseniks among NHS staff. That should be a gross misconduct offence, leading to a final written warning and dismissal. Why should patients who have followed the rules and had their vaccinations be put at risk going into an NHS hospital and brushing shoulders with staff who refuse to be vaccinated?

Finally, I hope the whole country will not be stuck in lockdown again because some areas or groups of people refuse to be vaccinated. If people in London or Bolton do not want vaccinations, tough luck on them, but the rest of the country should not suffer because of their stupidity. They should be at the end of the queue for hospital treatment, behind people who have had their vaccinations but require other essential medical care.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers and Self-Isolation) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Monday 1st March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by praising my noble friend the Minister for yet another appearance at the Dispatch Box. He must have set a record for the sheer number of times he has briefed this House and for his depth of knowledge and courtesy. He is an outstanding Minister, but so too have been the Prime Minister and the whole ministerial team in rolling out the world’s best vaccination programme.

A writer in the Guardian yesterday began with the sentence:

“For diehard Remoaners like me, all this endless good news about jabs and carbon emissions is pretty hard to take.”


He went on:

“Nearly 20 million … doses administered. A forward-thinking procurement plan. The leading large nation, far ahead of the US and, more gallingly for us frothing Remoaners, miles ahead of Europe. Nothing could be more depressing for the honest self-loathing liberal Brit … the vaccine programme has turned out to be a slick collaboration between hard-nosed businesspeople, big pharma and the academic establishment.”


So says the Guardian, so it must be true. So thank you, Ministers, and thank you, Brexit.

I have one point for my noble friend about vaccination refuseniks, and I neither want nor expect an answer today. Along with the vast majority of the public, we demand that all NHS staff either get vaccinated or get out. Everyone has the right to refuse a vaccination, but free choice brings consequences. As a vulnerable patient, I have followed NHS instructions not to visit hospitals in the past year, and all my appointments have been virtual, and all have worked exceptionally well. This is going to be the future for many appointments.

I and millions of others have done our bit to protect the NHS and now it is the duty of all NHS staff to protect us. We have all clapped the dedication of NHS staff who have worked incredibly stressful hours over the last year, but that does not give a minority the right to think that they can do what they like and jeopardise patients’ lives. When we go into hospitals, now that we have highly effective vaccines, we have the right to expect that every staff member in there has been vaccinated—front-line staff and all those admin people I see wandering around wards and corridors carrying files.

If the figure is true, it is appalling that 25% of staff in London are refusing vaccinations. Who do they think they are? Of course, the Government should explain and persuade, but, if that fails, the next step should be a final written warning and then dismissal. Yes, we are short of NHS workers, but the public demand that we do not have thousands of Typhoid Marys wandering around our hospitals and spreading the virus. I commend the care home industry for its policy of “no jab, no job,” and ask that it be extended to all NHS staff. The whole country has been through hell for the last 12 months and we are coming through it. We cannot let the ignorant and selfish wishes of a minority undermine all those sacrifices. We respect the absolute right of NHS staff to refuse being vaccinated, but we ask that they respect our right not to keep them in a job if they refuse.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Monday 8th February 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, from the cheap seats at the far end, I pay a warm tribute to my right honourable friend the Prime Minister for his masterful handling of the vaccination drive. As the NHS called me a critically endangered species, I had my jab last Thursday night and I am in no doubt that it was months ahead of where it would have been were it not for the brilliant handling of vaccination by the Government.

It has been a textbook operation. The Prime Minister gave Kate Bingham the order: “Stop people dying”. She formed a task force that rapidly decided the best vaccines to back and funded their production, bypassing NHS bureaucracy. It was based on scientific judgment, not just buying up everything in sight. The Secretary of State for Health told Oxford University to dump Merck and go with AstraZeneca. That was inspired. It was a masterstroke for which he deserves the highest praise. Then the logistics were fine-tuned, with Professor Van-Tam apparently demanding freezers way back last June. Then contracts for vaccine supply were signed three months ahead of other countries.

I also thank the Prime Minister for getting us out of the slow-moving EU oil tanker. What a perfect description of the EU—a lumbering monster, unable to move quickly and full of last century’s concept of power. If we had stayed in then there is no way we would have approved the emergency use of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Theoretically, of course, we could have, but a vote to remain would have made us a very tame, subservient puppet, afraid to do anything on our own. We would also have been trapped into the corrupt EU purchasing racket, paying for French Sanofi vaccines that have not yet been invented. Little did we know four years ago that leaving the EU could save thousands of British lives or we would probably have put that on the side of the bus as well.

While the NHS staff, the military, the volunteers and others are doing a fantastic job of sticking needles in people’s arms, there would be nothing much to inject if it were not for the leadership, judgment and far-sightedness of the Prime Minister, Ministers and all in the Government. Thank you, Prime Minister, personally—the Boris haters will have to gnash their teeth a while longer.

I have a couple of ethical and moral questions to pose to my noble friend, but I do not want answers today. It seems that we will have tens of thousands of vaccine refuseniks. I defend their absolute right not to be vaccinated, so long as they respect my right to get hospital treatment ahead of them if they catch Covid. Hundreds of thousands of people with all other life-threatening illnesses—cancer, heart conditions and so on—have had their treatment postponed to give priority to Covid cases. That may have been the right thing to do when there was no cure for Covid, but now that there is a vaccine it will be intolerable if honest patients who have been vaccinated cannot get into hospital because refuseniks are blocking beds. My message is simple: if you refuse vaccination and catch Covid, then tough luck. You have absolutely no right to displace from a hospital bed a decent patient who has been vaccinated. No matter your colour, ethnicity or age, if you refuse vaccination you forfeit the right to jump the hospital queue.

Related to that, I assume that if, for example, care home or medical staff wandered round the wards, smoking 40 cigarettes a day they would be dismissed on the spot. Therefore, if medical or care home staff refuse vaccinations and wander round wards, belching out Covid all day, which is 100 times more lethal than passive smoking, should they not be considered to be sacked on the spot as well? I simply leave that for consideration.

Finally, we are repeatedly told that we must not call it the Chinese virus, but the variants are called the South African, Brazilian, Kent and UK variants. It simply identifies where they came from or were discovered. China is directly responsible for more than 2 million dead in the world. Since China let this virus escape from its Wuhan lab, covered it up and lies about it every single day, is it not about time that we called it by its true name—the China virus?

Covid-19: Vaccinations

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Wednesday 13th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend accept my congratulations? The Government have done an absolutely magnificent job on vaccinations. They bought more than enough of the right vaccine, approved it first in the world, injected it first in the world and have vaccinated more people than the whole of Europe put together. I hope the Government will now not be distracted by some of the pathetic media trivia we have heard about how far you can ride a bike, whether a Scotch egg is a meal, whether it is 2 metres or 3 metres, or tier 3 or 4, or whether things have been too fast or too slow. Does my noble friend agree that the only thing that matters now is vaccinating all our people, in the whole of the United Kingdom, as quickly as possible—and 24/7 if vaccine supplies permit—to build on the success we have had so far?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I am enormously grateful for my noble friend’s kind words. I think that, as a Government, we would prefer to be judged at the third act of this important performance, so I think it is probably too early to take too much praise, but I would like to say a massive thanks to the British nation.

In three ways, the nation has really stood up. The amount of collaboration between different groups—I alluded to it in my previous answer—between the Army, industry, the NHS and local authorities has been enormous. At the beginning of this pandemic, there were arthritic elements to the way in which Britain is governed that meant that different parts of our political and administrative machinery did grind into action slightly slowly, but, my goodness, over the vaccine deployment it has been absolutely athletic, and I take my hat off to every part of the machinery of government. On the union, this has been such a strong example of a national solution: all of Britain has come together in order to purchase and deploy the vaccine. Lastly, I would observe the resilience of the British public. It makes me enormously proud that the country puts the elderly and the infirm first and stands by and celebrates the weakest and most vulnerable in our society being put first in the queue. That is a national quality we should all be proud of.

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

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I support these regulations, and I apologise to the Minister, because that is probably the most helpful thing I will say in the next two minutes. I am heartily sick of the media producing so-called experts who contradict everything Whitty and Vallance say within seconds of their briefings concluding. There is a never-ending stream of attention-seeking professors who are undermining public confidence in everything the Government do.

The others undermining government efforts are the police service of this country. I was a Police Minister and I defended the police every day of my life, but no more. They are a national disgrace, because they are deliberately refusing to enforce the laws passed by this Parliament. The Times revealed yesterday that, despite tens of thousands of breaches of the face-mask-wearing rules in shops, in the last three months, three-quarters of the police force have not given a single fine for breaking the law, and only 28 fines have been handed out by the rest of the police. They have just handed out 18 fines for mass lawbreaking. No wonder Covid is on the rampage in some of our major cities, when people see the police turning a blind eye to blatant law-breaking.

Can we also stop these idiotic euphemisms of circuit breakers and fire breaks, which are just code for total shutdown again? Shutdowns do not cure Covid; they just suppress it for a few weeks, then it takes off again. We have to learn to live and die with it, and survive by using social distancing, face mask wearing and handwashing.

We are told by the Government that we have to save the NHS, but why? I thought the NHS was supposed to save us, not the other way around. We are told the NHS must not get overwhelmed, but it already is. In its fetish to empty hospitals in case Covid kicks off, it has dumped tens of thousands of cancer patients and people with heart attacks, strokes and other serious illnesses. Some 90% of operations and treatments have been cancelled. These people will die prematurely and that is a disgrace. We can all clap the NHS medical staff, but the incompetent NHS bureaucracy is still stuck in Soviet-style government.

Coronavirus Act 2020: Temporary Provisions

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Monday 28th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, what a privilege it is to participate in a debate with three excellent maiden speeches. However, to be physically present in the Chamber to hear the absolutely stunning contribution from my noble friend Lady Morrissey is quite another experience. Clearly, it is “a good time to be a girl”. Before the hate mail comes in, that is the title of one of her books, not my sexist comment. I also look forward to her plans to “change the system”, a title of yet another of her books.

In politics, it is a nice and rare experience to look back at what one has said over the last six months and find out that one was right, or at least that the Government are doing what I was calling for all along—so we could both be utterly wrong. On 12 May, I said that everyone over 70 is not automatically vulnerable and should not be locked up as a unique group. Now, I read that the Prime Minister agrees, and we are not to be treated like lepers.

On 15 June, I complained that the police were failing to take action against demonstrations, raves and house parties, letting Covid-19 spread and bringing the law into disrepute. On 25 June, I said that face masks should be

“compulsory for everyone, no ifs or buts.”—[Official Report, 25/6/20; col. 396.]

On 24 July, I spoke again about

“illegal demonstrations and raves with people blatantly breaking the law”.—[Official Report, 24/7/20; col. 2478.]

I also spoke about the huge criminal scandals in Leicester. I ended by saying:

“I therefore urge my noble friend the Minister to tell the police … to get out there and enforce the law of the land, as they are paid to do.”—[Official Report, 24/7/20; col. 2478.]


On 3 September I said:

“We have spent four months locked away obeying the law, but what of many others? … every young person now knows that they can pack into pubs, houses, raves and planes not wearing a mask, and not a single thing will be done about it … We old gits will continue obeying the law and being put at risk every day by some people who do not give a damn and by a police force that is unwilling to enforce the law.”—[Official Report, 3/9/20; col. 474.]


On 18 September, I called on the Government to make shop assistants wear masks, but I also said:

“It is high time everyone in this country did the same every time they are outdoors or in public places”.—[Official Report, 18/9/20; col. 1578.]


That is what I have been saying over the last six months, and I am proud to have been ahead of government thinking—perhaps I may get a job in SAGE one of these days.

I welcome the new emphasis on enforcement. Whether or not these laws are right, sensible or the right thing to do is another argument, but, at the moment, they are the law of the land. If the law is not enforced in this area, all our laws are brought into disrepute. I do not recall any regulation or either of the Houses of Parliament authorising the police to adopt this lily-livered approach of “engage, explain, encourage” and only “enforce” as a last resort. It is difficult for the police to enforce when some police officers are down on one knee in the face of blatant law-breaking. We did not pass any law like that, and it is the duty of the police to enforce our laws and not make up their own cosy alternative versions. I understand that, on Saturday, 15,000 people broke the law in Trafalgar Square, and the police arrested 10 of them.

I hate these regulations and restrictions. Sweden may possibly be right—we do not yet know—but our hypocritical media would have crucified anyone in the Government if we had gone down that route six months ago. Of course, if the Swedish approach to herd immunity turns out to be right, then we will be condemned by the media for not doing it because it was the obvious thing to do, was it not?

All Governments are wrestling with a new disease for which there is no rulebook in existence. What I do know is that we cannot change the strategy half way through. We can amend and tweak the tactics—as the Government are doing, rightly—on a weekly basis as the impact of the virus changes on a weekly basis, but we need to see the current strategy through. I intensely dislike all the current restrictions and the severe damage to the economy, but abandoning the current approach may be just as dangerous.

Finally, I commend the recommendation of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee that this Act should not be renewed automatically by order; a new Bill that can receive full and proper parliamentary scrutiny should be introduced.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Wearing of Face Coverings in a Relevant Place) (England) Regulations 2020

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Friday 18th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I support these regulations, but I urge my noble friend the Minister to go further and simplify the rules on wearing face masks.

First, I agree 100% with my former Cumbrian sparring partner, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. Yes, I know that there is often a huge sigh when he makes the same point over and again, but I think that he is absolutely right: face masks should be worn by everyone, every time and in every place, except when in one’s own home or when eating or drinking in a properly socially distanced establishment.

The government line is that there is no conclusive evidence that face masks work. However, if that is the case, why have all medical staff for the last six months made such a terrible fuss when they have not had enough of them? Every doctor and nurse wears a face mask, and, if they work for the medical profession, they can work for everyone else. There is good evidence that, even if they do not stop the inhalation of every droplet, nevertheless they reduce the overall load of infection inhaled. There is now cast-iron evidence that the initial intake of the virus is the crucial thing between a mild infection and a life-threatening one.

Just as I approve of simplifying all those bubble rules that we had into a rule of six, so I approve of simplifying all our face-mask-wearing rules. I ask my noble friend to tell the media to stop whingeing about not meeting granny at Christmas. Christmas is three months away and anything can happen in the meantime.

On a train, passengers and crew wear masks most of the time, but shop assistants are exempt, it seems. I was in a shop last week and every shopper was wearing a mask, but a guy filling the shelves had no mask and was coughing and wheezing like an old sheep with lungworm. How does that encourage others to obey the law? I am a libertarian and—the Lord Chairman would strongly disapprove of this—if someone kills themselves with 60 cigarettes a day, I do not mind so long as it does not affect others and I do not have to pay for it. That is why I deeply resent those who are guzzling themselves obese and expect NHS taxpayers to pay the bill for their diabetes treatment. So I do not care if people cram themselves into a ghastly Ryanair flight or pack a pub and get Covid-19—it serves them right—but I care very deeply indeed that they are infecting other innocent people, such as their more elderly relatives, their friends and their workmates.

For many years, we have seen oriental tourists in London warning masks. It is nothing to do with Covid-19, but out of courtesy because they have a cold and do not want to infect others. I commend that oriental courtesy and culture. It is high time everyone in this country did the same every time they are outdoors or in public places with no exemptions, except for a few medical exemptions, and no excuses. Report them instantly and hit them hard with penalties when they do not comply.

Covid-19 Update

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Monday 14th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, that is the pub-quiz question of all pub-quiz questions. There are special provisions for families that are, like the noble Lord’s, separated or complex. Those guidelines have been published, I believe, and I would be glad to send him an email with a link to them.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

[Inaudible]—simple rule and the long overdue emphasis on better and stricter enforcement. Does my noble friend not agree that when a law is systematically and routinely broken and not enforced, it brings the rest of the law into disrepute? Therefore, will he encourage the police, in the strongest possible measures, to stop turning a blind eye to massive house parties, raves and woke demonstrations and tell them to get off their knees and enforce the law?

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) (No. 3) Regulations 2020

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Thursday 3rd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con) [V]]

My Lords, once again I congratulate the Minister on his sheer hard work, and on setting out so clearly the content of these regulations, which I support.

I want to focus again on the penalty and enforcement provisions in the regulations, which on paper are excellent. However, as we have seen time after time over the last few months, the police are simply not bothering to enforce them, and that is not the fault of the Minister or of the Department of Health and Social Care.

I am tempted to report every police force in this country as committing mass hate crimes against elderly and disabled people. We have spent four months locked away obeying the law, but what of many others? We saw mass demonstrations of Black Lives Matter and not a single person fined but the police bowing down to them. We saw mass lawbreaking of every sort in Leicester by Asian sweatshop owners, and again the police and authorities did nothing because they did not want to offend their communities. There have been hundreds of illegal raves all over the country and not a single person fined. I accept that where thousands turn up it is a problem, but the police have failed to break up and penalise small raves and house parties. Two days ago, a bunch of yobs roamed up and down a TUI flight dispensing Covid-19 to all and sundry. Not a single person has been fined or prosecuted. The police boast that they have spoken to tens of thousands of people and urged them to comply. What a joke; every young person now knows that they can pack into pubs, houses, raves and planes not wearing a mask, and not a single thing will be done about it. Fining Jeremy Corbyn’s brother £10,000 is no alternative to fining the other tens of thousands of lawbreakers.

We old gits will continue obeying the law and being put at risk every day by some people who do not give a damn and by a police force that is unwilling to enforce the law. I regret that I will not join those who say that the police are doing a wonderful job. They are not, and they should be ordered to enforce the law.

Medicines and Medical Devices Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 2nd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I wholeheartedly agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, that Britain can and must become a world leader in medical innovation. I strongly supported the Saatchi Bill on medical innovation. I am currently trying out a couple of MS drugs and will volunteer for everything. Personally, I am not too worried about safety, but that is a unique viewpoint.

I begin by paying a warm tribute to my noble friend the Minister. He is one of the finest Ministers I have encountered in this House: intelligent, knowledgeable, on top of his brief, courteous and very hard-working. I am delighted that he is going to listen to the criticisms on delegated powers today. Thus it grieves me to say that the structure of the Bill is absolutely atrocious and an affront to parliamentary democracy. Of course, it is not unique; it is just one more Bill stuffed full of Henry VIII clauses but devoid of substantive content. It is the barest skeleton, all to be filled in with negative secondary legislation.

I am speaking in my capacity as chair of the Delegated Powers Committee. We considered the key clauses—Clauses 1, 8 and 12—and concluded that they contain inappropriate delegations of power. We say that

“the Government have failed to provide sufficient justification for … the Bill adopting a ‘skeleton bill’ approach, with Ministers given very wide powers to almost completely re-write the existing regulatory regimes”.

But of even greater concern are the powers in these clauses allowing Ministers to create completely new criminal offences by statutory instrument: see paragraphs 29, 30 and 31 of our report.

Then we come to the negative/affirmative procedure ploy. We say:

“We are wholly dissatisfied by departments repeatedly arguing for powers … to be subject to the negative procedure where there is a need to act quickly, and seeking to justify this without acknowledging the existence of the made affirmative procedure. Departments are very well aware of that procedure and we can only conclude that their failure to mention it is a device to try to minimise Parliamentary scrutiny. In future … we will expect them to explain why the made affirmative procedure should not apply.”


That is pretty hard-hitting, and I am sorry that my noble friend the Minister is bearing the brunt of this criticism when it applies equally to dozens of Bills across all government departments. It is simply that my committee is fed up with Bill after Bill drafted with the negative procedure, on the excuse that the only alternative is the affirmative procedure. This is simply not true. The Office of the Parliamentary Counsel and the Cabinet Office are perpetuating a falsehood in their official guidance on drafting legislation, which completely, and I say deliberately, ignores the “made affirmative” procedure.

Then we come to the wonderful new term “protocols”, another ploy invented by draftsmen to avoid parliamentary scrutiny. We say:

“Allowing regulations to make … legislation subject to conditions set out in a ‘protocol’ is yet another example of ‘camouflaging legislation’ … those powers … should be set out in the regulations themselves and not in a ‘protocol’ which is not subject to Parliamentary scrutiny”.


The memorandum states on Clause 2 that the negative regulations will be made

“following extensive consideration and scrutiny by the relevant professional bodies”.

Jolly good for them—everyone is to be consulted except this Parliament.

Finally, we say in our conclusion:

“We are deeply concerned not only by the Government’s failure to provide sufficient justification for the adoption of a ‘skeleton bill’ approach—which would give Ministers sweeping powers to almost completely re-write the existing regulatory regimes … but also by their failure to acknowledge the breadth of the powers that the Bill would confer. In future, we will expect a more transparent approach in which a department acknowledges the breadth of the powers and seeks to fully justify it.”


Of course, Ministers must take responsibility for their legislation, but the root cause of this abuse of Parliament can be found in the Cabinet Office guidelines to departments on preparing legislation. The Office of the Parliamentary Counsel boasts on its website:

“We are committed to promoting good law—law that is: necessary, clear, coherent, effective, accessible.”


If the lawyers drafting our laws think this Bill is good law, God help us. Do they think good law includes skeleton bills, Henry VIII clauses, negative procedure everywhere, regulations masquerading as guidance and protocols, and criminal offences created with no parliamentary scrutiny at all? Parliament is effectively bypassed; that is a sick joke of good law.

I will return to this theme at a later date. I apologise again to my noble friend the Minister that he is on the receiving end of criticism that applies across the board.