Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Leicester) (No. 2) Regulations 2020

Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth Excerpts

Thursday 24th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles. I thank my noble friend for presenting these regulations for consideration.

As has been noted by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, there is a retrospective flavour to this debate, which is all too familiar with the regulations that we have been considering on coronavirus. I accept the need for regulations, but surely we can overcome this retrospective nature and debate these things in a more timely way.

The great danger is that, when these regulations were brought in, the infection rate was falling, fatalities were falling and there was a very different flavour to the atmosphere then, compared with now. Against that background, can my noble friend tell us what the infection rate is currently in Leicester, Oadby and Wigston, and indeed in Blaby and Charnwood, which were initially subject to some of these restrictions too? It would be good to note whether the numbers are still falling; I rather doubt it myself.

The Minister stressed the local nature of the approach, which is something that many of us believe in very strongly. We have currently a rather overcentralised system of controls and should be aiming for a much more local approach. I would welcome the Minister saying something about the attitude of Her Majesty’s Government to the implementation of policy. I accept that there has to be a national framework, but I think that we would all welcome more local input and use of local expertise.

The Minister referred to some difficulties in Leicester. I accept that this was the first area of the country to go into local lockdown, so some grind of gears was, as the Minister said, perhaps inevitable—although the gear-grinding was much more reminiscent of when I was learning to drive. There were far more problems of communication than perhaps the Minister has outlined. What lessons have been learned about the experience in Leicester? I accept and welcome the multilingual nature of communications, and I have no doubt that that is being replicated in other parts of the country that are now subject to lockdown, but I would welcome the Minister saying something on that too.

Of course, Leicester is an area with a large black and Asian minority ethnic population—a long-established and very well integrated population from those communities on the whole. Can the Minister say whether any lessons are being learned about the challenge and fact that these parts of the community are affected disproportionately, and what action is being taken as a consequence of lessons learned in communities such as Leicester?

Being the first, in a local sense, to be in more of a lockdown than the rest of the country, Leicester has suffered more economic impact. I welcome the bold Job Support Scheme that has been announced by my right honourable friend the Chancellor in another place; many of us have been pushing for that for some time. Above all, I ask the Minister to give more strategic thought to what we should be doing as a country in relation to the split between the centralised approach—indeed, overcentralised at the moment, I would argue—and a more locally focused approach that I think we should be aiming for.