Health Protection (Coronavirus, Collection of Contact Details etc and Related Requirements) Regulations 2020

Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth Excerpts

Wednesday 7th October 2020 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, who has very impressive forensic skills.

I thank the Minister for setting out the background to these regulations. His prodigious work-effort continues to be incredibly impressive. I am surprised that he has managed to make a tour of west London pubs to see which are complying with the regulations, but obviously, he has, so congratulations on that too.

I strongly support these regulations. It seems to me that we all have a great interest in having an effective test and trace system. For that to work properly, we do need back-up, and this provides it. I share many of the concerns expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, but I come from a position of thinking that these regulations are very necessary and, as stated, they came into force some 20 days ago. I have had a chance to look at the regulations, and I do have some questions on them. It may be that my noble friend is not able to answer them all on the hoof today, as it were, but I would be grateful for a response in writing, with a copy to other noble Lords and to the Library, if he is not able to do so.

My noble friend indicated that some 634,000 businesses or institutions have downloaded the QR code facility. Is he in a position to indicate what percentage of those needed for this to be effective across the board that represents? It may be that is a very high percentage, and that we are not looking significantly elsewhere for other institutions to sign up, but it would be interesting to know how many have not done so, and what percentage that represents.

Further, with regard to the specific persons and institutions affected by these regulations, I do have some specific questions. First, in the Explanatory Memorandum, there is an exemption for police and security officers visiting businesses. I understand that, in an emergency, it may not be appropriate for them initially to download or indicate with the app that they are present—they are pressed, in terms of doing other things. However, there will be visits by police and security officers that are not in that urgent situation, and indeed, in situations where there is an urgency, subsequently it is surely desirable that their presence there is also recorded. So I wonder why that exemption exists, and whether there will be some review mechanism so that we are able to extend these regulations sensibly to those who should be affected by them.

In relation to accommodation—hotels, B&Bs and so on—I would be interested to hear from my noble friend whether short-term accommodation of the likes of Airbnb, which are well run and largely overseen by the Short Term Accommodation Association, are part of this system, bearing in mind that in many cases there will be remote check-in, and that people using these facilities may not come into contact with anybody at all. But on occasion, of course, they will. So I wonder whether there is a particular position there in relation to such businesses. In relation to non-commercial businesses, it seems that only commercial businesses, or commercial accommodation, I should say, are covered. What about hostels that are not run on a commercial basis—faith accommodation and so on? Why are they not subject to this? Art fairs are covered; why not antiques fairs and book fairs? These are detailed questions.

I strongly support the regulations. I am pleased that over 16 million people have downloaded the app. It needs to be many more, but we are making good progress here, and I congratulate my noble friend.