Covid-19

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My noble friend illustrates the complexity of trying to work with local authorities and the impact of giving local authorities the discretion to make decisions on their own. In this area, in tier 3, we gave discretion to local authorities on their gyms. Merseyside decided to close its gyms and Lancashire did not. It is entirely appropriate for them to make their own assessment. I confess to feeling a real and genuine dilemma when it comes to gyms. My noble friend is entirely right that activity is important, particularly at a time of lockdown. However, medical advice on hygiene is that the spray from exertion and sweaty bodies is very difficult to contain, even in a well-meaning and well-managed gym. That is why we have given local authorities that choice and why we keep the matter under review.

[Lord Dubs (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I have two brief questions. Somebody I know received the following message on their mobile phone:

“Possible COVID-19 exposure. Verifying exposure info. The app has accessed the date, duration and signal strength of this exposure.”


Can the Minister say what this means? Is the recipient supposed to do anything about it or is this some maverick message? My second question is on a different point. Does the Minister agree that there are people in this country who are too apprehensive about the possible quarantine to go abroad and so have to quarantine on their return to this country? Could we not adopt the system, which certainly seems to be working in Germany, that we offer testing for people arriving from areas where they are liable to be quarantined, possibly testing them two or three days later? That means they would not have to be in quarantine for two weeks and risk losing their job, and so on. Could we not adopt that simple expedient?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

I reassure the noble Lord that his friend’s notification came from a new feature of Apple phones called “Exposure Notifications Express”. This is something that we have worked hard to incorporate in the existing app. I slightly suspect that, if she has a new version of the NHS app, she will not receive these notifications any more. We are grateful to Apple for enabling its phones to work in developing countries, but there has been some turbulence with our own app, which we think we have resolved.

On quarantines, I say that, as a follower of these debates, the noble Lord will know that the CMO’s view is that testing on arrival will capture only 7% of infections, and it is very difficult to apply quarantines to get people to commit to staying longer. However, we are committed to running pilots to try to open the kinds of schemes that he describes, and I would be happy to report back on their development.