Living in a COVID World: A Long-term Approach to Resilience and Wellbeing (COVID-19 Committee Report)

Debate between Lord Lexden and Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho

Wednesday 29th November 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho (CB)]

My Lords, I will start with some thanks. First, I thank the team that helped us during our committee; it was patient beyond belief, especially with the novice chair. I thank the Whips’ Office for a protracted process of finding a date to debate our various reports; I am delighted that we have managed to do so today. Most importantly, I thank the members of my committee, a few of whom are in the Room, and many wish they could have been. They all contributed with incredible kindness and care to what was and still is a complicated subject.

The central contention in our work is that, because of Covid, the state needed somewhat of a reset. I will return to that theme in my remarks. We felt that, because of the incredible acceleration of some trends and the emergence of others due to Covid, as well as the trends that we saw in sharper relief during Covid, there were multiple angles from which we should rethink our approach to resilience, well-being and long-term planning.

We did many pieces of work in our committee, starting with a large data-gathering exercise. To be completely honest, it had a mixed reception among colleagues, but we were intent on making sure that, at a time when the world was feeling very anxious, we involved the communities of people most affected by what was happening and did not just start from our own perspective here—not in this building or our own home offices but our own views about how people might feel.

We did a huge call for evidence that went out to the world, and 4,000 pieces of evidence were submitted to us. We received everything from poems to pictures, and writing from children, grown-ups and academics. We worked alongside POST, which did some brilliant work for us, looking at some of the academic work emerging during that time. That was one of the first things we attempted to do, and it certainly put us right into the thick of what different communities were feeling about what was happening. We then went on to look at a hybrid world, families and children, and towns and cities, and then wrapped it together in our last piece of work, about the resilience of our entire communities, which we are debating today. I will focus on each of those in turn.

I was a member of the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy for three years, and resilience in our work meant something quite different from what ended up in the work we are discussing today. In that committee, resilience was about the critical national infrastructure—whether we can protect the water system from biochemical attacks and so on. In the Covid-19 Committee, we worked hard thinking about how we can build the muscle of resilience not just in how central government responds to crises but in how communities build stronger links to each other and to central, charitable and faith organisations; how to make sure that we are measuring the right things to build on resilience, looking at not just economic growth but all the factors that impact people’s lives; and how we can think about a different planning cycle. So often, short-term thinking is the enemy of good thinking.

I will take each of those in turn, starting with resilience at a local level. In our call for evidence, we looked at multiple different communities of people and engaged with lots of different peoples’ experiences of what was at that point an extreme lockdown. We were all in lockdown while we were doing the majority of our work. We found a huge number of different things, but what was clear in every one of our evidence sessions —and among pretty much every group of experts we talked to—was that, through Covid, inequalities were being seen, which people had not realised were quite so deep; that inequalities were being exaggerated by Covid, which it had not been appreciated were so deep; and that the trend into more inequalities was accelerating because of Covid; all of which was very alarming. We heard from people who were making the choice, quite literally, between getting data to be able to function in a lockdown and buying food. We heard from people whose children were not learning to speak because they had not seen other people, or who were having to deal with a parent with a deep mental health issue. The stories were countless and very affecting, as noble Lords would imagine. We all felt strongly that, unless we recognise and see for ever the inequalities that we experienced during Covid, we will have done the country a disservice by not paying full attention to them. So, one part of resilience is recognising, understanding and acting upon those inequalities.

Another part of resilience is building social cohesion. We saw again that, in multiple parts of our communities, there were amazing examples of social cohesion and people looking after each other. We are not just talking about standing on the doorstep banging pots and pans for nurses, but real care, filling the gaps where services had had to stop. However, we also saw that there were communities where that was not the case; very often, that was linked to deep deprivation and socioeconomic issues. So, yet again, inequality was affecting both the ability for communities to come together and their resilience.

Something else that we found, which perhaps seems unsurprising now but was a little more novel—and we were perhaps a little more naive about—two or three years ago, was around information flows and how that had affected inequalities and the ability for communities to be resilient. We looked at how communities were getting information, how information spread and how communities were affected by information. One thing that I have reflected on since we finished our work is how, if we were starting the work now, we would certainly be more alarmed by this particular point, as the launch of generative AI has changed the game yet again with regard to the information systems that we all live within. Even two or three years ago, we were concerned by how much the resilience that we are able to build for the country is affected by the information that different people receive. I would therefore be interested to understand the Government’s response and reflections on our positioning of resilience as not just coming from central organisations but being built at a local level and built around these different aspects of inequality, social capital, social cohesion and information flows.

The next thing that we looked at as part of the bigger picture was moving to more of a measure of well-being from welfare. Well-being can be taken in many different ways, and I am sure that there are many in this Room who are more expert than me on the measurements and academic studies around well-being. At the very basic level, we knew that mental health was deeply affected at the time that Covid hit. Now, Covid is estimated to have impacted the mental health of around 8% of the population, costing the economy £100 billion a year— I am sure that noble Lords will agree that they are very significant numbers.

But we went further than looking at just mental health; we considered how the Government were weighing up trying to save lives, save the economy, save the education system, save the health system and save communities—an unenviable task—and what other measures might be useful in that regard. Our very clear position was that we supported the Government’s move to measure well- being and would urge the Government to go further. The Government have made many nudges towards measuring well-being and we had an adviser on our committee, Nancy Hey, who works at the What Works Centre for Wellbeing—effectively a government agency looking at well-being measurements across society—who helped us to navigate this issue.

I shall press the Minister a little as, as I understand it, she can recount the Government’s spending figures around well-being. Money was supposed to apportioned to each department, but it has still not been given to each department. Only £50,000 was to be given to each of 10 departments to have some measurements around well-being, but, unfortunately, this has not yet been distributed and it looks as though what works well centres might have to close because of the lack of propulsion towards better understanding of well-being. This is a shame when it felt as though there was some real cohesion and non-party-political coalescing around well-being and how valuable it could be, especially, I reinforce, when weighing up the unenviable task of saving lives and the economy and the systems that we all operate in alongside that.

We looked at inequalities and well-being and spent time thinking about long-term thinking. The political cycle is no one’s friend, especially in the past two years. We felt very strongly that, in order to be well-equipped against potential future crises, we need more long-term thinking at the centre of government, and that is why I am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, is responding to us today. We recommended that there should be somebody in the Cabinet Office looking at long-term thinking and bringing together a multi- disciplinary approach to help departments navigate beyond some of the difficult complexities of their political masters. We appreciate that this is a complex subject, but it is fundamental if we are going to be able to address future crises that we are inevitably going to face.

Those are the three planks on which our work was formed: inequalities, well-being and long-term thinking. On all of them, we believe that refocusing and re- emphasising could help build our national resilience in a new way and help us as we inevitably face future crises.

As I stand here now and look back 18 months to when we finished this last report, I think there are some things that we got pretty right. There was a report just this morning from Ernst & Young and coincidentally the TUC has published a report looking at the interactions between humans and digital in the provision of services. One of the things that we looked at for a long time was how that might play out in future. We said very clearly that we thought technology was not the answer for all services. It was gratifying to see this morning that those reports come out in the same place. I think that in some things we were looking in the right direction. However, in some things I think we slightly underegged the challenges we would end up in. In our towns and cities report, which we are not debating today, we looked at future of the high street and local businesses. I stand here as president of the British Chambers of Commerce and I am somewhat anxious about the number of businesses that will be forced to close their doors over the next year. I am sure many members of the committee heard the upset owner of Wilko, which went bankrupt yesterday, blaming Covid for a lot of its troubles. I think we may have underestimated the impact on our high streets and local businesses of the residual tail of the Covid challenges.

Inevitably, with a committee set up three months into a pandemic looking at its long-term implications there will be some challenges. We were challenged by differing views of how to execute our work—who should be brought into it and different ideas about what the future might hold—but I am 100% certain that we were not in any disagreement about the scale and importance of what we were facing. We had absolute cohesion around four ideas. We saw new inequalities, new trends being created, an acceleration of certain trends and a deepening of others. It is very important that we do not lose sight of that in the face of some of the other things we are looking at now.

I am much struck that we are debating this report alongside the financial statement in the Chamber next door—I quite appreciate that many Members may wish that they were there instead. These issues are completely interrelated, yet it somehow feels as though we have disconnected them. The spending choices being debated in the Chamber are a direct result of some of the decisions made through Covid. It is important to make sure that, as we face the significant headwinds of a rapidly intensifying climate crisis, wars on multiple fronts and a cost of living crisis that people are feeling so keenly, we do not lose sight of the impact that Covid had on many people’s lives in this country.

I look forward to the Minister’s response and reflections on the themes and thoughts in our report.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

My Lords, I think there may have been a little confusion about the speakers’ list. For the convenience of the Committee, let us hear from the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, next.