Covid-19: Lockdown Costs and Benefits

Debate between Lord Patel and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Wednesday 13th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I agree that hard evidence is important and I too value academic studies. A lot of academic studies and reviews of the pandemic in other countries have already been published and are generally available. We are focusing on responding to the Covid inquiry. Clearly, we hope that it will cover all these different points and make sure that future pandemics are tackled as expeditiously and as well as possible, looking at the broader impacts.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I was the one who first mentioned the dangers of this virus a few weeks before we entered lockdown. On whether lockdown worked, at that time we did not know much about the virus or its behaviour. The proof of the pudding was that every country that had a lockdown benefited from it by reducing the rate of infection. The only country that did not lock down was Sweden, and it had a higher rate of infection than its neighbouring countries, Norway and Denmark, which had a lockdown just like we did. It was implemented to control the infection.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his wise observations. I would observe that the health of the economy and the health of the population tend to go in tandem, and that was one of the things that we noted during the pandemic. However, I come back to my point that the inquiry needs to look at these things for us. We need to learn the lessons and look at evidence objectively.