Covid-19

Aaron Bell Excerpts

Monday 28th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami). I will start by paying tribute to everyone in Newcastle-under-Lyme for their fortitude in these extraordinary times. People have looked after each other. I do not mean just in the literal sense at the Royal Stoke University Hospital, the care homes, or with neighbours, but in a more general community sense, by their adherence to the many restrictions on liberty that the Government had to impose.

I spoke in the Chamber from one of those big screens during the debate on the initial health protection regulations that were set out on 26 March. That debate was held on 4 May, 39 days later. That day, many hon. Members were willing to extend to the Government a considerable measure of tolerance, given the circumstances at the time, but it is clear that that tolerance is wearing thin, not just in the House but in the country at large. I fear the mood is turning somewhat fractious. Conspiracy theories and bad science are swirling around my inbox, and that of every Member of the House—I know that because I know all Members have been copied in.

In the debate on 4 May, I said:

“Politics and Government are about trade-offs. That is always true because resources are not unlimited, but a crisis like this highlights it more starkly than ever. Science and its epidemiological models do not, by design, always capture all elements of those trade-offs. They can show us specific consequences of specific measures, but they cannot consider every dimension of the choices politicians must make.”—[Official Report, 4 May 2020; Vol. 675, c. 464.]

I went on to discuss three dimensions of those trade-offs: covid versus the economy; covid versus other measures of health, such as mental health; and covid versus liberty. Each of those raise profound questions.

It cannot be the correct strategy simply to structure society to limit the daily number of coronavirus cases, but it is fair to ask what the correct strategy is, not just in this country but around the world. Are we all simply hanging on for a vaccine? That may be the best option, but it would be good to have some probabilities and dates attached to that strategy while we recognise the uncertainty involved.

I have been privileged to serve on the Science and Technology Committee throughout the pandemic, and it is clear from the evidence I have heard that Britain is leading the world in its scientific response. As the Secretary of State made clear in his opening speech, the Government have made extensive preparations for the vaccine breakthrough we are all hoping for in terms of both procurement and planning for its distribution. But what strikes me most from the evidence we have heard on the Select Committee is that we are still dealing with profound uncertainty about so many variables, including: the nature of the virus; the efficacy of the measures we are taking against it right now; the likely epidemiological path this winter; and, indeed, the timeline for a vaccine. In dealing with uncertainty, we must all be careful not to succumb to optimism bias that the noble Lord Finkelstein wrote about last week in The Times. He called it the “San Francisco Error”: when lost in San Francisco, it is always tempting to think that the right way back must be downhill.

I, like many colleagues, find the restrictions we have had to place on individual liberty hugely unwelcome, and I fear the ongoing impact on the economy of any prolongation of lockdown and any further restrictions, particularly in those sectors that simply cannot trade at all at present. However, ultimately, and despite my fervent wish that it were not so, it seems clear from the data we have seen from elsewhere that those who would rather we were not taking these additional measures now—either nationally or locally—could be succumbing to that optimism bias. This remains a very dangerous disease, and we must not take it lightly this winter.

I would like to echo the excellent speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), the Chair of the Science and Technology Committee. As he said, this must be the last season like this. By the spring, we will need a new plan, informed by the scientific evidence at the time and by what we learn over the winter, because we simply cannot continue to live like this forever. Finally, I urge the Government to share the burdens of the difficult decisions—these trade-offs—with the House, because doing so will increase the legitimacy of those decisions in the eyes of the public.