Inclusive Society

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I too welcome the challenge from the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. How do we build a fairer, more inclusive post-pandemic world? One prerequisite in my opinion will be how urgently we rebalance the relationship between the state and the individual. Whether you think lockdown legislation was disproportionate or totally necessary, I think we can all agree that individual freedoms and rights have been suspended. Focusing on tackling poverty should not blind us to the devastating impact of impoverishing citizens by any continuation of an assault on individual agency or on people’s moral autonomy to make choices. The new normal should not mean less freedom or fewer rights.

Yet despite lockdown restrictions slowly being rolled back, there are some worrying signs that government, both national and local, seems keen to cling on to its new powers and retain control over people’s lives. Look at the debate over domestic Covid passports and certificates that the noble Lord, Lord Beith, referenced. These proposals would mean citizens requiring permission papers to participate in society before being able to go to the cinema, concerts, football matches, gyms, nightclubs or even to get jobs. People potentially would have to obtain official clearance. This would equate to the Government declaring every person a risk to others, unless they prove that they are Covid-secure. Let alone considering the ethics of pressurising people to undergo medical procedures to participate in civic life, it could create the potential of a second-class citizenry with two sets of rules and two sets of rights.

I am delighted today to see that many in hospitality have signed a new charter named Open For All. I hope the Government will take note and think carefully before embracing this biomedical, digital-permit society as it can only be exclusionary, discriminatory and less free, and I do not want it as the new normal. I have also watched with dismay at how authorities have taken advantage of lockdown to impose contentious policy changes without the inconvenience of democratic scrutiny.

Take the example of road closures and the controversial low-traffic neighbourhoods—LTNs. While citizens were confined in their homes under lockdown, up sprang bollards, giant flowerpots and barriers to block off residential roads. These and schemes such as bike lanes and wider pavements were boasted about by politicians as examples of building back better, but better for whom? LTNs are sold as introducing green travel habits but I think opportunistically citing unprecedented levels of walking and cycling during the pandemic to push for a new normal of less car use is pretty despicable. The Department for Transport talks of LTNs as helping to

“embed altered behaviours and demonstrate the positive effects of active travel.”

This is a top-down new normal, with the state deciding what is good for people, whether they know it or like it or not and it can be tone deaf, unfair and create new victims. For example, LTNs have not eradicated pollution or congestion, just moved them to less well-off areas. The impact of these schemes on those who use the vehicles for their livelihood has been devasting. Care workers dashing from home to home, delivery van drivers, plumbers and electricians now have 20-minute drives turned into hours in endless traffic gridlocks. Even in those quieter, traffic-free streets, many elderly and disabled residents complain that they feel stranded.

Myriad rank-and-file protest groups have sprung up. Have the local politicians listened to their complaints? No—instead, I am afraid, they have demonised them as selfish car rats on rat runs and as macho gas-guzzlers, even though most of them are women and many of them use their car to help their neighbours. As one activist notes, politicians

“underestimate … cars as a community resource.”

My main point for the Minister is this: can we ensure that when politicians promise to build back better this will not be an imposed vision of what people want but they will be asked and then listened to?