Covid-19: Local Restrictions

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Friday 9th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, where the department has used secondary legislation to put in place measures to tackle the coronavirus pandemic, these regulations stipulate that a review of the measures will take place within 28 days. In making a decision on how to proceed, we comply with our legal duties, and all the relevant Acts—the Equality Act, Public Health Act, National Health Act and the family test. We keep the situation under continuous review to consider whether the measures contained in the regulations are still a necessary component of our effective response.

[Baroness Hayman (CB) [V]]

My Lords, Covid is not a one-off, short-term emergency. There will be difficult judgments and hard decisions to be made for many months ahead. Does the Minister accept that it is imperative that we find a way to ensure legitimacy for those decisions by gaining parliamentary assent before, not after, they are taken, and that parliamentary assent before should be the rule, not the exception? Does he further accept, as I believe, that those decisions would actually be improved and better accepted by the population because of the challenge they would receive in public, in Parliament?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

Well, my Lords, our rule—if there is a rule—is that we are clear that our measures should be locally led. We work with local leaders first and communities to take swift action to prevent and manage outbreaks, ensuring that our responses work for them, supported by a national service which they plug into. It is for that reason that we are considering local tiers. Local alert levels or tiers are designed to standardise the interventions in place in local areas across England to make it easier to communicate what restrictions apply, and in what areas, to the public.