Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 2) (England) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2020

Baroness Jolly Excerpts

Friday 18th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jolly (LD)]

My Lords, as I expected, this has been a fascinating debate. I have drawn the short straw and will wind up; unfortunately, my noble friend Lady Brinton is still not well enough to join us, but I sincerely hope she will be back in her place soon. I am also sorry that the Minister is not in his place. I hope he is not unwell. It is not always helpful to have a Minister with dodgy connections—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Baroness Jolly (LD)]

I shall just carry on.

When I was trying to put together what to say today, I started with the regulations and the Explanatory Notes. They are pretty dense, so I went to Wikipedia—the noble Baroness laughs, but it laid out extremely well and clearly how these three instruments work and fit together. So, there is a tip, because I think we will be doing this a few more times.

These three SIs are all derivatives of SI 684; we debated that on 24 July, but it was actually laid on 3 July—some 10 and a half weeks ago. Everything is so much after the event. I looked back at our debate in Hansard; the Minister outlined the key points because we had only a minute each. He was not given the challenge and scrutiny the public deserved. It is the same today. If we have to do this—I understand that we do—we need more time to do it justice.

In that debate, I asked the Minister about the Bournemouth beach crowd. It was topical at the time and, as my home is a notorious area, I really wanted to know the answer. The Minister was not able to give me one, but neither did I get a letter from his office picking up on questions not responded to. I appreciate that many questions are asked in the sort of debate we are having now. The Minister is pushed for time, but his competent and helpful staff should be able to put together a letter to all Peers covering issues raised and not responded to. This could be emailed to participants—possibly not put in the Library at the moment, but maybe both.

To give a bit of the detail, SI 788 allows swimming pools, indoor water parks, indoor fitness and dance studios, indoor gyms and sports courts to reopen. SI 863 allows indoor casinos, skating rinks, play areas, bowling alleys, conference centres and exhibition halls to reopen—perhaps we could have had our party conferences after all. Nightclubs, dance halls, discos, sex venues and hostess bars remain closed. My next point is quite serious—what about bingo halls? For an awful lot of people, bingo is really quite important. They get together and get away; it is a cheap way of having a bit of fun with your friends. I am sure they could be socially distanced, but these regs are silent on bingo.

SI 907 imposes a fixed penalty of £10,000 for gatherings or raves of more than 30 people. I wondered whether you can have a rave with fewer than 30 people —I am sorry the Minister is not here as I know he is the expert on raves. There are geographic restrictions as well, but some expired even before we had the debate. I apologise to the House if I sound grumpy, but debating these regs so long after they are laid is a silly way of doing business.

I have asked the Minister before about how effective a deterrent the fixed penalties are. My noble friend Lady Walmsley asked about fines as well. I would be grateful for an answer to that question. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, who is not in his place today, put the whole thing really well at the last airing of SIs. He got grumpy too, and I think we should.

What is bothering the population at large is the testing situation. If we are going to get through this pandemic efficiently, we will need to step up population testing in schools, workplaces, care homes and local drive-in centres. We should also, following on from the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, look again at airport testing. Data will help us beat this virus. Ignorance will not.

We are again debating these measures retrospectively. We are in strange times, but we live in a parliamentary democracy. That should not mean we have to accept a loss of parliamentary oversight. The noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, put it very well: we really need proper parliamentary scrutiny, but this is not it.