Coronavirus Act 2020

Baroness Merron Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My Lords, we do not oppose the renewal of the Coronavirus Act. As the Minister himself acknowledged, the pandemic is not over and many of these measures remain necessary. These provisions include: powers around the emergency registration of healthcare workers, which is important in ensuring that we can get workers who have retired from the healthcare system back into it, and participating in the vaccination programme; provisions for sick pay from day one, rather than day four, to help those required to self-isolate; and derogations that make it possible for remote participation in court proceedings to take place.

Not opposing the extension has been made easier, I should say, given that some of the more concerning and draconian measures have been removed from the Act. This includes Schedule 21, which contained the power to detain potentially infectious persons and has been used for a number of prosecutions, every one of which was found to be unlawful by the Crown Prosecution Service. A year ago, the Joint Committee on Human Rights said that these powers “ought to be repealed”. We, too, have long called for those powers to be removed from the Act and it is right and proper that they have been. However, we would question whether some sections which are also set to be removed should be.

We are disappointed, for example, that the powers in Section 78 to enable local authority meetings to take place remotely have been removed from the Act. Surely it should be the case that local authorities should decide for themselves if they would like to continue online meetings, especially as we approach a challenging winter, with the Health Secretary warning that cases could well rise to 100,000 a day. I look forward to the comments of the Minister as to why that intervention on the organisational arrangements of councils is being made.

Nevertheless, the Coronavirus Act itself is not the legislation that put us into three national lockdowns and imposed the regime of local lockdowns, the three-tier system, travel restrictions or mask-wearing mandates. Indeed, I am sure from this debate that I am not the only one who has lost count of the number of SIs laid under the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984, the legal basis for coronavirus restrictions in England. I note that no changes to the public health Act are planned. Over the past 18 months, the House has repeatedly expressed its concern, as we have heard today, about the myriad regulations that have been introduced with limited scrutiny, bypassing Parliament and leading to executive dominance. These concerns have been further exacerbated by the Government’s reliance on the “made affirmative” procedure, meaning that, all too often, Parliament has not been given the opportunity to debate or scrutinise regulations before they became law.

That includes the health protection regulations that we are also debating. They were laid on 22 September and came into effect on 27 September. We fully support the provisions to amend the definition of “fully vaccinated” to include those who have received doses of two different approved vaccines or clinical trials. We also support the extension of the requirements for those who test positive for coronavirus and who are unvaccinated to self-isolate, and the extension of local authorities’ enforcement powers to 24 March 2022. However, I do not understand why this legislation was laid under the “made affirmative” procedure. I should be grateful for the comments of the Minister when he responds. After all, the department knew that the original expiration deadline was approaching and has long acknowledged that cases could rise to 100,000 this autumn or winter, thus necessitating continued self-isolation and enforcement powers.

While this is of course a rather straightforward SI, the Minister’s predecessor—the noble Lord, Lord Bethell —failed to make the case when introducing far more onerous Covid regulations that were laid using the emergency “made affirmative” procedure to implement coronavirus policies. Many of these regulations were laid at the 11th hour—a point made by my noble friend—despite being in press releases days, even weeks, in advance. They included mask-wearing requirements and the system of mandatory quarantine backed by criminal sanction, which gave the police the power to enter people’s homes; it also allowed individuals to be detained and searched, and have their belongings seized. These are not minor changes to the law.

Although we understood the need for the Government to respond quickly in the initial phases of the pandemic because of the emergency, it is unjustifiable to continue doing so without scrutiny where pandemic management has moved from reaction to control. I hope that the Minister can assure the Committee that the Government will do much better if, or when, they reintroduce some restrictions in respect of the management and control of the spread of coronavirus.

We all know that the pandemic is not over. We see tens of hundreds of new recorded Covid infections every day. We know that there are hundreds of people in hospital, many of whom are in the ICU. We also know that, on average, over 100 people are sadly dying of this dreadful disease every single day. The Minister will be well aware that the NHS Confederation, the BMA and local councils have called on the Government to implement plan B immediately. It contains the measures that we already support and are familiar with, such as mask wearing and allowing working from home. The Prime Minister should never have abandoned these measures; it is extremely concerning to hear that he is not following the advice of SAGE. My noble friend Lord Hunt expressed concern about the downgrading of SAGE’s role. I would welcome the Minister’s comments on that.

It appears that there has been little learning in government of the lessons from the early stages of the pandemic when delays undoubtedly, regrettably and tragically cost thousands of lives. Indeed, we know that plan B will not be enough to prevent another lockdown. Let us look at some of the current practices. I refer the Minister to one particular aspect of test and trace: the messages sent to people who have been in contact with somebody who has tested positive for Covid. Can he tell the Committee what impact those messages and their wording, which I would suggest is not carefully constructed, have had on compliance? Also, what assessment has been made of the user experience of the people receiving those messages? How often is the messaging reviewed?

The noble Lord, Lord Naseby, talked about the power of communication. I suggest to the Minister that, for any of us who are in receipt of these messages, the advice on what to do is, at a minimum, confusing. It is overly directive on the matter of self-isolation and takes a considerable time to establish that self-isolation is not necessary if one has been double-vaccinated. I would be grateful for the Minister’s comments on that.

Furthermore, the Government must get a grip on the stalling vaccination programme: it has left almost 5 million people at a greater risk of catching Covid, as they are yet to receive their booster jabs and are at the mercy of waning efficacy. The Government have said that the vaccination programme will continue to be our first line of defence; yet on current trends, we will not see completion of the booster programme until spring 2022. This seems rather slow.

We note also that the rate of vaccination for children is shamefully low as well. Vaccines for 12 to 15 year-olds in the UK started on 20 September and, to date, only 15% of 12 to 15 year-olds in England have received one shot. With hardly any protective measures and delayed vaccination, the return to school last month has seen record numbers of children becoming infected. For the last three weeks, we have seen an average of 10,000 new five to 14 year-olds testing positive for Covid every single day. Thousands are missing school, and this cannot continue.

As we approach a difficult winter, it seems that Ministers have failed to put in place the necessary measures to improve ventilation in businesses, public spaces and schools, despite better ventilation having been proven to reduce transmission of Covid. They have also failed to provide for proper sick pay and to fully resource local contact tracing teams, which would also help reduce the spread of the virus. This is no time for complacency. We urge the Government to act on vaccines, ventilation, sick pay and masks.