Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions) (England) (No. 4) Regulations 2020

Baroness Meyer Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meyer (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to my amendment to the Motion on the increase in mental illnesses and other long-term psychological harms. Earlier this week, I was talking on the telephone to my younger son who is a physician at the clinic for psychiatry and psychotherapy at the Charité in Berlin, one of Germany’s very best hospitals. He was angry; he described the disastrous impact on people of the German Government’s lockdown. By isolating them from their friends, their families and their fellow human beings in conditions akin to house arrest, their essential humanity was being denied. Many could not take it. Depression and suicide were often the inevitable consequence. Still others will be mentally scarred for life. Many turned up in his clinic, seeking help.

So from Germany, a country rightly admired for its handling of the coronavirus, comes the warning that it is not just the damage to the economy that must be calculated, but the impact on the nation’s mental health. Who in our Government is taking responsibility for making these calculations? Where is the risk analysis? Who in government can give us evidence that the cure will not be worse than the disease—because that is the heart of the matter, is it not?

It is no longer enough for the Government to say that they are following the science. That begs the question: which science, which scientist? There is the science of the Chief Medical Officer, of the Chief Scientific Officer and of Sage, which the Government are following. Then there is the science of innumerable expert voices, each with impressive titles after their names, who advance dissenting views. Contrast and compare, for example, the most recent pronouncements from Imperial College and King’s College London. The latter has asserted that there is no Covid surge. Why do we follow Imperial and not King’s? Or, as the latest edition of the Spectator magazine has put it:

“Why have No. 10’s Covid forecasts changed so much?”


Back in March, we were all innocents wandering through Covid’s dark forest. Nearly eight months later we have all become amateur epidemiologists and virologists. I know that a little learning is a dangerous thing. However, with it has come the need for, and the right to, far greater transparency in explaining the Government’s modelling inputs and policy decisions. Instead, we are blinded by science and its myriad predictions, forecasts, scenarios, and indecipherable graphs.

I stand second to none in my admiration of the Prime Minister’s fortitude, confronted as he is by intolerable policy choices on an almost daily basis. Those who are too willing to criticise him and his team over Covid handling—the Labour Party keep saying that we should have done lockdown before—should show some humility. However, the harsh fact will not go away. The one thing we know beyond all doubt is that the collateral damage inflicted by lockdown is immense: to our economy, to our freedoms, and to our mental and physical health. The latest lockdown will tear still further the fabric of the nation.

It should be about risk management, rather than predictions, which may prove to be wrong. Will Her Majesty’s Government publish a full impact assessment, setting out the cost of the lockdown in terms of jobs, the businesses that will fail, the toll on people’s mental and physical health, and the lives that will be lost—and saved—as a result of lockdown? On the evidence so far, I have to say I find it difficult to accept that the benefits of lockdown outweigh its long-term risks.

--- Later in debate ---

Tabled by

[Baroness Meyer]

At end insert “but that this House regrets that the Regulations will result in an increase in mental illness and other long-term psychological harm.”

Baroness Meyer’s amendment to the Motion not moved.