Covid-19: One Year Report

Baroness Quin Excerpts

Thursday 25th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Quin (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I welcome the chance to pay tribute to all those who have worked so hard and devotedly to care for and serve the citizens of our country over the past 12 months. This obviously includes all NHS staff, but also those working in care homes, in other public services and indeed in our local essential shops and supermarkets. I also pay tribute to the many volunteers who have helped out, particularly in vaccination centres. Having had my second jab this morning, I was so impressed by the way cheery and positive volunteers were supporting our local health services.

I welcome, too, as others have done, the success in rolling out the vaccination programme. I share, however, the concerns about how late we were initially in going into lockdown and about the failure to adequately protect people in care homes. I lost two friends for whom I had the greatest admiration and love in the distressing circumstances affecting care homes, and I know how, behind the numbers, there are terrible individual and family tragedies. I very much support the regret Motion in the name of my noble friend Lady Thornton.

I want to make two points. One is a plea to the Government, and the other is to ask the Government a specific question that I do not think has been raised so far. The plea is on behalf of borderers. I live near the Scottish borders and know how much it would help if there were better co-ordination across the UK’s devolved authorities to avoid confusion or creating unnecessary barriers. I say this fully respecting our system of devolution but simply wanting co-operation and joint decision-making to work better.

For example, at one point, with the differences between Scotland and England, I could in theory have driven more than 500 miles to Cornwall but not a few miles up the road to the Scottish borders, although the level of infection in the areas on both sides of the border was similar. Another example is the recent statement about the international travel ban. The description of what this meant, both online and in news bulletins, was far from clear as to whether it referred to England only or to the UK, yet this affects us in border areas. If you live in the far north-east of England, for example, the nearest airport for direct flights to particular destinations is often Edinburgh. Therefore, we needed to know for sure whether flights from Scotland were included, and if they were not, whether we were permitted to cross the nearby border to travel on such flights. Perhaps it is asking a bit too much to expect First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Prime Minister Johnson to work together, but, particularly as scientific advice is shared across the UK, it should be possible to avoid such perplexing and confusing discrepancies.

Treating England as one unit, as the Minister today said, is often problematic, too, given the widely differing levels of infection and the sheer size of England’s population. For this reason, co-ordination and consultation should work at a regional level within England as well as across the UK. I salute the efforts of local authorities and their effectiveness during the pandemic and urge the Government to make even better use of them and involve them more in their vital role of delivering services on the ground.

Finally, I have a question for the Minister which I would be happy to have a reply in writing to if a response is not immediately available. I understand that the legal power of local authorities to hold virtual or hybrid meetings is to expire in May and that, in theory, meetings afterwards should therefore be fully physical. Many local authority staff are concerned about this, as it will be difficult to find venues for all meetings in rooms where social distance requirements can be met, and there may, in any case, be a need for continuing hybrid meetings for those with particular health conditions.

I should say that not only are council meetings but those bodies with local authority representation affected, which means that the issue that I am raising has wide ramifications and needs to be resolved quickly and sensitively. If new legislation is needed, it should be introduced quickly, or else existing legislation should be extended until social distancing is no longer necessary. Of course, that is something we will all be looking forward to after this difficult and extraordinary year.