Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Steps and Other Provisions) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, by now the Minister must realise that we are very fed up at being asked yet again to retrospectively approve significant legislation that impacts on individual liberty, well-being and livelihoods, three whole weeks after they came into effect. Are we fed up? The answer is yes. However understanding and apologetic the Minister might have been in his pre-emptive words about this, it is time that this came to an end and the usual practice of accountability was reinstated.

My first question, which I suspect the Minister will say is above his pay grade, is: can he give the Grand Committee a date from which we can expect to discuss these important matters in advance of them being enacted? The noble Lord, Lord Scriven, and other noble Lords are quite right that it is time to stop using emergency legislation for these issues and to use it instead when there is an emergency. The regulations were made on 14 May and came into effect on 17 May. While admittedly that is progress, it still falls woefully short of the threshold for using emergency-made procedures.

Of course, like the Minister and other noble Lords, I welcome the vaccine rollout and its increasing effectiveness. The regulations allow six people or two households to gather indoors, and up to 30 people outdoors. Weddings and funerals are now permitted, and all remaining outdoor entertainments and indoor hospitality can now reopen. All those things are of course enormously welcome.

The statutory instrument amends the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Wearing of Face Coverings in a Relevant Place) (England) Regulations to provide an exemption for gatherings for specified education and training purposes in community premises. This mirrors the policy for schools and further education providers. But given that cases in many hotspot areas are concentrated on school-age children and young adults who have not yet had the opportunity to be vaccinated, does the Minister think it might be premature to announce that face coverings will no longer be required in secondary school classrooms and communal areas from 17 May?

I am asking this because we can see that a number of local public health authorities in the north-west have issued recommendations to secondary schools about using face masks again due to the rising Covid-19 transmission rates across the community, largely due to the delta variant. That underscores the need for greater powers for local authorities to introduce measures as and when needed. In a way, that echoes the remarks from the noble Lords, Lord Lansley and Lord Scriven, about the transition we need to be in to live with this. That might mean that, in some areas, you might need to wear masks in some schools and not in others, for example.

I turn to the confused mess that is international travel, as mentioned by most speakers. These regulations remove the prohibition on international travel and the requirement for individuals to declare their reasons for travelling abroad. If this is a shift from regulation to guidance, it really has not worked. We on these Benches believe that the traffic light system, where the Government are advising people not to do what is allowed, coupled with very lax quarantine requirements when they come back, is flawed. Indeed, the Prime Minister said:

“It is very, very clear … you should not be going to an amber list country except for some extreme circumstance, such as the serious illness of a family member. You should not be going to an amber list country on holiday.”—[Official Report, Commons, 19/5/21; col. 692.]


Yet, travellers are allowed to travel to amber list destinations without proof of an essential reason and some holiday companies are offering holidays to amber list countries. Indeed, the confusion over the amber list has led to reports of more than 50,000 people travelling to the UK daily from countries with rising Covid numbers and only a tiny percentage going into hotel quarantine. Does the Minister accept that the system is leaving the door wide open to new strains of the virus and risks undermining the lockdown sacrifices of the British public and the success of the NHS vaccine?

I am sorry that the Government seem not to have learned from their previous mishandling of travel restrictions. We needed robust quarantine measures in place for people coming back into the country. Moving Portugal to the amber list is not the answer. Surely the answer is that the amber list should be scrapped—either countries are red or they are green.

We need the Government to be more vigilant about emerging threats. I want to talk about the C363 variant, which is linked to Thailand. It was designated as a variant under investigation on 24 May and 117 cases have been identified in the UK, with over 37% of cases originating from travellers into the UK. Vietnam is also experiencing a significant rise in cases, potentially as a result of this new variant. It seems that the delay in adding India to the red list made us vulnerable. I hope the Minister can assure us that Thailand and Vietnam should urgently be added to the travel red list.

Given that Ministers have promised to provide a week’s notice of changes, and with 14 June being next Monday, when will we hear from the Prime Minister about what happens next? Can the Minister assure the House that we will have the chance to see and debate these regulations before they come into force? We all know by now that lifting restrictions will lead to further spread. What is less clear is whether the increase in Covid hospital admissions will be a wave or a ripple. What is the Minister’s view?