Covid-19

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Monday 11th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green) [V]]

At times of crisis, the Opposition should be constructive, but we must also tell the truth. The truth is that the Government’s handling of the crisis has been a disaster. The public inquiry that will inevitably happen will have no shortage of material to consider: how 10 years of austerity left the NHS struggling to meet normal levels of demand, let alone cope with a pandemic; how chronic fragmentation under the Health and Social Care Act 2012 has in essence contributed to dangerous delays and disorganisation; how learnings from Exercise Cygnus were covered up and—worse—ignored.

Of course, no Government facing challenges of this magnitude will ever get every decision right, but we have to understand how, at every point in this unfolding crisis, this Government have made the wrong judgment calls, and their unforced errors have cost lives. This is not about having the benefit of hindsight; it is about wilfully choosing to ignore the evidence in front of us, and about British exceptionalism leading Ministers to believe that their way is always best. We should not wait for an inquiry after the event to learn lessons from such a disastrous approach, because getting answers now can help to save lives today.

In particular, the new track-and-trace operation must learn from the weakness of current top-down, centralised control. It must be driven at local level, not contracted out to remote private sector companies, with directors of public health and environmental health officers leading the delivery of a decentralised, community-based operation.

Too many of the Chancellor’s economic support schemes are failing businesses, and in my Brighton constituency they are desperate. For example, the self-employed scheme should include small business owners who take their incomes in dividends; allow flexibility for those who combine pay-as-you-earn with freelance work; and stop discriminating against new start-ups and women who have taken time out in the past three years for maternity leave and childcare.

Businesses need reassurance that the job retention scheme will continue for as long as needed and that the 80% furlough rate will not be reduced any time soon. As talk starts about opening up the economy again, it is even more vital that furloughing be made more flexible by allowing short-hours working so that businesses can prepare and by tapering its withdrawal to avoid cliff edges. That is critical for sectors such as tourism and hospitality, which are a key part of my Brighton constituency.

The coronavirus pandemic has turned the world upside down, exposing major weaknesses in our economy and deep-seated inequalities in society, with the most vulnerable hit the hardest. But what we do next could change everything. As the world recovers, we have a chance to reset the clock and build back better than before. If we do not, we risk leaping out of the covid frying pan into the climate change fire. There should be no going back to normal, because normal was intolerable for far too many people, as well as trashing the environment and nature.

It is vital that the recovery plan decarbonises the economy in a way that also tackles grotesque levels of inequality. A transformative green new deal could create hundreds of thousands of new, decent jobs. Let us harness people’s growing recognition of the importance of clean air and green spaces and combine it with a new realisation that when the Government choose to, they can spend at speed and scale. We should look at evidence that green recovery packages deliver far higher returns than conventional stimulus spending. Programmes such as mass home insulation, thereby reducing emissions and fuel bills, would create jobs throughout the country.

Let us resolve that there should be no unconditional handouts of public money to prop up carbon-intensive industries; instead, funds should be used to support workers and restructure industries to bring them into line with the Paris climate commitments. Finally, we need to listen to the scientists who warned for years that deforestation and the exploitation of wild species have created a perfect storm for the spillover of diseases from wildlife to people and, having listened, we must act.