Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Leicester) Regulations 2020

Lord Addington Excerpts

Wednesday 29th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, this document is arriving a little after it was hot news, so we are asking the Government what they have actually learned from it. As many noble Lords have asked, do we have a set of circumstances in which the local authority—it has to be the local authority—should be concerned because it is vulnerable? That is coming across. Was what happened in Leicester replicated in other parts of the country? The answer is yes. To what extent, and when should people be worried? What has actually worked well there?

It is quite clear that there have been problems where English has not been the first language. There are lots of ways of living with that if you use technology: has that been done? Are there ways of communicating what should happen to that population? If there is a social organisation where people’s housing makes them slightly more vulnerable, what do they need to do to minimise that risk? Is that being communicated? Unless we actually hear that something is being done on a consistent basis, we are left with the feeling that we will be back very quickly asking similar questions. Surely the delay in seeing these regulations means that we should have some answers now about what works and what is to be avoided.