Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers and Self-Isolation) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Monday 1st March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I want to take up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, and ask the Minister when we will see the MoU. On 17 February, the Minister wrote that it

“is currently being updated to reflect amendments to the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Self-Isolation) (England) Regulations 2020 on 29 January and feedback from the Information Commissioner’s Office.”

He added that the MoU would be published

“as soon as practically possible.”

That was two weeks ago. Where is it? When will we see it?

I will make some general observations. This has become very much a middle-class debate. A lot of people in this country are not paying much attention to these regulations. Many of them do not understand what they are for—although they understand that they want to get round them. They see an increasingly authoritarian Government increasing the penalties but the police not implementing the law. There is not a single sign of the law being aggressively implemented in the city of Cambridge, where I live. I do not think the police would like to invade the middle-class enclave and I am not sure they would feel that confident going on to the council estates.

So we can keep on giving the police powers to fine and so on, but we need to understand that what is perceived as a hostile environment, backed up by an authoritarian Government, is not working. Threatening people with a criminal conviction that could stop them being employed for ever is an incentive to get around the law as much as it is to obey it, and we have not really followed that up. People will say, “Why should I take the test? I might be found to be infected. Then I would lose my income. I would have to stay at home.” It is a directive incentive not to take a test, and we do not seem to be able to face up to that.

This was made very clear by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, when she said:

“Crippling fines and a police record will only disincentivise people to seek testing and disclose their contacts.”—[Official Report, 22/10/20; col. 1668.]


That is absolutely true.

My final point is that I have been abroad fairly regularly during this, because I have a job that takes me to Brussels. I have regularly handed in my test and trace form. It has always been accepted but has not on a single occasion been checked.