Covid-19: Government Handling and Preparedness

Debate between Lord Bethell and Lord Houghton of Richmond

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I am not sure that any Government, even the Labour Government in the noble Lord’s time, could claim to have some kind of forecasting ability that could possibly have predicted the precise shape and impact of this pandemic. Even now there are things about this virus that we do not know. At the beginning, in January, February and March, the precise features of this virus were not fully understood, and it was not possible to prepare for this particular pandemic in its precise shape and nature. To pretend otherwise is doing this House a disservice.

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

My Lords, I will follow on from that. The Ministry of Defence and the Armed Forces are often accused of being prepared for the last war rather than the next one. In truth it is impossible to be ready for the next war unless, of course, you intend to start it. The best you can achieve within finite resources is to be ready for “a” war, not “the” war. You must then adjust what is inevitably a generic preparedness to meet a specific set of circumstances. Might the department of health’s preparedness for a global pandemic be more sympathetically viewed if this important subtlety were better explained and better understood? Might the criticisms that are made therefore be more objectively assessed as those that are fair and those that, frankly, are somewhat vacuous?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, we will need to wait for the inquiry for a thorough post-mortem on what was or was not thoroughly prepared for. It is fair to say that the developed nations of the world had invested a huge amount in modern clinical medicine, yet that did not serve to prepare us for the precise circumstances of a respiratory pandemic. I pay tribute not only to those in the public health profession but to those in the military, who did so much and moved so quickly to deliver the kind of protection that this country has benefited from during the pandemic.

Heathrow Airport: Border Control Passenger Safety

Debate between Lord Bethell and Lord Houghton of Richmond

Tuesday 25th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I join my noble friend in paying tribute to Heathrow, which has worked extremely hard, in a collaborative spirit, with the very difficult, challenging and often fast-changing border and quarantine arrangements. As she quite rightly says, its commitment to the red-list terminal pilot is extremely encouraging. However, I am afraid that I cannot give her the reassurance that she seeks on our mission to ensure that variants of concern that might have an impact on the vaccine will not be diligently and ruthlessly excluded from the country. It is our duty to protect the vaccine, and we will take whatever steps are necessary to do that.

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

I draw the House’s attention to my relevant interests in the register. It seems to me that the current pandemic will pass but the future threat will not: mass air travel will return and, with it, so will the risk that, once again, it will become the principal vector by which a localised epidemic could become a global pandemic. Therefore, I ask the Minister: what action are the Government taking to find suitable technological solutions that provide early detection of airborne pathogens within aircraft in transit in order to then take measures to avoid the risk of mass cross-contamination in airport terminals? Who in government is the focal point for such activity?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord is right: this is a 21st-century problem that we may well be living with for the rest of our lives. It is absolutely right that we look at the best and latest technology to try to mitigate risk and reduce the impact on the things that we love doing, including global travel. However, the image that he cited is a little far away at the moment, I am afraid: we are struggling to get accurate tests from a gob of spit, let alone from the air in an airport cabin. However, we are meeting with the firms who are investigating these kinds of technologies; that is done through the innovations and partnerships department of test and trace, and we are hopeful that those technologies will emerge.