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

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Tuesday 12th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the SLSC for its typically thorough report, which identified errors in the original regulations. But with the changes announced by the Government over the last two days, I look forward to new revised regulations, which I hope will correct one glaring anomaly in the regulations of 26 March.

Regulation 6(2), relating to restrictions on movement, states that a reasonable excuse to leave home is

“the need … to obtain basic necessities, including food”.

Leaving aside the word “need”, which is quite subjective, the term “basic necessities” has led to some police officers boasting that they were patrolling shopping aisles to make sure that consumers were purchasing what the police considered were “basic necessities.” I believe that that behaviour was quickly stamped on, but the law in this regulation still says “basic necessities”.

Schedule 2, Part 3 lists the shops that may stay open. These include supermarkets, petrol stations and hardware shops, among others. The Government have confirmed that consumers can purchase anything at all in these shops which they stock, much of which is not a basic necessity. Supermarkets selling homewares, toys, video games, clothing and compost are perfectly within the law. The term “basic necessities” is confusing and unnecessary. Regulation 6(2)(a) should therefore be changed to say: “to obtain any supplies, including food”, et cetera, “from the businesses listed in Part 3 of Schedule 2”.

Schedule 2 should also have a general provision which states that any shop or retail premises can open provided that it can maintain social distancing. If the supermarkets can limit numbers and space out customers, why not permit, say, Army & Navy Stores, Debenhams or any other retailer to open if they can set up safe systems?

Finally, I commend the statement in the Government’s plan, Our Plan to Rebuild, announced yesterday, that

“the Government will continue to recognise that not everybody’s … risk is the same; the level of threat posed by the virus varies across the population”,

and that the Government expect

“to steadily make the risk-assessment more nuanced … some … may be able to take more risk … The Government will need to consider both risk to self, and risk of transmitting to others.”

Therefore, I hope that the new regulations will make it clear that everyone over 70 is not automatically vulnerable. The same goes for those of us with “underlying health conditions.” These cover a huge range of conditions, and not all of them have equal risk. We must let people over 70 or others in perceived risk categories get out, so long as they do not pose a risk to others. If they endanger themselves, that is their decision, so long as they do not endanger anyone else. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will take those points on board.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Palmer of Childs Hill) (LD)]

Please could we all try to keep to the timings.