Coronavirus Act 2020: Temporary Provisions

Lord Bridges of Headley Excerpts

Monday 28th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bridges of Headley (Con)]

My Lords, I start by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Clark, and my noble and learned friend Lord Clarke on their excellent speeches. It is absolutely wonderful to have my noble and learned friend Lord Clarke here to make such a great contribution to this House.

In my mind, this debate is about the exercise of power, pure and simple. We all obviously would agree that in these circumstances, with Covid as an emergency and a world health crisis, the Government are right to look to take more emergency powers. The simple question is whether Parliament should have a greater role than it currently does in scrutinising proposed action, holding Ministers to account and voting for such powers to be exercised. In my mind, the answer is an unequivocal yes, for two simple reasons.

First, as a number of your Lordships have mentioned, and as is perfectly apparent, clearly these powers lead to the curtailment of individual freedom. The issue is whether that curtailment is proportionate and reasonable. Where should the balance lie between the state taking away someone’s freedom to leave their home, to gather in someone else’s home or to open a business, and trusting the people, an age-old principle that brought many of us into Conservative politics? Have the Government got that balance right?

Secondly, exercising these powers obviously has a seismic economic and social impact, as my noble friend Lord Lamont said. By next March, we are forecast to have the highest level of debt as a percentage of GDP since the 1960s, not to mention higher unemployment and bankruptcies, largely thanks to measures we have implemented to control Covid. To point this out is certainly not to criticise the Chancellor or others—far from it. The Chancellor has done an extremely good job in my view, in very demanding circumstances, and his latest initiative may prevent us following the path of the OBR’s downward scenario. Let me remind you what that downward scenario is: unemployment peaking at 13% next spring, it taking until autumn 2024 to get the economy back to pre-Covid levels, and the five-year cumulative shortfall in real GDP becoming larger than that of the financial crisis.

This gargantuan amount of money and this gargantuan damage exposes the second reason why Parliament must have a greater role in the exercise of these powers. We must have more opportunity to weigh up the benefits of the measures we are taking to manage health risks with the economic costs of doing so. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said, have we got that balance right?

By asking these questions, I certainly do not dismiss the laudable human instinct to save lives. I simply wish to ensure that when action is taken, we are mindful of all the consequences. Some of those consequences are very immediate, as we have seen. Workers, for example, from a BAME background, women, young workers, low-paid workers, disabled workers—these are the groups who have been the worst hit economically by the coronavirus outbreak. There are other consequences, which my noble friend Lord Lamont also mentioned, including the longer-term consequences of the impact of our economic growth. Will it be sufficient to fund the NHS and our welfare system, and how will we pay back the borrowing?

Sadly, I fear we face many more grim months fighting Covid. The Government must ensure that they bring the country with them as they do so, as my noble and learned friend Lord Clarke said. Given the enormous impact that the exercise of these powers has on our nation’s future, it is absolutely not enough simply to give Parliament the chance to debate their use. Parliament must be able to vote for the use of these powers before they are brought in.