Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions) (England) (No. 4) Regulations 2020

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, the one thing that Covid-19 has done and continues to do is to puncture egos at the highest levels and in all parts of society throughout the world.

I have considerable sympathy with many of the points made by the amendments. In particular I believe that there is an overwhelming requirement, as many others have argued, for the Government to use the lockdown period to provide a strategy, a way for them to show that they have learned lessons from the first two lockdowns, that they are finding a way to exit it and that we are setting out on a course that will avoid the possibility that we could have a third wave early in 2021 followed by another lockdown.

Yesterday I asked the noble Baroness the Leader of the House:

“If the Government intend, as they state, to adopt a pragmatic and local approach again in the months ahead, is one of the lessons learned that this might be more successful if the Government seek to bring all the political parties, at all levels, into the process? Would the noble Baroness consider a joint plan of action along the lines suggested by”


others and

“her colleague and former Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Bridges of Headley?”

Listening to today’s many contributions makes the case even more strongly to me that we need wider involvement by people than we have had hitherto. The noble Baroness the Leader replied:

“The noble Lord is right that we need co-operation locally and nationally”—[Official Report, 3/11/20; col. 688.]


but she referred only to co-operation locally with the Liverpool experiment; she made no mention whatever of anything that might happen at national level.

I believe that the country is sick and tired at the lack of direction. We heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, that people despair of politicians and the bickering among them. I would have thought that the assembly here today could all come together, work together and find a way through. My plea is that, as we look forward, we should try to work together against a common enemy as we always have done in the past when we have been faced with such an approach. That is the way in which we will get the confidence of the Government behind us and we will be more likely to find solutions to these problems. If our good friend, my noble friend Lord Desai, had been brought in, he could have been helping to find a better way forward than we have at the moment.