Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 2) (England) (Amendment) (No. 4) Regulations 2020

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Tuesday 6th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, here we are again: post-legislative scrutiny and a hapless Minister, who has worked with prodigious vigour—we all salute him for that—given a frankly indefensible brief. The hallmark of a good law is clarity and simplicity, so that we all understand what it is. Here we have a law that is continually riddled with new anomalies and new inconsistencies. My noble friend Lord Lamont pointed out a number of them with his customary good humour, but it is not really funny, is it? This is touching the lives of people throughout our country, in a cruel way in many cases.

The rule of six was most effectively ridiculed in your Lordships’ House a week ago. Not that it was a directed ridicule, but our new noble friend Lady Morrissey said with quiet pride that she has nine children, seven of whom were still at home. We have got to have a law that can be seen to be fair. We have got to have laws that can be seen to have been properly discussed and debated in the other place, and indeed in your Lordships’ House where there is an accumulation of ministerial and medical knowledge second to none in any chamber in the world. We really must get the horse before the cart, because we are not doing that at the moment. Of course I feel sorry for my noble friend, who I genuinely like and admire, but he is being given an indefensible brief. May we hasten the day when he has one that he can truly defend and that we can all support.