Covid-19: One Year Report

Lord Desai Excerpts

Thursday 25th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Desai (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness. I think the Prime Minister is quite right: greed is good, and capitalism works. I disagree with most people who say that the Government have made mistakes and that things have gone wrong. This is precisely how it is meant to work. This is how 18 years of Thatcher government worked. The noble Lord, Lord Oates, had a marvellous time in the coalition, but I remind him that, in the coalition, when we were all supposed to be in it together, the way to cut budgets was to cut corporation tax, because that was important. Of course, you also had to cut welfare spending, but that is not unusual.

In this system, which works, the few gain and the many suffer. That is what we have been living under for a long time and it is not going away. People say that the pandemic changed everything and brought us all together. It did not. Ultimately, NHS nurses ended up working overtime and now are being told that they will not be paid any more. That is the way the world works. Why are we surprised?

Basically, the sequence of a late lockdown and an early end to the first lockdown is simply explained: some people in the Government, especially the Back-Benchers, were impatient to go to the pub, which is every Englishman’s right. The Chancellor wanted the economy to resume, so there he was carrying a tray of beer or whatever it was, with his mask on. He just could not wait. The lockdown had to be ended early, because there were profits to be made by people. How could we stop it? Very reluctantly, the Prime Minister reimposed the lockdown. We know how eager he is to lift it, because he cares for liberty. It is basically so that a few are free to go to restaurants or their foreign homes. Who is going to tell Stanley not to go?

We should not have been surprised at all. In every crisis, the poor suffer. There may be no restaurants open, but the food banks have to open, because people cannot go anywhere else except food banks. Black and ethnic minorities invariably suffer. The postcode lottery always works against us. Women suffer, especially elderly women. Children suffer. We know all this. It takes Marcus Rashford to tell the Prime Minister that, if you do not have free lunches available in the holidays, children will starve—in the fourth-richest country in the world. We know all this; none of it is rocket science, but it is precisely how the system works. It is not too much to say that there is not much hope.

When identity cards were going to be introduced, as my noble friend Lord Brooke said, the objection of the coalition Government was about privacy. I remember that the Deputy Prime Minister was a champion of privacy. I am very glad that he needed a huge bribe to give up his principles and join Facebook. I admire that; it is how capitalism works. It is quite impressive.

We economists, naive as we are, believe in learning by doing. Here, we know that there is no learning by doing. We are going to make the same mistakes again and again because we sort of half trust science but we trust the profit motive more. Lives and livelihoods may be important but not everybody’s livelihood is that important.

I want to add one more thing. Everybody wants an inquiry—fantastic. I want a long inquiry. They are all long; who remembers Chilcot? It will take ages. Can I please be a member of that inquiry? I too want five years in the QEII Centre, then I will produce a fantastic, 22-volume report, guaranteed to answer all the questions —by which time, I hope, there will be another Government.