Covid-19 Internal Review

Lord Flight Excerpts

Thursday 20th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I am enormously grateful to my noble friend for his comments. I know he has been a vocal critic of some things, and I take his comments in very good measure. On his point on guidance, this is not how the public have presented things to us. They want clear, easy-to-understand guidance. We have learned the importance of publishing in many languages and now regularly publish in 10 spoken languages. The public are in fact hungry for detailed guidance, which is why we have published more than 400 pieces of guidance on GOV.UK, covering everything from funerals, care homes and schools right through to smokers, vapers, houseboat dwellers and singing with children. That is because the public would like to have this kind of advice and recommendation.

[Lord Flight (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, on how professionally he handles his responsibilities in the Lords. I am sure he will support the Prime Minister’s announcement that a full inquiry will be held next year, beginning in the spring, which will place the state’s actions under the microscope. The existing internal lessons-learned review was an informal exercise, not a public-facing work, which I believe will not be published. It would be wrong to publish it. While there have inevitably been some mistakes, I congratulate the Government and the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, on having got Covid-19 vaccinations moving significantly faster than the EU. I hope he will exceed the speed limit even more.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

I am enormously grateful for my noble friend’s kind comments. On his point on vaccines, I emphasise the enormous contribution of the whole union behind the vaccine project. It has been a union project to deploy vaccines to every person in the UK at amazing speed and with consistency right across all parts of the union. For that we should be enormously grateful.