Coronavirus Act 2020: Temporary Provisions

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

Monday 28th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op) [V]]

My Lords, it is a real privilege and a pleasure to follow—I was about to say the Member of Parliament—my noble friend Lady Clark of Kilwinning and to congratulate her on an excellent maiden speech.

As she has already revealed, I have known my noble friend for over 40 years—I hope that I am not giving too much away there—and I know her family, a great socialist family in Ayrshire, very well. We have heard an excellent maiden speech from her, and I would like to pay tribute to the work that she did as the Member of Parliament for North Ayrshire, which is almost as beautiful as South Ayrshire. I look forward to many more speeches from my noble friend over the many years that I know she will spend in this House. I am sure that, in future speeches, she will be a bit more controversial, as she was advised not to be in her maiden speech—she stuck to that injunction tremendously.

I, however, am allowed to be controversial, so I return to the issue before the House. If there is one word that summarises the Government’s record on the coronavirus pandemic, it is “failure”. First, there was the failure to anticipate the seriousness of this virus, following clear experience in China, Italy and elsewhere, not to mention the scrapping, during the austerity years, of the previous plans to deal with epidemics. Further, there was failure to recognise that transferring all the people with the virus from hospitals to care homes would result in deaths that could, and should, have been avoided. I fear that we are about to repeat this. There have also been multiple failures with the test and trace system, which the Prime Minister bombastically claimed would be “world-beating”—it is certainly not that. The decision to outsource to private firms such as Serco, instead of using the tried and tested local health network, and the cronyism of appointing the unqualified noble Baroness, Lady Harding, to oversee it means that the system is mired in controversy and ineptitude.

There is also the double failure of the much-heralded app, first with the trial on the Isle of Wight and now with the national scheme, which only works on a minority of smartphones. In recent weeks, there has been a total failure to recognise and prepare for the dangers associated with thousands of young people criss-crossing the country as they start, or return to, university. Many are now imprisoned in their lodgings, having to pay thousands for fees and rent while receiving mostly online learning, which most of them could have had from home. It is okay for the vice-chancellors and for the student hostel owners, but it is a raw deal for the students. There is also a failure to provide consistent messaging: “Work from home”; “No, go back to work”; “No, stay at home”. It has been simply one U-turn after another.

Finally, there has been a massive failure to co-ordinate with the devolved Administrations and to provide some consistency of approach. There should have been daily meetings, convened by the UK Government, recognising devolved responsibilities but seeking to get an agreed approach throughout the United Kingdom. We are now told that we face at least six more months of coping with the pandemic. I hope that, in his reply to this debate, the Minister finally gives an assurance that the Government will at last recognise the mistakes that have been made and will learn from them, so that future action is better than their past record.