Coronavirus Act 2020: Temporary Provisions

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Monday 28th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow my old friend, the noble Lord, Lord Hain. Although the Companion tells us that we should not all pile in and congratulate the maiden speakers all the time, I nevertheless particularly want to welcome the two new speakers who hail from north of the line between the Severn and the Wash. There are precious few of us who that applies to, including the Deputy Lord Speaker. In many ways we are a deprived minority in this House, so every extra one should be given a great welcome—so I do so.

I am minded to vote for the Motion to Regret from the noble Lord, Lord Robathan. I do not agree with everything he says or thinks on this matter, but it will be my own little shot across the bows of the Government. So many people, who come from completely different political perspectives, have real worries about the huge great pile of these “made affirmatives” which we are getting, and eventually getting round to discussing, in some cases after they have been—what is the word?

[Lord Addington (LD)]

Enacted.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

Thank you.

The country is dividing yet again into two tribes, just as we have been desperate to get over the division in the country over Brexit. A lot of people are frightened, hiding and confused. Great damage is being caused within families, as well as to their financial circumstances, and some people are being made poorly as a result of it. Others are angry and are becoming increasingly aggressive or getting out of hand. My own town has an increasing problem of school-age young people who are increasingly getting out of hand in local gangs. It is very difficult to deal with, and the Government had better not tell me that the police ought to do it, because they have absolutely no spare time to do anything at all extra.

However, many more of the angry people are just getting very worried and making themselves ill, and do not know what to do. This is not helped when people whom I call idiots, such as the people demonstrating in Trafalgar Square this last weekend, are going around saying that vaccination is a great plot, and all the rest of it. We could do without those people. That makes it more difficult to be constructively critical of what the Government are doing, but I believe that that is what we ought to do.

We need education, explanation, transparency and clarity, as the right reverend Prelate suggested; we need support and persuasion of people, as my noble friend Lord Shipley said, rather than control and legal threats, threatening to fine people £1,000, or whatever it is, if they get a telephone call from Test and Trace saying that somebody, somewhere says that they were a contact. The implications of that and the problems of people who dispute it are enormous. It seems to me that we are where we are, but the Government need to have a substantial rethink and reshift of their priorities in the way they do things, and I hope that these debates here and in the Commons will help them to do that.