Health Protection (Coronavirus, Wearing of Face Coverings in a Relevant Place and on Public Transport) (England) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2020

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Monday 12th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, it must be hard work for the Minister to have to come here, make speeches and deal with noble Lords all the time. Trying to do this particular one twice must be a nightmare—fortunately, he was rescued from that.

As far as public consent is concerned, masks are one of the few successes of the Government’s policies and strategies on Covid-19. There is a high degree of compliance with mask-wearing, which is to the credit of people in this country.

When we started again in September, I was very concerned—I was frightened—at the prospect of going on the Underground, remembering what it was like in July, so I brought my bicycle down to London and had a wonderful fortnight cycling in, during the day. My daughter told me that if I brought my bicycle to London, it would be stolen, so I took precautions against that. It was not stolen, but somebody had a go at it and tried to smash it up and I had to take it home to be repaired. I took courage into my hands and went on the Underground. I have to say that, at the moment, the Underground is a safe environment. I have been coming down on the west coast main line, as I did this morning, and I worry how long those trains will run for when it is only me in a whole carriage. At least the public transport I use is safe, and almost all the people I see on it are wearing masks and behaving sensibly. That is good.

The problems seem to be in supermarkets and similar retail premises. People go on social media and get all het up about people not wearing masks in those places. The answer of the operators of retail premises is that they cannot force people to wear masks. But what they can do, and sometimes do do, is refuse to serve people. If the rule was that you could not be served in such places unless you were wearing a mask, it would be much easier to enforce. They would simply say, “I am sorry, I am not serving you.” It is not difficult to sort that out, so the Government ought to think about that and do it.

I am not someone who will march along the street behind the Great Barrington banner; I think that they are going overboard in what they are saying, though some parts are quite sensible and ought to be taken on board. Generally, there are too many people, on all sides, who are proclaimed as experts and believe that they are right about every aspect. Whether they are professor this, doctor that, or even professor-doctor something else, everybody in this debate, and everybody going on television, ought to have a great deal more modesty about what they are putting forward. The truth is that we do not know a huge amount about the virus and the illnesses that it causes, and we will not know everything for a long time, if ever. Therefore, instead of saying that this is necessary or this is essential, it would help if people had greater modesty and relied on evidence when we can get it.

The problem is that, increasingly, what is put forward as evidence, including the statistical stuff, varies according to where you go. A great deal of the evidence that we need is simply not there. I look at the PHE surveillance report every week. It is a mass of exciting graphs, many of which are put up on our television screens by various organisations. But the crucial evidence that is not known, which I think the Minister referred to in his speech, is how much of the primary transmission of this virus—the real source of it—comes from different elements out in the community.

We are told that it is almost all community transmission now—that while transmission within the health service has not been eliminated, it has been substantially reduced. We are told that care homes are being dealt with, so the two huge problem areas from before have been dealt with. But do we really know how much is coming from shopping, from hospitality, from sporting events and, if I dare say it, from schools—an area that we are not allowed to talk about—and so on? Also, how much of it is essentially among families? I think that family transmission is secondary and, as the Minister suggested, the virus is being brought into homes and then spread in that way. I do not think we know, and that is because the testing and tracing being done does not look backwards; it looks forwards. Environmental health officers can do the job of finding out where the virus is coming from in the first place. There is a huge amount of evidence about this that the Government really need to look at seriously.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

Since the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, has withdrawn from the debate, I now call the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty.