Health Protection (Coronavirus, International Travel) (England) (Amendment) (No. 7) Regulations 2021

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Monday 22nd March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I echo the congratulations to my noble friend Lady Chapman on her excellent maiden speech. I agree that my party has hard lessons to learn.

I am going to have to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, when it comes to the issue of parliamentary scrutiny. That is twice that we have agreed with each other in the last three weeks, which is deeply worrying.

I want to reflect on the trenchant comments of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. The SI that we are debating today has already been updated, as I understand it, by the amending Covid travel regulations Nos. 8 and 9. The Explanatory Memorandum provided with regulations No. 8, which we have yet to debate, was particularly poor, says the committee, and the DfT had to replace it immediately. As the committee says, when instruments are brought into effect immediately, it is even more important that their intent and effect be made clear to both Parliament and the public.

One would have thought that the lesson would have been learned but, according to the scrutiny committee, it has not. Regarding regulations No. 9, which we anticipate debating fairly shortly, it says:

“The Explanatory Memorandum was particularly thin … and the supplementary information provided remained opaque.”


The committee draws those regulations to the special attention of the House on the grounds that

“the explanatory material laid in support provides insufficient information to gain a clear understanding about the instrument’s policy objective and intended implementation.”

I am of course aware of the huge pressure on Ministers and their officials at the moment, and I support my noble friend in wanting a quicker and tougher approach to travel rules and quarantine. However—and this is the point that the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, was making—I also accept that we are putting severe restrictions on people’s personal liberties, and that is something that cannot be swept away. It is unacceptable if departments cannot even provide clear statements in Explanatory Memorandums of what the regulations are about.