Covid-19

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, the figures today for the number of cases and deaths are deeply worrying. It is a 20% increase in the week in the number of cases and, of course, the number of cases that we have seen in recent weeks is now tragically leading to a much-increased number of deaths, so there are no grounds for complacency. However, as I think we all understand, this is a marathon, not a sprint, and there is an inevitable tension in the question of how far businesses can be shut down on a permanent basis—and we want to avoid that.

I put it to the Minister that to support businesses that are Covid-secure and keeping open, we need compensating measures to try to limit the transmission in social circumstances. Would the Government consider extending the advice across England that, when indoors, people should mix only in their own household and social bubble, and that the rule of six, while continuing to apply, is not sufficient indoors? We need to limit the mixing of households indoors.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend’s observation is entirely right. In Manchester alone there have been more coronavirus infections already in October than in July, August and September combined. The average daily hospital admissions in Greater Manchester are now higher than they were on 26 March, and there are now more Covid-19 patients in Greater Manchester hospitals than in the whole of the south-west and the south-east combined. These are illustrative of one region but it is a story that has already played out in others, and we naturally fear that it will play out in others in the future.

My noble friend’s advice on the mixing of households is very perceptive. One thing with that we cannot do anything about is the kind of infection that the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, described among her friends, where it spreads within a household. That is something that no household can reasonably fight against. However, stopping the spread of disease between different households is something that we can lean into. It requires an enormous amount of social distancing and a return to the kind of lockdown measures that we had at the beginning of this year. That is something that we are extremely anxious to avoid because it has enormous social impact, it is disruptive to our way of life, and it has an economic impact because it has implications on social distancing and on some businesses. Still, my noble friend is entirely right that that is exactly the kind of area that we will need to look at if we are to contain the spread of the virus.