Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 2) (England) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2020

Lord Mann Excerpts

Friday 18th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I do not envy the Government the range of advice they get minute by minute from experts everywhere. It must be difficult to reach conclusions from that.

I want to raise an issue that does not seem to have been discussed much in the last three or four months: how different Sweden’s policy is. Have the Government used the UK model to examine what the rate of infection and mortality in Sweden ought to be by now? The presumption is that it would be much higher than in this country, and in other European countries which have followed a similar approach. However, my own rough calculations suggest that it is actually lower in Sweden. That begs a big question about the approach taken in Sweden, where all the over-70s have been advised—pressured—to self-isolate but the rest of society has tended to operate in a much more normal way than in the rest of Europe. There are things we could learn from that. We certainly need to able to answer that question.

A second pressing issue arises from what may well happen in Sweden, where it gets darker much earlier. Our lockdowns and the big wave of the virus happened as we came into warm weather in the spring, when every day was getting longer. The public mood was much easier then than it will be going into winter, when every day it gets darker earlier. The effect on children, in particular, will be quite different when people do not want to use gardens or open spaces, even if they are allowed to, because of the darkness and the weather. I hope the Government will look at this issue.