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

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Monday 15th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard (LD)[V]]

My Lords, my main concern about these regulations is whether there can be sufficient public confidence for people to respect them. Debates such as this have shown how government advice and regulations about how we should all respond to the Covid crisis have been inconsistent: inconsistently applied and inconsistently based on scientific advice. Government statistics, on which policy is based, have been regularly challenged.

I asked the Minister some weeks ago if he listened to the excellent Radio 4 programme “More or Less”. He said that he did. If he has been listening recently, he will have heard a weekly demolition of government statistics. On Friday, we learned that England’s chief nurse was dropped from a Downing Street press conference because she would not back Dominic Cummings. Yesterday, we read in the Sunday Times that the Government’s Chief Medical Officer and Chief Scientific Adviser are both on resignation watch. Tonight, we saw the Foreign Secretary standing alone at the Downing Street press conference, without advisers.

The impression has been constantly given that political pressures to create headlines have sometimes taken precedence over protecting people’s lives. To help regulations such as these gain respect, can the Minister please tell us why the daily Downing Street press conferences should not be replaced by Statements in Parliament where they can be properly scrutinised, and by regular press conferences, at which journalists are allowed us to pursue questions where they are not answered satisfactorily and scientific advisers are able to speak freely?