Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions) (England) (No. 4) Regulations 2020

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2020 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Robathan]

Leave out from “That” to the end and insert “this House declines to approve the draft Regulations because no impact analysis of the social, economic and health costs of a national lockdown, compared to the benefits of addressing the transmission of COVID-19 of such a lockdown, has been laid before Parliament, and because Her Majesty’s Government have not published a comprehensive long-term strategy for the lifting of all the restrictions put in place to address the pandemic.”

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest in that I am 69 and am definitely entering the danger zone for coronavirus. Actually, I believe I had it in late March after lockdown. It was largely asymptomatic and possibly acquired here in this House. I appreciate that my noble friend the Minister and the Government are in an impossibly difficult position. Nobody doubts that this is an unpleasant, virulent and highly contagious virus that is killing people, especially the old and vulnerable. Beyond that, there is huge disagreement among the public, politicians and scientists.

This morning, I attended a meeting with Sir Jeremy Farrar of SAGE. He was very reasonable, plausible and balanced but not ultimately convincing because of differing and competing views. For instance, Professor Heneghan, of the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine—I emphasise “evidence-based”—said that the R rate in Liverpool is falling among the over-60s. Apparently, Covid cases in Liverpool hospitals are falling. King’s College London believes that the R rate in England and Wales now is approximately one and Tim Spector, a professor of epidemiology at King’s, thinks that the peak of the second wave has passed. Professor Gupta at Oxford and many other eminent scientists disagree with the SAGE analysis. We were told on Saturday by Sir Patrick Vallance of a trajectory of 4,000 deaths each day without a lockdown and yesterday, the Chief Medical Officer, under questioning, reduced that number to 1,000.

What I am saying is that nobody really knows, and scientists and doctors disagree. For instance, just over 1 million people have officially had Covid but I think that there are very many more. I suspect that all of us know people who believe that they have had it. We do not know how many cases are hospital-acquired infections; yesterday, Jeremy Hunt said that it is 18%. We do not know when and if a viable and effective vaccine will be produced. We still do not know why people have such totally different responses and symptoms. My son had the virus before the lockdown in mid-March. He recovered but said that he could not taste or smell anything. That was not declared a symptom until late May. This morning, Professor Farrar said that we still do not know much about the long-term effects—so-called long Covid. Of course, respiratory diseases such as pneumonia have a lingering effect that sometimes takes six months or more to recover from. The truth is that nobody knows much about this virus or the epidemic.

However, we now know that one has only a 50% chance of survival if put on a ventilator. We were not told that in April during the panic to get more ventilators, so advice changes. We know that only something like 320 deaths from coronavirus, every one of which is a tragedy, have occurred among those aged under 60 without comorbidities. Among the under-40s, there has been a total of about 250 deaths from the virus during the epidemic, overwhelmingly of people who were already vulnerable with comorbidities.

We know that our young people—our children and our grandchildren—will be saddled with debt for decades, as my parent’s generation spent decades paying off debt from the Second World War. Will our children ever forgive us? We know that unemployment will rocket next year. We know that businesses, large and small, will be closed in their droves. In hospitality, pubs and restaurants will close their doors tonight and many will never reopen. We know that cancer treatment has ground to a halt for hundreds and thousands of patients. We know that domestic abuse and mental health issues have increased dramatically—as, it appears, have suicides. We know that students are locked into halls of residence, ruining their time at university; they are turned into criminals if they leave. They will then face a desolate employment landscape in which to find a job. Therefore, is it not reasonable to ask for a cost-benefit or risk analysis? Yesterday, Robert Jenrick, a Cabinet Minister for whom I have a high regard, said that there had been no impact assessment. Surely we should expect such an assessment before embarking on a serious act of national self-harm, yet the Government do not appear to have done one.

The second part of my amendment calls for an explanation of the Government’s comprehensive long-term strategy. In the last century, when I was in the Army, it was a given that one explained to all one’s soldiers the rationale behind orders if one expected them to follow them. It is called leadership. I ask the Minister to tell the House what the strategy is behind government policy. The country is locked down so infections should fall, but when restrictions are lifted, it seems to me that infections may rise again, meaning a third wave. Then what? An effective and reliable vaccine may appear, or it may not. It may be only 50% reliable anyway, as I read from another expert. As I understand it, a vaccine makes the patient’s body produce antibodies, but now we are told that many recovered patients lose their antibodies within six months. Is that the case?

As a loyal Conservative, I want to believe that the Government have a strategy but my credulity has been strained somewhat. We were originally told, until late August, that face masks were essentially of no use. We have been told to go back to work. It is only two or three weeks since we were told that there would definitely not be a second national lockdown. I regret to say that an enormous amount of good will and trust has evaporated. We are told that the public support a second lockdown. I am not so sure, but the role of leadership is to lead. We need courageous leadership to explain the costs, benefits and risks surrounding this crisis and this measure. We need to a clear strategy to take us through this crisis.

I do not underestimate the extraordinarily difficult choices before the Government; nor do I envy Ministers having to make these decisions. I will listen to the 50 or more contributions and look forward to the Minister’s response, but I currently intend to divide the House on this amendment.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Haskel) (Lab) [V]]

I should inform the House that if the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, is agreed to, I cannot call any of the other amendments by reason of pre-emption.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend the Minister—and I hope he still is a friend—may have noted that there was not a lot of support for his position in the House. I thought the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, was somewhat rude to me in this allegedly courteous House. I remind her of what Dr David Nabarro of the WHO said. I remember him doing excellent work when I was on the DfID Select Committee. He said that lockdowns make

“poor people an awful lot poorer”.

I have not heard any Member of the Labour side say that.

Wise counsel and friends who I respect told me to pull my punches, not to push this amendment and to wait for something more important. I am not sure that there is anything more important. Now is the time to stand up and be counted. I do not wish to defend my weakness to my locked-down children or to the locked-down young people of this country who are suffering, in my opinion, unnecessarily. Time will tell whether I am right or if the Government are. I may easily be wrong—I have been before—but I would like to divide the House on this amendment to the Motion.