Covid-19 Update

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I did not quite say that I did not know how many people use the app; I said that we do not know who is using it. We keep an eye on it and, to date, its use has not dropped, but we are naturally concerned that trust in the app will deteriorate and that is why we are looking carefully at the advice that comes out of being pinged. Some 19 million people have the app. It is an enormously valuable resource, and one that we believe has made a big impact.

Predicting long Covid and infections is extremely difficult because we do not know what the infection rate is going to be. We are in a race against the virus. I hope that very soon the impact of the vaccine will bring R below one and the disease will start going down instead of up. But I cannot tell the noble Baroness, exactly when that date will be.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, last month the Minister made some highly critical comments about my having had the temerity to question the wisdom of government restrictions. Yet we now know that the last Secretary of State did not believe in their value either. Given the small risk to children and teachers from the virus, can my noble friend explain what the value has been—backed by evidence—of severely disrupting the education of hundreds of thousands of children by enforced isolation? Or should we be similarly sceptical about that policy?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I know that my noble friend is sceptical of almost everything to do with the Government, and I am not quite sure how to address that question—but I will take it seriously. The bottom line is that children are a vector of infection, and, during the tough days before the vaccine, they were the ones who spread the disease around, accounting for a very large proportion of the numbers. As a father of four, I can tell you that it was extremely frustrating to have our children sent home, but, none the less, it was an important and impactful aspect of our fight against Covid.