Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 2) (England) (Amendment) (No. 5) Regulations 2020

Lord Scriven Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, the 10 pm curfew is a bit like the captain of the “Titanic” using a hairdryer to try to melt the iceberg he is hurtling towards: the impact is marginal and it will not work. Now that this measure has been set and the law has been passed, what is being used to measure the impact of the 10 pm curfew empirically?

As I said in a previous debate, I believe in looking at real people in real communities up and down the country, so this time I will use the community I live in. It has a population that is about 40% transient professionals, young professionals and students and 60% permanent residents. We have noticed—this is not just students and young professionals, but other people as well—that the 10 pm curfew has had consequences that might be unintended, but I will warn the Government about.

More people are pre-loading—buying and drinking more before they go out to the pub. They are then concertinaing their drinking when they are at the pub because they know that there is the 10 pm curfew. They are then asked to leave at 10 pm, full stop. We have gone from Eat Out to Help Out to “drink up and sod off” at 10 pm. People are going out, playing cricket, watching football penalty shoot-outs, and congregating in great numbers. They are then going home and having parties above the number of six. The hospitality industry is suffering and so is public health, because it is concentrating people in homes and in areas outside at 10 pm.

It is quite clear that this is not working. It is having a detrimental impact on public health. I believe it is also having a detrimental impact on the hospitality industry. That is why I support the amendment to the Motion.