Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers) (England) Regulations 2020

Lord Scriven Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, when government Ministers have to spend two days explaining when and how you can eat a Scotch egg to help slow down the transmission of a deadly virus, you know the simplicity of the rules and the clarity of the message, so vital to the task, have been lost. It is an indication of the confusion that has been created by constantly changing the rules that both individuals and businesses must adhere to. This is not helped when the former senior adviser to the Prime Minister clearly broke the rules and the full weight of the Prime Minister’s office was used to defend breaking the law.

People want to do the right thing to protect their loved ones, businesses, jobs and the community they live in. However, listening to people, you get a real sense that they do not understand what they are being asked to do anymore. The Government have complicated not only the message but the rules people must abide by. These regulations, 70 pages long, with nuanced rule after nuanced rule depending on which tier you live in, will cause further confusion.

The next four weeks highlight how this is not about creating a sensible, calm, strategic set of rules to slow the transmission of the virus but a bureaucrat’s dream and Ministers trying to control things from a Whitehall office. On 2 December, we are into tiers and a new set of rules; on 16 December, the tiers are reviewed, and we could have a new set of rules to live and work by; on 23 December, we throw the tiers out, and we can have Christmas; on 27 December, we are back to the tier rules of 16 December; on 30 December, the tiers are reviewed again, and we could have to contend with a further set of rules. In all reality, can the Minister say that potentially having to live under five sets of rules within one month is going to create trust, stability and clarity and give people and businesses the platform to be able to plan their everyday lives as well as fully understand what they are being asked to do to slow the transmission of this deadly virus?

The country requires richer, deeper understanding of the triggers that put an area into a set of restrictions and, just as importantly, the trigger points that release them from the most restrictive rules. The analysis that the Government have provided is not a serious attempt to explain. It is a commentary without the clear evidence that is required for people to understand and plan their lives. I asked the Minister: rather than a broad-brush approach, what empirical evidence will the Government bring forward to show how the triggers are adopted for an area going into and out of a tier?

In Sheffield, we are bewildered as to why we are in tier 3. The latest set of figures indicate we had, on 25 November, 185 cases per 100,000 people. Hospitals are moderately busy but in no way full to capacity. The local Nightingale hospital for Yorkshire and the Humber sits empty; our case rates are falling. Meanwhile, some areas with greater hospital activity, less ICU capacity, higher case rates per head and rising cases have been put in tier 2.

It is also worth noting that the department of the director of public health for Sheffield City Council has written to local care homes suggesting that lateral flow tests are not specific enough and that it is seeking government data and assurance. I ask the Minister: are the Government totally confident that lateral flow tests are safe and reliable enough to be used in care homes so people can visit?

The country has had a £20 billion failing national system. The Government highlight the number of tests, not their quality or the speed of the results. There is a very poor record on tracing and almost a laissez-faire isolation system that keeps leading us back to these types of regulations.

Dealing with this virus does not have to be like this, with ream after ream of confusing emergency law. Some of us have been saying since February that, to minimise disruption, a localised test, trace and isolate system is required. It is now time to do things differently. We need to localise the test, trace and isolate system within a national framework that supports local areas with the expertise and resources to deal with real hard tracing and have proper and resourced community teams supporting people who need to isolate. It needs to be underpinned by a government commitment to reward people for doing their civic and national duty of isolating, like they do in Taiwan, by paying people their full income while they isolate. I ask the Minister if and when this could be done.

The Government need to listen and refocus test, trace and isolate. They need to understand the results that local test, trace and isolate can bring, support that and underpin it with an income guarantee for those who isolate. If this is not done, we will be back here, fortnight after fortnight, confusing people, with the Government taking knee-jerk powers that affect businesses and individuals, causing debt, strain and worry.

We are reaching the end of the path of just nodding through emergency regulations; it is time to review the whole strategic approach of how the country deals with slowing the transmission of the virus, taking from international examples, such as South Korea and Taiwan, about how to minimise disruption by getting a proper local test, trace and isolate system. The Government need to understand that they are now on warning to radically change the way they manage this virus, or future regulations will not be nodded through so easily.