Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Self-Isolation and Linked Households) (England) Regulations 2020

Lord Winston Excerpts

Thursday 7th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Winston (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I had the privilege of sitting on the Select Committee that looked at the virus. The committee was brilliantly chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, who has already spoken. One thing we heard was that this virus occurred from a mutation and that mutations were likely to be possible in future. The fact is that the more people who are infected in a population, the greater the likelihood of mutation that may be deleterious to human health, and the more treatment that is given to people, the more likely there is to be a mutation, as the virus fights against that treatment.

Of course, people who come from outside your environment—for example, from outside the country—are more likely to bring such mutations in with them. One of the clear issues, which was not properly answered by the noble Baroness, Lady Evans of Bowes Park, earlier today, when she answered the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, I think, is what we are doing about international travel, a point already raised very ably by my noble friend Lord Reid. It seems to me, looking at the figures for people coming through London airports, that hundreds of thousands of people are coming through on a weekly basis and we are not properly tracking or tracing them. Some of them are being asked if they might like voluntarily to be tested, and of course they have to pay for it. That is clearly nonsense. There should be much stricter controls on people coming into this country, as is happening in other countries. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, exactly what we are going to do now, because at present the Government do not seem to have a firm policy to do something to make sure that we are not bringing more viruses, which may be mutating in some cases, into this country.