HEALTH PROTECTION (CORONAVIRUS, RESTRICTIONS) (SELF-ISOLATION) (ENGLAND) REGULATIONS 2020
HEALTH PROTECTION (CORONAVIRUS, RESTRICTIONS) (NORTH OF ENGLAND, NORTH EAST AND NORTH WEST OF ENGLAND AND OBLIGATIONS OF UNDERTAKINGS (ENGLAND) ETC.) (AMENDMENT) REGULATIONS 2020
Debate between Mark Harper and Catherine McKinnell(4 years ago)
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Mr Harper
Point taken.
It is welcome that the regulations create an offence of falsely giving contact information, meaning that someone needlessly has to isolate at some considerable cost to themselves. Self-isolation is the equivalent of house arrest, which under the criminal justice system requires a high bar of evidence.
Under the regulations, if Test and Trace tells someone to self-isolate they must do so, but what procedures are available to challenge that? Some people will not have travelled on public transport or have met the criterion of having been closer to someone than 2 metres for 15 minutes. If they receive a message that they must self-isolate but know they have not been in contact with anyone, is there a mechanism whereby they can challenge that? I suspect the answer is that there is not because of the need of the person who has tested positive to be anonymous, but if that has been considered by Ministers I would like them to say so and accept that it is unfortunate but that there is nothing that can be done about it.
I am concerned about it because for those in this room self-isolation is not a massive burden: we are still paid and can do quite a lot of our job at home. But for some people self-isolation is a real problem, and if it is not necessary in order to keep the community safe I do not want people to have to do it and I do not want anything to damage their confidence in the regulations.
Regulation 2(3)(a)(i) states that somebody must self-isolate in their home or in the home of a friend or family member. When we were debating where university students had to self-isolate, I asked whether, if a university student or anyone else who potentially has more than one home tests positive, they have to self-isolate in their university accommodation. Clearly, they must not do what a Member of this House did and get on public transport to go to another place and put other people at risk. However, if they were able to travel from one location to another in a private car, for example, where they were not going to come into contact with anyone else, and the person they were staying with was perfectly happy for them to do so, is there anything in these regulations that prohibits them from doing that?
The reason I ask is that the Department for Education is putting quite a lot of effort into thinking about what changes might have to take place in the period running up to Christmas to enable students to go home. When I read these regulations, I could not quite see on the face of it any reason why even a student who had tested positive, if they could travel safely, with the agreement of their family and where there was nobody at particular risk, could not just go home anyway and have their period of self-isolation at home, while obviously taking appropriate precautions. I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify that.
The final point I will raise—I think I am perhaps a bit firmer on this than the Labour party—is that I have a particular reason to be unhappy with the enforcement powers in the regulations, particularly giving the power to use “reasonable force” to officers of the state. Let me tell the Committee briefly why I am very concerned about this, to the extent that I have already made it clear on the Floor of the House that I am not satisfied by the Minister’s answers I will seek to vote against these regulations even though I am completely in favour of people’s having to self-isolate.
I became a Minister in the Home Office shortly after some individuals who are being deported had sadly lost their lives as a result of poor restraint procedures on aircraft. We carried out a significant independent inquiry into that and into how to use force, if required, on somebody in a way that kept them safe. I have no problem with powers being given to police constables; they already have the power to use reasonable force and their use of reasonable force is governed not only by a number of pieces of primary legislation, but by common law. A new police officer has a five-day training course specifically on using reasonable force and has to attend a two-day refresher course every year. There is a national decision-making framework that officers are familiar with, which they use to make those decisions, and in all their safety training that they are assessed to ensure they understand how to use reasonable force and what their legal requirements are. They also have to state the length of time since their personal training and refresher course when they use force, and any use of force by a police officer is reviewed by an independent panel.
That part of it I am fine with, but I have a real problem with the other three groups of people being given that power. People may not be aware that police community support officers do not have the power to use reasonable force except to detain someone until a police officer arrives. They do not have the power to use force any more than a member of the public does, and they do not go through all those training procedures that I have just talked about. I have no idea what sorts of people the,
“person designated by the Secretary of State”,
will be, but I want to know who we are thinking of and what training they have undertaken to ensure that this is safe.
The final group is officers designated by the local authority. I do not want local authority employees having the power to use reasonable force. I do not think the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government does either, because if we look at the regulations that the House approved last week on tiers, there are powers to use reasonable force in those, and although they still include the powers to use reasonable force for police community support officers, the powers available to local government employees have been constrained to a specific part of the regulations. They have been narrowed—I am still not happy with them, but they have been narrowed.
The reason why that is important is that we are talking here about using force on people with coronavirus. In itself, that is a risk. Giving the power to use reasonable force to agents of the state is a big deal. We do not generally give state employees the power to use reasonable force to detain and move people. That is a limited power. Because of all the regulatory requirements, where we give that power to police officers, there is a huge number of controls around it, quite properly. Unless the Minister can give me a very good reason why the powers are here, and say what the thinking is behind them and what steps the Government have taken to make sure they will be exercised in a safe manner, I cannot support these regulations.
Not everyone will feel the same way as me, but I have been a Minister with this responsibility, and have seen what happens when powers like these are used inappropriately: they lead to deaths. I do not think they should be here. Frankly, we should take these regulations away and strip those powers out. They should be given only to police officers—people trained to use them, and who know how to use them when all the appropriate safeguards in place. This is incredibly serious. I conclude there, to give the Minister time to answer our questions in the remaining 20 minutes.
