Health Protection (Coronavirus, Wearing of Face Coverings on Public Transport) (England) regulations 2020

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Monday 6th July 2020 General Committees

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Hosie, especially for my first opportunity to respond to legislation as a Front-Bench MP. I start by thanking the Minister not only for providing advance notice of this statutory instrument to the shadow Secretary of State for Transport and to me, but for the briefing that he offered me last week with his team and civil servants. That was valuable in providing further details on the statutory instrument and addressed some of the queries that I had, and I thank them all for their time.

Although the statutory instrument imposes time-limited restrictions on people’s personal liberties, it is important for the reasons the Minister has just outlined: to reduce the spread of coronavirus and, ultimately, to save lives. I agree that this is a proportionate measure to achieve those aims and I do not think it particularly controversial. I and the Labour party wholeheartedly share the Government’s aim of defeating coronavirus and protecting public health. I therefore support the SI, but I would like to take a few moments to place a few points of concern on the record.

The first point, and perhaps the most important from a public health perspective, is that although this measure is welcome, it should have been implemented long before now, as Labour consistently called for. The Government have once again been too slow to act. The SI was laid in Parliament, and came into force, on 15 June. On the same day, the Foreign Secretary stated in the Government’s daily press briefing that across the country there were 1,056 new coronavirus cases. That figure was thankfully part of a sustained trend of declining cases and came as the Foreign Secretary was also announcing that some of the lockdown restrictions from March were being relaxed. I do understand that, as the Government relax lockdown restrictions, they want to keep the infection rate low and prevent a resurgence of the virus, but why are the Government only now introducing this simple step of infection control? Surely a much more sensible time to have introduced these measures was at the start of lockdown itself, months ago, when we were experiencing approximately 6,000 cases a day. Why was no effort made to introduce this then? That was a time when those using our public transport network were largely essential workers, yet the Government chose not to take this basic step to protect them from contracting coronavirus.

I expect the Government to say that they have been following World Health Organisation advice, but this SI does not in fact follow that advice. The WHO updated its advice on 5 June to recommend that cloth masks made from at least three layers of fabric be worn by the public on public transport, in shops and in other confined or crowded environments. Ten days later, we get the statutory instrument we are considering today, but it makes no mention whatever of the fact that the public must wear face masks that have at least three layers of fabric. In fact, it makes no mention of face masks at all. Actually, a T-shirt pulled up over one’s mouth and nose, or a visor that does not make any contact with one’s mouth and nose, are face coverings. Although such coverings are completely fine under this SI, they are a far cry from the recommendations of the WHO. In that respect, this measure is yet another missed opportunity to take the steps that are needed to protect people using public transport.

On compliance, since this measure was introduced, we have seen patchy figures for people wearing face coverings on public transport, so it would be good to hear how the Government plan to monitor compliance and take steps to increase the number of people wearing face coverings.

It is my considered view that enforcement of this legislation is a job for the police and not for transport staff, so I would be grateful if the Minister reassured me that the issuing of fixed penalty notices will be done exclusively by the police and perhaps by Transport for London enforcement officers as applicable, but not by other transport staff. If the Government expect other transport workers to enforce these restrictions, what training and additional protections will they provide to keep transport workers safe from abuse in their place of work?

Across the UK, public health is a devolved matter, but there is obviously a large amount of cross-border travel on public transport, as I am sure you will attest, Mr Hosie, so I ask the Minister to guarantee that the Government will take a joined-up approach with the devolved Governments to ensure that, as passengers travel across borders, they comply with the different and evolving requirements in each nation.

The Minister, as he will no doubt be aware, is required to review this SI in six months, but I hope that before then he will consider the issues raised in today’s debate, seek feedback from the police, transport unions and operators as to the impact that this SI is having, and—if necessary—make changes sooner rather than later.

I realise that this is a period of some uncertainty and that the situation we are in today will probably not be the same months or even weeks from now, so I reaffirm to the Minister my commitment to work with him constructively on all issues, but especially on this one; I am sure he will agree that it is too important an issue not to get right. On that note, I thank him for his co-operation, and I thank you, Mr Hosie, for giving me the opportunity to speak today.