Covid-19 Update

Viscount Waverley Excerpts

Wednesday 14th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I agree that we all want to work together to fight this terrible disease. Your Lordships’ House provides a very good model for how constructive discussions can happen. On my noble friend’s point about the 10 pm curfew, public health directors have reported that compliance with social distancing and enforcement of regulations becomes more challenging later in the evening, after people have been drinking. That is part of the reasoning behind the 10 pm curfew, so that drinking does not continue through the evening.

[Viscount Waverley (CB) [V]]

My Lords, the complexities of getting the balance right are immense. While I sympathise with a circuit-breaker strategy that pulls the nation together in regional endeavour and would resolve confusion, why not thereafter reduce risk by restricting or shutting down hospitality but funding it, keeping manufacturing and construction running as normal, and encouraging or even insisting on working from home?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

Each tier—medium, high and very high—has a range of restrictions around all the things the noble Viscount rightly says.