That is probably overstating things. Certainly, it is not what has been said in the other place about the reasons why children were included. We do need some more clarity from the Government on that.
In terms of clarity, we also need more data and evidence from the Minister about what is happening to reduce the transmission of the virus. We need her to commit to publishing evidence behind all these decisions. If there is no evidence, then so be it, but we need to see the basis on which decisions are being made. I was a little unsure whether she was saying that it was too early, or not, to establish the effectiveness of these regulations. She said at one point that it would take a couple of weeks to see whether the regulations are being effective, but of course we are already past that point. I hope that we can see some clarity on that.
I would be grateful if we heard a bit more about why it is a rule of six, not seven, eight or five, for example. That is very important, because we are putting significant restrictions on people and those cannot be based on an arbitrary number. I raise this not because we want to pick holes in what the Government are saying but because the Transport Secretary, when asked why it was six, said there was no particular reason for that figure. Can anyone imagine a police officer going to hand out a fine to a group of seven people and, when asked why seven was an offence and six was not, saying, “Well, there’s no particular reason for that.”?