Absolutely. The main provisions under which we put in place the lockdown come from the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984, not the Coronavirus Act. The mainstay in terms of the Coronavirus Act is to allow us to support people and public services. For instance, furlough is in the Coronavirus Act; that is not up for renewal, because it is a permanent part—it is for the full period of the Act. Nevertheless, in terms of being able to pay statutory sick pay to people when they are self-isolating, I am asking the House today to renew that provision, and I think that we must.
I want to stress this point to those who are understandably concerned about the extent of powers in the Coronavirus Act. Although the Act remains essential and we are seeking the renewal of elements of it, we have always said that we will only retain powers as long as they are necessary. They are exceptional powers. They are approved by the House for use in the most extreme of situations and they must be seen in that light. Because of the progress we have made, we are now able to expire and suspend a whole raft of measures in the Act, just as we expired provisions after the previous review six months ago.
We propose to expire 12 provisions in the Act: section 15, which allowed local authorities to ease some responsibilities around social care; section 24, which allowed biometric data held for national security purposes to be retained for an extra six months; five provisions that required information for businesses and people involved in the food supply chain; section 71, which allowed a single Treasury Minister to sign on behalf of all Treasury Commissioners—I know the Whips Office is looking forward to getting its signatures out again. There are two provisions that created a new form of emergency volunteering leave, which we have not needed and are retiring. Section 79 extended arrangements for business improvement districts and section 84 allowed for the postponement of General Synod elections. Those are not needed anymore and we are therefore not seeking to extend them. We only extend that which we think is necessary.