It is some time since I have spoken in a coronavirus debate in your Lordships’ House but my issues with the Government’s policies are fundamentally unchanged. The Government continue to make policy in a coronavirus vacuum as if the only thing that matters is the virus and its impact on the NHS. There are clear non-Covid health harms, which are almost too many to mention. The physical health harms include mistreatment, misdiagnosis and elevated non-Covid deaths. There is a huge backlog of NHS work. Mental health issues include 80% of teenagers suffering a mental health symptom, with a disproportionate impact on those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. We will be living with—and dying from—the impact of these health harms for a generation.
Similarly, our economy will pay a heavy price for many years, with public sector net debt over 100% of GDP and the threat of higher taxes to pay for that. Unemployment data are being dampened down by the various financial support schemes, but we will inevitably see further business failures and job losses when that support ceases. It is already having a big impact on younger employees, and those entering the job market face an uncertain future.
In policy terms, getting the balance right is inevitably a highly complex judgment. However, it should not be the preserve of a few in Whitehall. The Government have not had a grown-up conversation with the country about trade-offs and priorities; nor have they put any meaningful data and analysis in the public domain. I have often wondered whether the Government have the analysis and have suppressed it or there is wilful blindness at work. We probably will not know until there is a full inquiry in due course.
The non-Covid health harms and excessive economic damage are bad enough but I have been shocked at the loss of civil liberties, coupled with heavy-handed and insensitive policing. The sad thing is that too many seem to enjoy these new powers over ordinary people. I never thought I would live in a country where a police officer intervenes because two old women are having a cup of socially distanced tea, or because sitting on a park bench to rest was not permitted. Although I completely understand the need to be able to place restrictions on those entering the UK in case they are carrying the virus—especially new variants of it—I completely reject the notion that the Government should stop its citizens leaving the UK and fine them if they try to do so. Whoever thought that up should be sacked. It is just not British. We have travelled too far into totalitarianism.
The noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Thornton, have tabled Motions that compete to name the most politically motivated regrets. I will support neither of them. However, I agree on the 252 cases of wrongful prosecution. It is shameful that the Government are not removing Schedule 21 to the Coronavirus Act today; as we have already heard, it has led to a 100% unlawful prosecution rate. It must be a modern-day record for bad legislation.
I regret that the road-map regulations are based on dates, not data, and seem to be immovable by data. They ignore, or largely ignore, the impact of the
vaccination programme on those who are the most vulnerable to Covid-19. We should have been completely unshackling the population by now. Instead, the token freedoms offered in April are an insult. I predict that they will be increasingly ignored; I shall not condemn people for doing so.
Today, the Government should not be renewing the temporary provisions of the Coronavirus Act, as the other place is being asked to do. It would not, as the Government have misleadingly suggested, strike down the coronavirus support schemes, because they do not rely on one of the temporary provisions, nor would it affect the main regulations before us today, which are made under public health legislation. It is time for the Government to get out of how we live our lives. We have to learn to live with the virus, which means that individuals have to be trusted to make their own risk assessments and take responsibility. That is the only route back to the country that I thought I lived in.
3.11 pm