My Lords, I congratulate all those who have got us to a situation in which infections, hospitalisations, ICU admissions and deaths have tumbled, with so many millions of the vulnerable and ever-younger cohorts being vaccinated. It is an amazing achievement, but what does it mean? It effectively renders the virus endemic. It will join the range of respiratory viruses that circulate each winter and do not disrupt our lives—how brilliant. We should be celebrating today that the emergency is over—the data proves it. But the Government, bizarrely, will not admit it. I took the Prime Minister at his word when he claimed that he would follow the data not the dates, but as the data has improved, rather than a review of the road map, those dates seem fixed in aspic.
Some will say that, with only weeks or months before restrictions are lifted, it is churlish to complain about this element. But I remind noble Lords that, outside of here, each hour, each day and each week means more livelihoods destroyed, more industries being trashed and more self-employed made unemployed. It means the horrors of social isolation taking their toll on young and old, and the sheer humiliation for millions of citizens of being deprived of control over their own lives and of being condescended to with the slow drip, drip of their own freedoms dispensed from on high, for which they are expected to be grateful.
If the data shows that we have moved beyond an emergency, what possible moral or political justification can there be for prolonging draconian powers for a minute more than necessary? The Minister assured us—and it is reassuring—that the coronavirus legislation before us has retired unnecessary provisions. Good—but what is a bit worrying is that it contains some of the most extreme detention and disposal powers in British legal history even as we speak, such as the egregious Sections 21 and 22, yet this Government still think they are necessary. Does the Minister?
I am shocked and disappointed. I would have expected all politicians in a free society to be full of revulsion at the state’s acquisition of huge swathes of punitive
powers. Even if you believed that over the past year they were necessary, would you not want to dump them as soon as possible? I find it cringe-worthy to hear the contortions that some are prepared to go through to excuse the extension of illiberalism well past its sell-by date.
The problem is that instead of these laws being reviled, too many seem content to normalise them as an appropriate long-term strategy to manage any ongoing public health challenges, even when there is no emergency. We have heard some brilliant speeches illustrating the dangers of that. When Dr Mary Ramsay from Public Health England said on the BBC at the weekend that we can expect restrictions on travel, laws forcing people to wear masks and social distancing to last for years, where was Matt Hancock with his “Cry freedom”?
Do noble Lords know how demoralising it is that the Government allow this dystopian future to be peddled out without contradiction? Do they realise that it leads people to ask what the point of the vaccine is? When there are knee-jerk statements and then careless talk of “jabs for jobs” or Covid certificates for pubs and pints, which are so divisive and potentially discriminatory, it all fuels fear and uncertainty about the future, as though freedom will never be restored.
What we need to do at the moment is to encourage people to be brave and resilient, so that we can energetically reopen society and reactivate the economy. Surely, if anything, it undermines the Government’s claim that the rapid rollout of the vaccine is working—and the Government told us it was the key to liberty and normal life if we roll it out successfully—if they then do not give back liberty or normal life. Will that not fuel anti-vax feeling? I worry that this refusal to repeal coronavirus legislation and to cling on to the rules dampens the mood of confidence and inadvertently fuels cynicism, because freedom is so elusive. Many people will say, “What is the point of being vaccinated?”.
Finally, many noble Lords have rightly complained about the paucity of debate and scrutiny of laws in the other place and here, but it is worse than that. Effectively, the Government suspended the public square, decommissioned the public and closed down debate. Shut down at home, the public were told to shut up and follow instructions. What a tragedy for democracy that, rather than galvanising the public and treating them as equal adults who can be trusted to take far more personal risk-based decisions, politicians on all sides agreed to use the law to change behaviour. Rather than encouraging a society-wide debate about how to balance risks and harms, or deploying creative bottom-up solutions to everything from the crisis in care homes to what is happening in schools, anyone asking questions not state-approved or rubber-stamped by SAGE was treated as a dodgy denier.