The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has raised very many relevant questions, as did the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. Those questions come from the anxiety that people are feeling about what the future of living with Covid means, with what looks like not having all the instruments to identify it or the recommendations about what to do if you have it. There is also the support that people may or may not be able to get from their workplace; and the support that may or may not be available to local authorities, for example, which are going to pick up some responsibility for this.
Almost exactly two years ago, my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer and I faced the Minister and his Whip, two Liberal Democrat colleagues, a couple of people who were chairing the sessions and a skeleton staff as we put on to the statute book the restrictions we are lifting today. Everybody else had already gone into lockdown; we put the legislation on to the statute book about three days after the rest of the country had gone into lockdown. It was a bizarre experience and actually felt quite risky. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Newby, will not mind me saying that he went home and told us the day after that he had got Covid. My noble and learned friend Lord Falconer and I were absolutely convinced that we were going to get it, because we had been sat very close together, but neither of us did at that point.
In a way, I am very pleased to see that we are rescinding these restrictions now, but the Minister needs to put some answers to what has already been put to him on the record. The first thing I want to ask about is the support for local government. If local government and public health authorities are to be picking up how to identify what to do about the pandemic if things get worse, I would like to know whether support is available to them to do that.
The second thing I want to raise is to do with monitoring and research. I excuse the Minister for not answering my question in the Chamber earlier, because it is quite hard to answer such questions in detail in the 30 seconds that might be available, but I will repeat the fact that the ZOE Covid study app is no longer going to receive its funding. The app was launched in March 2020, having been developed by King’s College London and the technology company ZOE to help
discover new symptoms of Covid. It reported on the effects of vaccines and has provided up-to-date predictions about the spread of the pandemic. It has 4.7 million users, of which I declare myself as one, and 850,000 people contribute daily to its recording of more than 480 million health reports. The app was part of one of the largest studies of its kind in the world and has led to 40 peer-reviewed scientific papers, based on its findings.
Many noble Lords will have heard of Professor Spector. He has been doing weekly YouTube broadcasts that I have watched from time to time as part of my information gathering to do my job from these Benches more effectively. He has developed the study further to look at things such as heart disease, cancer and dementia. It is extremely disappointing and very short-sighted that the UK Health Security Agency is going to withdraw its funding for this programme. It has been an important tool in protecting the UK and could protect the UK from the next pandemic.
I want to hear from the Minister what he and the Government are going to do to replace the kind of surveillance that the ZOE app has provided to this country in a very cost-effective way. The Minister’s earlier answer to me in the Chamber said this and that, but he did not specify. We need to know why the Government have allowed this to happen and what they are going to do to replace this effective surveillance and reporting.
Thirdly, I would like the Minister’s view on the BA.2 variant. His honourable friend said that it is of no significance but that is not what the chief executive of the UKHSA said. She acknowledged it and said that we do not yet know whether it is significant. How do the Government propose to monitor this?
Finally, I want to talk about the problem of inequality that the Government’s withdrawal of free testing brings. I think it will mean us having two tiers of Covid in this country. Those of us who can afford to will continue to test because we believe that it is important to protect other people, particularly the vulnerable, when we go out and about. I do not want to come into the House of Lords without having a test in the morning because I would hate to bring an infection into the workplace, because of the young people and pregnant colleagues who are here. That would be irresponsible. But there will be those who cannot afford to buy tests; what do they do? Our part-time staff here, for example, might not be able to afford to test. The Minister needs to address the problem of the inequalities that the Government’s policy will bring about for those who may get Covid but cannot afford to test.