My Lords, I would like to ask some questions about data. We are told that the Government’s policy has been data driven. As my noble friend just pointed out, the Prime Minister suggested that the case figures and hospitalisations are going down, when in the last seven days cases have gone up by 52% and hospitalisations by 18.4%. This is a trend: the Prime Minister constantly fiddles the figures. First, we had him misleading Parliament on unemployment figures, then on crime figures, and now on Covid figures. This is very important.
I would like to know why the Government are withdrawing funding from some of the studies that enable us to know what the data is, such as the ZOE study. Without the data, the experts cannot properly advise the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister then cannot, if he chooses to, take the right decisions. Why are we withdrawing funding from these studies? As my noble friend says, if the virus is endemic, we still need to control it and we need the figures to do so.
Lateral flow tests that people can take at home are particularly important, especially in the light of the symptoms of this new subvariant—B2, I think—of omicron because the symptoms start as a bit of a runny nose. If somebody has a runny nose, yes, it could be a cold, but it could be Covid. If we are being asked to be sensible and to protect other people, if it is a Covid runny nose one should stay at home, and if it is a cold one should take precautions, but without the test—and poor people cannot afford £20 a box—people will not know which kind of runny nose it is. Can the Minister say how people on benefits or low incomes, who cannot pay the price that some companies are charging for these lateral flow tests, can afford to have them standing by at home so that when they get symptoms they can check the cause of those symptoms and protect everybody around them?