My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Thornton not just for making this debate available to us but for her having demonstrated stamina beyond the normal in the way that she has fronted for this side of the House—indeed, I think she has spoken for Members across the House—during the entire troubles that we have been through with Covid. Covid may have a long form, but those who speak about it and remind us of its importance can also have a long form, and I thank her for that. I also pay tribute to our friends in the Library for their briefing note, which is truly extraordinary and has been mined by many of us in the speeches that have been made.
The noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, has drawn attention to the way that ME played out through chapters of misapprehension and wicked neglect through its course, until we got on to more certain ground. I might add dyslexia as another condition that suffered from not having adequate analysis or forensic understanding, which led to its own misapprehensions.
All that leads me to focus my intervention on the first of my noble friend Lady Thornton’s points: the need for data—the need for an adequate basis from which to draw empirical and helpful conclusions. In pressing the Government, and my noble friend is certainly not the only one who has done this, we must almost insist, if that is within the bounds of the conventions of this House, that the Government really give us an answer on that one: how do we get the evidential basis upon which we can draw reasonable conclusions? I heard from the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, who is not in his place at the moment, a suggestion that concrete ways of responding were available, although they might need to be enriched and all the rest of it. It is urgent that we have that evidential base, for this is something that we must know more about scientifically.
I have a son who went down with all the symptoms that my noble friend Lord Stansgate mentioned, and was laid flat out for months. He has made a good recovery so that is a possibility, but I have to say that his family live with the possibility that it may recur. Again, that emphasises the need to understand this disease better than we do currently. I have to say—and a father would only want to do this—that in my son’s recovery he played a key role in the way that the funeral of the late Queen played out. He works for Westminster City Council, responsible for their street management. He resourced the queues and cleaned the streets once the horses had left their hallmark, and did all the things that were unseen.
However, I have another son who has not had Covid but Covid has had him. He has a small business that collapsed the day that lockdown started, and he is reinventing himself all the time. Long Covid, in an economic and personal way, is not related to the disease in the bloodstream or whatever it is but is playing itself out in as insidious a way, and the economic outcomes have to be borne in mind. Meanwhile the marriage of my daughter—who lives in France—did not manage to survive lockdown. Once again, those things happened as a result of Covid, and there is an ongoing realisation that we have to cope and deal with it as best we can. Long Covid in its clinical phase of operation and understanding, together with its outcomes in personal and economic life, all need to be held together.
One thing is certain in my mind as I draw my remarks to a close. The noble Baroness began by saying that Covid is still with us, and the worry is that it might recur when we thought we had cracked it. On a lighter note, I have to say that I went down with it once. The symptoms were mild but it was on my significant birthday when I could not finish my salmon steak or my glass of wine. So I have a real grudge against Covid, and I hope that will be taken into consideration.
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