Health Protection (Coronavirus, Wearing of Face Coverings) (England) Regulations 2021 — House of Lords, 2021-12-01
Topic: Health
Syed Kamall (Conservative, Centre-right): Sorry, was that offensive? I apologise for any offence caused to my noble friend. I just assumed that because I like teacakes, my noble friend also does I will start with some of the questions. On the question of how many people have been helped by some of these financial services, as of 17 November 2021, local authorities have reported 362,573 successful claims since the start of the scheme, totalling £181 million in test and trace support systems Despite the easing of the restrictions at step 4 of the road map, the Government have continued to recommend that face coverings are worn in crowded and enclosed spaces. We accept that there is wide support for reintroducing mandatory face coverings, but we have always tried to balance these issues. As I said in previous debates, we look at a number of factors, not only medical but economic and social. Also, within health itself, many mental health experts are very concerned that we might go for more lockdowns and about some of the measures that a number of noble Lords have mentioned As we saw in the debate, there are noble Lords who believe that we have gone too far and noble Lords who feel that we have not gone far enough unless we effectively enter a second lockdown. That shows the range of views here and the difficulty, as my noble friend, Lady Altmann, said, that the Government are damned if they do, damned if they do not, but we accept that So, do face masks actually work? This is where there is still a debate. I thank my noble friend Lady Noakes for pointing out the article by Professor Simon Wood, who is professor of statistics at the University of Edinburgh, in which he analysed the BMJ paper. It is in effect a meta-analysis. A number of newspapers have taken a line saying that wearing a mask cuts Covid by 53%. I encourage noble Lords to read the article, in which he takes apart the statistics as a statistician and looks at, as those who have done statistics will understand, whether we have a significant number of samples to make it statistically sound. In addition, Professor Naismith of Oxford University has been quoted as saying that "the Scottish and English approach to masking, although formally different since July, has made no meaningful difference to delta." Once again we see that there is a whole range of views, but we have listened to those views. Because we do not yet know enough about this variant, we will continue to review the data. For example, some say that it is very mild in South Africa so we should not be overly concerned about it, but we also have to remember that South Africa has a different demographic in terms of younger people. We know that when the virus first struck it disproportionately affected older people—as my noble friend Lord Robathan said, people aged over 85. On the balance of the data at the moment, we believe that wearing face masks works but we have always been very careful to make sure that it is proportionate where we do it On the expiry of some of these measures, as the Prime Minister said on Saturday, all the provisions that have been voted on will be reviewed in three weeks. They are necessary and proportionate while we learn more. I refer to the economics Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek, who talked about humans having limited knowledge. He talked about the conceit of knowledge. The way to understand a lot of complex problems is to allow the discovery process to take hold and to look at what we can learn from that process. We should be very careful not to imagine that we have total knowledge. What we have to do is assess it proportionately It is our hope that these regulations will no longer be necessary in three weeks’ time and that we can return to the system that we lived under last week, but in the event that we need more time to understand the effect of the variant, or that the data shows that we need to take a different approach that requires new regulations, the House will return to Parliament ahead of the Christmas Recess for a debate and vote on the regulations ahead of their coming into force On regulations expiring, the international travel regulations will expire at the end of 16 May 2022. The face covering regulations will expire, unless extended, at the end of 20 December 2021. The self-isolation regulations at the moment expire at the end of 24 March 2022, but we will continue to review the data. Almost daily the data is being reviewed and conversations are going on. We will also continue to review the data on the new variant and we hope to update Parliament on the review in the week commencing 13 December A number of noble Lords asked about facilities. We are told that setting up dedicated testing facilities at border entry points such as airports is logistically difficult at the moment, and risks delays to passenger journeys and operations. Given the turnaround for a PCR test, passengers would still have to travel to their home or the place they are staying and isolate there before receiving a result. The Government are taking a measured and proportionate response. We want to try to protect the UK from omicron while allowing continued safe travel A number of references were made to points made by Dr Jenny Harries. As the Prime Minster said, the guidance remains the same as the measures that were in place to fight delta. We have now brought in tougher measures, but we continue to take advice from a number of experts. Individual experts are free to give their viewpoint but we look at the balance—some of it medical, some of it clinical, but also economic and social factors—and getting that proportionate.