Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 2) (England) (Amendment) (No. 4) Regulations 2020 — House of Lords, 2020-10-06
Topic: Mixed Topics
Norman Stewart Hughson Lamont (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I have tabled this amendment to raise a few questions about the rule of six, on which I am grateful to the Minister for his comments. He has already conceded that there are lots of inconsistencies and injustices but that these are put there in the name of simplicity. However, for many people, that makes it more difficult for rules to be accepted as legitimate Many people want to know the basis on which the rules are made and the scientific basis for the rule of six. The very fact that there are different regimes in different countries in the UK, all based on exactly the same science, suggests that there cannot be a precise basis for the figure of six. Is it just fingers in the air for each country of the UK Six means that a family with four children cannot have a family gathering with even one set of grandparents. If a couple invites another couple from next door and have two children upstairs, that counts as six, but if the couple who have been invited have three children next door, for some reason the three do not count. How can this be logical and how can it be fair in terms of spreading the risk of infection? It does not make sense. Why cannot children under 12 all be exempt, as in Scotland and Wales? What is the point of the rule anyway, when one can go into a carriage on the Tube or into an office or supermarket and find oneself positively close to a lot more than six people? It becomes more difficult to understand when one considers some of the exemptions; for example, that for "linked families" and "support bubbles". What exactly is a linked family? What exactly is a support bubble? Who decides whether a support bubble is genuine or just a convenient excuse The SI that we are considering has a limit of 30 for a wedding, but it has already been altered to 15 in another statutory instrument. The 30-person limit was guidance and not law in July but overnight became a 15-person limit on 28 September without any parliamentary process. This law affects many couples and an important sector of the events industry. A rather dry, cynical, mathematical friend of mine pointed out that, at a wedding, there are two main participants: each gets seven and a half friends. At a funeral, there is one body, who gets four times as many friends. This may not be the most appropriate way of looking at it, but it has a certain logic. Can the Minister explain what his logic is and why it is superior There are so many different events. At a christening, is it true that a baby counts as one of the total for the six? As for Halloween on 31 October, apparently parents will be fined if children go trick-or-treating in groups of more than six. The fine, I am told, is £200; perhaps the Minister will tell me that it is £3,000. Is the person who answers the door to the trick-or-treater included in the total of six Edmund Burke once remarked that "laws reach but a very little way." There is a limit on how far laws can influence behaviour, and a wise Government do not pass over-intrusive laws My amendment refers to the difficulty of enforcing these rules. How is this to be done? Will police officers force their way into private houses? The police in Glasgow have announced that they have already broken up 300 gatherings in private homes. What will this do for public support for the rules? Two Ministers have suggested that people should inform on their neighbours. It is one thing to report your neighbour if you see that he is building a bomb factory, but if he is holding a barbecue for seven people, are you really going to report him I deplore any suggestion that we should become a nation of informers like the old East Germany. As the Minister said, the whole point of the rule of six was to simplify things, but when the regional variations are added on top, it becomes absurdly complex. As well as the national rule of six, there are seven local regimes, and that is on top of the variations between the devolved Administrations. As we saw the other day, Ministers, including the Prime Minister, struggled to explain what the rules were in the north-east of England—I sympathise, with the "gotcha" journalists all around him—but ordinary people face fines if they do not know what the rules are. A noble Lord on the other side of the House drew my attention the other day to a cartoon in one of the newspapers which showed a man in a pub talking to his companion, and he said to him, "I’ve just downloaded a wonderful new app. It tells you whether in the last 14 days you’ve been in close proximity to anyone who understands the rules." My amendment refers also to the lack of consultation. With this SI, as with others, we have the element of retrospection. The SI was introduced on 13 September and became law one minute after midnight—which probably left some people breaking the law in the wrong house at the wrong time. Last week, MPs won the right to have a say in the implementation of national rules. That is welcome; I hope it will really happen, and it should have happened earlier. Local government matters. Some mayors have complained about a lack of emails, a lack of phone calls and no documentation Last week, when we had the debate, I put to the Minister a direct question which he did not answer. May I put it to him a second time? The Health Secretary has talked of eradicating—that is the word—the virus. The PM, in his interview on "The Andrew Marr Show", referred to bringing the virus "to an end in the speediest possible way" What does this mean? Other Ministers give the impression that government strategy is simply to suppress the virus until there is a vaccine. If so, what is there to stop the virus bouncing back every time the rules are relaxed? Are we to continue suppressing the economy until there is a vaccine? What happens if there is no early vaccine? That is the key question I hope the Minister will answer. What exactly is the government strategy I am not arguing that we should let the virus rip. We need rules, but we have not had satisfactory explanations. I do not intend to divide the House, but I say this to the Government: this cat’s cradle of rules is in danger of collapsing under its own weight. Popular consent is undermined by arbitrary rules that are hard to follow. For rules to have legitimacy, people need to understand the rationale, and above all, government needs to observe the appropriate limits of laws.