Fairness and proper support is needed
GIVEN the government’s previous rush to ease restrictions before fully getting on top of the virus; the inadequacies of their over centralised private test and trace system; and their failure to adequately support people to quarantine, even when they have been identified as needing to do so, re-imposition of more severe restrictions on social contact and economic activity was always going to become necessary and will probably need to go further.
Repeated (frequently belated) lockdowns are not a long-term solution and to avoid them the government also needs to get test and trace functioning properly, by shifting funding to local, public services.
It also needs to provide proper support to allow people to quarantine where necessary, without jeopardising their ability to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads, because studies suggest that less than a quarter of people who ought to be quarantining are currently fully doing so.
In the meantime, given that ongoing and increasing restrictions on social contact and economic activity are needed, far more also needs to be done to reduce the impact of these measures on individuals and small businesses, by broadening entitlement to support and making it much more generous.
Also, if we accept that it is legitimate to ban businesses from trading and people from mixing, in order to control the virus, then it would surely also be legitimate to ban landlords from charging people rent, where individuals and small businesses have lost income as a result of the pandemic.
This would help to prevent a further epidemic of homelessness and bankruptcies.
Alongside this, to maximise compliance with restrictions, people need to see them as fair. Rules need to be seen as applying to ministers, their advisors and their families, the same as to everyone else and there should be no exemptions from restrictions for certain favoured activities, such as hunting and shooting.
In addition, if different restrictions are going to be applied to different areas then the criteria for deciding what they are need to be seen as applying to all areas equally, irrespective of who they vote for; and what is and isn’t deemed safe should not appear to depend on whether there is a card reader present.
Malcolm Hunter, Leicester