We need a new roadmap to freedom that is based on data, not dates
More than 26million people in the UK have now received their first dose of a Covid vaccine. The rollout has been exemplary; the efforts of Kate Bingham’s Vaccines Taskforce, and the NHS and its volunteers deserve our thanks.
With all this good news, many are rightly asking why, given that we have vaccinated such a large proportion of vulnerable groups, we have tougher restrictions than last summer?
As Easter approaches, families would normally be making plans to visit and stay, and people could be forgiven for thinking that getting together would be possible to do safely. However, the Government’s roadmap – which appears almost entirely focused on dates rather than the increasingly positive data on deaths and hospital admissions – means that such activity will involve breaking the law.
Reasonable people will wonder whether the Government has got this balance right. Staying with your family won’t just be illegal for Easter weekend, it will be unlawful until May 17 at the earliest – whatever the data say. The roadmap is “dates, not data”.
If the Government wishes to make normal human behaviour unlawful, then it must be prepared to show that such rules are proportionate, reasonable and grounded in evidence. If it wants Parliament to pass these laws, then ministers should also be prepared to say that they want them consistently policed.
It’s damaging to pass laws that aren’t enforced, but it’s also unfair to place police officers in an impossible position, as we saw last weekend at the vigil on Clapham Common.
Whilst it’s clear the Met has serious questions to answer, those scenes are at least partly the consequence of poorly drafted laws, rushed through Parliament with little scrutiny.
This week, as well as voting on the roadmap, MPs are likely to be asked to renew most of the temporary provisions of the Coronavirus Act for a further six months until October.
According to the Government’s own description, the Act contains “extraordinary measures that do not apply in normal circumstances”.
One example is some of the most draconian detention powers in modern British legal history, giving the police and other officials the power to detain us, potentially indefinitely. Therefore, for any temporary measure that the Government wishes to retain, the burden is on them to set out, in Parliament, a very clear justification.
Parliament can already give the police emergency powers under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, but these regulations need parliamentary approval. All the Government has to do under the Coronavirus Act is mark its own homework every two months and involve Parliament twice a year.
When announcing the roadmap out of lockdown, the Prime Minister promised that it would “guide us cautiously but irreversibly towards reclaiming our freedoms” by June 21.
Retaining most temporary provisions of the Coronavirus Act until October is not consistent with this pledge and will raise concerns that curbs will be reintroduced in the autumn. Ministers have tried to suggest the Act needs to be extended to October to keep the furlough scheme and other financial support packages.
This isn’t true. The basis for the financial support packages is supported by the parts of the Coronavirus Act that automatically remain in force.
When this first started, protecting the NHS and saving lives was achieved by people staying at home. It’s now achieved by getting vaccinated and we have seen dramatic falls in deaths and hospital admissions. We should be able to get back to normal more quickly if we are following the data, not dates. If we are meant to believe the roadmap will “reclaim our freedoms” by June 21, why would Parliament extend the temporary provisions until October? That is the question MPs must consider and minsters must answer.
‘Ministers must tell Parliament why they want to extend these temporary provisions until October’