Tougher measures will be a calamity
It feels as though Britain is going backwards in its response to the pandemic. Perhaps this was foreseeable: infections were likely to rise in the last part of the year, as is happening across Europe, and the Government was likely to come under enormous pressure to do more. Ministers are haunted by the claim that they should have acted sooner when the pandemic began, but several months on they are also being asked, quite rightly, to provide a clearer scientific rationale for their decision making – by businesses, the Opposition and Conservative MPS. The political consensus around Britain’s handling of the virus has cracked.
Any new measures will have a devastating impact upon an economy struggling to recover from what has already been done to it. In the latest development, the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has beefed up his jobs support programme to cover up to two thirds of the wages of employees of firms formally or legally told to close.
The offer of help is very welcome, but the implication is obvious: businesses are likely to be shut by fiat. The Government obviously anticipates that, following the roll out of its three-tier national system, measures will become more strictly and widely applied, and some are already lobbying for a “circuit breaker” initiative to stop the growth of coronavirus infections. Furlough 2.0 indicates the Treasury is laying some groundwork for Lockdown 2.0. What else is around the corner?
The justification for the new measures is most likely to be pressure on the NHS – again. Many voters will find this both confusing and frustrating. Why would the NHS not be ready for a second wave of the virus? As we wrote yesterday, any return to the “protect the NHS” message begs the question of why, having had billions of pounds poured into it, new infrastructure built and plenty of warning, it does not have the necessary capacity in place now.
Health chiefs have warned that some hospitals in the north of England could shortly run out of beds, including the two main acute hospital trusts in Liverpool. This is obviously because of a cluster of infections, and the city is owed every sympathy – but in the first lockdown, Liverpool already suffered the worst death rate of any city outside of London. Why were trusts not better prepared for an eventuality that, without a vaccine, was widely predicted?
Moreover, a return to “protect the NHS” would contradict the message from the health service that it is open for non-covid treatments, although this is also contradicted by the experience of many of those who are still struggling to get an appointment or are stuck on a waiting list. If the NHS has not been devoting its time to building capacity in advance of the winter, then users are entitled to ask what it has been doing for the past few months.
No one is questioning the devotion of hardworking, excellent physicians, but the Health Secretary’s description this week of the NHS as Britain’s “most cherished institution” – the “best gift a nation ever gave itself ” – conforms to the image of the health service as a precious antique, which patients must handle with extreme care. It ought to be more robust. There are serious questions to be raised about a health system that does not function well during a public health crisis.
If the direction of travel is determined by the “protect the NHS” argument, then the country is at risk of talking itself into a much wider and deeper lockdown. The costs of this would be enormous – to business, to the taxpayer, to mental and physical health.
The lockdown we practised at the start of the year was a sledgehammer approach. Furthermore, in the end, while the situation was tough, the NHS actually did have the capacity to cope. The real failure was in not protecting the most vulnerable, some of whom were discharged from hospitals into care homes even if they had had a Covid diagnosis. Our actions over the winter need to be infinitely more sophisticated.
The offer of help is very welcome, but the implication is obvious: businesses are likely to be shut by fiat