Lifting restrictions is the right thing to do
For a while yesterday, a delay to a Cabinet meeting called to agree an end to pandemic restrictions in England prompted speculation that Freedom Day had been put on hold. Fortunately, the concerns were misplaced. The cause was a disagreement between the Treasury and the Department of Health over funding free Covid tests after measures are lifted. Sajid Javid had reportedly requested some £5 billion to continue free testing but was rightly beaten back by the Chancellor, though help will continue for more than 1 million clinically vulnerable people and NHS staff obliged to test.
One reason for seeking to “live with Covid” is to stop spending vast sums on testing mostly healthy people on a daily basis. This is money that could be spent elsewhere in the NHS without raising taxes. Ending the legal requirement to self-isolate in England from Thursday obviates the need for mass testing altogether. So why wait until April to end it? Outside of the most vulnerable, if someone suspects they might have Covid, they can pay for a test kit to find out.
In the Commons, Mr Johnson said that while Covid was now an endemic disease it should be dealt with without recourse to emergency powers, which are to be repealed early. Protection against Covid would henceforth rely on the exercising of personal responsibility, backed by vaccines and treatments. This is precisely the right, proportionate and balanced approach that we have urged on the Prime Minister for some time but one which (mostly masked) opposition MPS still could not bring themselves to support.
The state cannot continue to impose restrictions on people other than in an emergency. Now that one no longer exists, Sir Keir Starmer is wrong to object when the rates of infection have fallen, hospitals are coping well and deaths are below average for the time of year. Labour seems wedded to legal compulsion for its own sake.
But senseless red tape remains. For instance, restrictions on visitors to care homes are unduly onerous and should be modified. Moreover, if it is no longer mandatory to self-isolate, why do people arriving in the UK need to fill in passenger locator forms? These complicated documents act as a pointless barrier to travel which the hard-pressed tourism industry could do without.
Mr Johnson hinted that they may be scrapped in time for the Easter holidays. Why wait? They should be dropped now for all the good they do.