It is lovely to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Our freedoms are like the air we breathe. They are fundamental to us as a nation and to who we are as its people. Yet once again we stand on the threshold of using the rule of law to undermine the rule of law, the foundations of which have been laid over centuries. We are not asking our constituents to do anything. We have never asked; we have coerced them. We have coerced them through criminal and civil law. Let us not use the word “ask”, because it is not an accurate description of what we have done. We have criminalised freedom of association, the freedom to go about one’s business, the freedom to travel—and the freedom to protest. The freedom to protest is the oxygen of democracy. This hurts my head and it hurts my heart. Dismissing these sincerely held concerns as wanting to let the virus rip is both deeply ungenerous and deeply, deeply unkind, but in responding to that charge, I say that if this Parliament is not the place for disputation, delectable or otherwise, where is this rigour to be found? I want people to live long lives, full lives, happy lives, myself included, but my mortality—our mortality—is ultimately our contract with our maker, whereas our fundamental rights are our contract with Government. I will not be supporting this legislation. I think it is terribly unjust and, like my dear friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady), I think it is, in many parts, cruel.
I will have no part in criminalising parents for seeing their children and children for seeing their parents—no part. This legislation goes against my every instinct—perhaps an instinct even more fundamental than the love and touch of my family. I am not living in fear of the virus. I will not live in fear of the virus, but I am living in fear of something much darker, hiding in the shadows, and when the sunlight returns, and it will return, I hope that it chases those shadows away, but I cannot be sure that it will. I cannot be sure, and that is at the heart of my anxiety and the anxiety of so many of the people whom I represent in this place.
2.36 pm