My Lords, my noble friend Lord Hunt made the most pertinent point, which is that, as we have acknowledged, Covid has pointed to the gross inequalities in our society. That can be seen
absolutely when we look at the self-isolation regulatory regime and the impossibility of those on low incomes self-isolating because they then have to choose between feeding or not feeding their children; they cannot afford to self-isolate. We still have not solved that problem sufficiently well.
As we move into the winter, as the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, said, this pandemic is not over. If you have 150 to 200 people a day dying, it is not over. If you have half the ICU beds in our hospitals still occupied by people with Covid, it is still not over and we will never catch up with all the NHS waiting lists that have fallen so abysmally behind in the past 18 months. So it is not over.
Self-isolation is part of the toolbox, to use the Prime Minister’s and Secretary of State’s word, that will help to control the spread of this virus. What the old regulations did—do—is amend the self-isolation regulations. With effect from 19 July, they allow a person to leave self-isolation and put an antibody test in the post, and from 16 August certain people were no longer required to self-isolate if they had come into contact with a person who had tested positive for Covid. The Minister listed who those different groups are, including children under 18. I completely agree with my noble friend about the need to include children under 18, but we have to address the issue of what that means for schools.
The Minister said before the summer, when we were hearing Statements about the easing of these regulations, that people were going to have to behave “in a responsible fashion”. I had a particular issue with that last week, when a friend I was supposed to be meeting called me to say that her husband had caught Covid. Both were double vaccinated, he was not very ill—I am pleased to say. They had been at a wedding, and there was a family there who were anti-vaxxers; they did not know and he caught it. She tested negative for the next four or five days.
I was personally quite torn about what to do: should we meet or not? The idea shocked me that somebody who is living with somebody who has Covid did not have to self-isolate. I worked my way through it; I read the regulations, which I must say are complex and not completely clear. She did not say, “I am allowed to go out”; she was being very responsible, but I thought that millions of people must be facing those issues all the time. Just saying that people have to behave “in a responsible fashion” may not be quite the point.
5.15 pm
Before I talk about schools, I would like to ask whether there has been monitoring by the JCVI and others on the effect of the decision that was taken in July and became effective in August. Are we fully confident that the spread of the delta variant is sufficiently understood to justify lifting that restriction? If anybody gets Covid these days, it will be the delta variant. Are we sufficiently confident in the science to lift that restriction?
This statutory instrument relaxes the bubble rules that would require entire groups of students to self-isolate following positive cases and leaves the decisions to schools themselves. The Minister will be aware that a handful of schools in England have had to close
classrooms just days into the new year, following Covid outbreaks among students and staff. This puts schools in a difficult position. First, school leaders need quick, clear and unequivocal guidance about how to respond if they see a rise in case numbers and not to be left on their own to make those decisions. The lack of investment to enable our schools to have clean air in their classrooms is unfortunate.
All our local secondary schools opened last week and one had anti-vax parents demonstrating outside it. I do not know whether this is happening elsewhere. They were demonstrating about 12 to 15 year-olds being vaccinated, and that is very worrying. I will leave that with the Minister. It is shocking, but what on earth can we do about it?