24 September 2020, The Tablet

Of the people, for the people

Parliament and the pandemic

 

Britain is going through a critical moment in its response to the coronavirus pandemic. Measures designed on the assumption that the epidemic was receding are having to be reversed as cases start to rise exponentially again. Public safety must come first, but this is not an easy calculation to make as it involves difficult risk assessments on both sides. It is vital for public confidence that those calculations should be done as transparently as possible, which is especially important if the consequences involve restraints on individual liberty, as they must.

So there is clear need for greater parliamentary scrutiny before such measures are authorised. Without it, regulations decreed on the basis of a ministerial signature, backed only by all-encompassing permissive legislation passed a while ago, will not carry sufficient weight. One likely explanation for the way the coronavirus epidemic seems to be growing again is that the public have too often disregarded government health and safety advice because they do not have enough confidence in those giving it. If that advice has been sifted through Parliament, acting on behalf of the public at large, there is a greater chance it will be heeded. Trust is the key issue, and the government has squandered it.

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User Comments (1)

Comment by: Stephen Donaghy
Posted: 28/09/2020 12:53:05
It seems disingenuous to say the public's alleged disregard of health and safety advice was fuelled by a lack of parliamentary scrutiny, rather than by Dominic Cummings and Stanley Johnson flouting the advice. More importantly "Britain needs to go back to work" must be questioned. The pandemic has called into question what work is needed and valued. Is life improved by drug dealers getting back to work in pubs and nightclubs? The coronavirus has exposed the fetishisation of GDP as a measure of progress - failing to account for the work that carers, predominantly women, do in homes. It is incredible that a measure which declines if a business owner marries his secretary, who then provides accounting and secretarial services for free, is used to fuel destruction of natural resources. I worked on an assembly line, pushing three buttons sequentially for eight hours a day. It was soul destroying. Automation has largely replaced such jobs and AI will replace the  work of accountants, lawyers and doctors. There are advantages to parents not working and spending time at home with their children. Anecdotally a reception class teacher tells me that this year's intake is far more socially adept than those of recent years. Rather than Tablet editorials urging a return to work for work's sake it should be uging a radical tranformation to ensure that, for example, carers are trained, valued and remunerated at far higher levels than currency speculators.