Sir Charles calls for new a focus on long-term mental health and an end to the language of fear.
Sir Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)
As we welcome the end of lockdown, dare we hope to see the banishment of its companion communication strategy, a strategy ruthlessly executed in pursuit of maximum compliance? It has been brutally effective, but so brutal that we now have children too frightened to go outdoors lest they kill their parents, adolescents isolated at home suffering from anxiety, eating disorders and self-harm, parents battling with depression, desperation and suicidal thoughts and many old people fading away from loneliness: as I say, a brutally, brutally effective strategy, but one that has created a deep well of anxiety. That anxiety will be visible at the school gate, in the classroom, in our workplace, in our homes, on our streets and in our police stations. Then it will end up in the NHS for months and years to come.
Many people will say that the victory justifies the cost: the cost in the jobs lost, the businesses ruined, the education forgone and the cost to the nation’s long-term mental health and wellbeing. But I have to ask one question, which one day I will need answered. Before we unleashed this deliberate terror on our airwaves, did anyone in the room ask, “Is what we are doing ethical?” Did the Secretary of State ask, “Is this ethical?” Did the chief medical officer ask, “Is this ethical?” Did anyone—did a voice at SAGE—ask, “Is this ethical?” Did they ask, “Is it ethical to create a level of fear that will push many people to the very edge of what they can bear, or over that edge?” Did they ask, “Is it ethical for us to embark on a strategy that will leave many of our fellow citizens debilitated with fear, anxiety and worse for years to come, or perhaps a lifetime?”
Suffering in one’s head matters. Knowingly creating that suffering strikes at the heart of the state’s own morality and our morality. So I ask the Secretary of State, the chief medical officer and the members of SAGE to look directly at the damaged and the anguished—not over them, not through them, but directly at them—because it is time those people were seen, it is time their health mattered and it is time that they counted.
Earlier intervention in the same debate
Sir Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)
I am confused. If we are having this driven by data, why are we worrying about timetables and dates? The Minister mentioned “no earlier than” dates, but why? This is data-driven, not date-driven. There seems to be mixed messaging here.
Edward Argar (Minister of State for Health)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend—indeed, my friend—for that point. The reason we are doing this is that we have been clear throughout, and the Prime Minister has been clear throughout, that this should be the last lockdown we experience and that, once we relax these restrictions, they should be irreversibly relaxed. That is why we are doing it in a staged way, one step at a time, and we will continue to monitor the data, which I hope and believe will continue to go in the right direction. But it is because we do not wish to see anything happen that could cause us to pause or reverse that we are taking it step by step.