Wednesday 14th April 2021

(2 years, 11 months ago)

Grand Committee
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Lord Bhatia Portrait Lord Bhatia (Non-Afl) [V]
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My Lords, as the Monitor states:

“We live in unprecedented times. The global community has been broadsided by a pandemic that has upended our lives socially, physically, psychologically, and financially … The impacts of COVID-19 are so profound that even re-emergence … won’t look like 9/11. It won’t look like the 2008-09 global economic collapse. This time it’s different, because it’s intertwined with a global public health threat that … re-centres the public good. The old paradigm that prioritized economic growth above population and community wellbeing has become a massive casualty of the pandemic. COVID-19 exposed an already fragile ecosystem COVID-19 has exposed what many of us already knew: public health is the key driver of everything, from community wellbeing to a thriving economy. If ever there was a time to embrace a Health-in-All-Policies approach to government decision-making, it is now. COVID-19 has exposed the short-sightedness of austerity budgeting, where governments prioritized tax cuts over needed investments in public services—in health and mental health, education, child care, social supports, affordable housing, public transit, long-term care, and more.”


This is not the time for political parties’ views. Maybe the time has come for a national unity Government, as in 1945, when both political parties came together and agreed to deal with the crisis.

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Portrait The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Watkins of Tavistock) (CB)
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I call the previous speaker, who has now reconnected: the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer. Lady Miller? No. We will move to the next speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker.