Speeches from Hansard that I made years ago in debates about the repeal of Section 28 and reducing the age of sexual consent have surfaced, in which my antediluvian prejudices are quite shocking, even to me.
How could I have ever believed such things, let alone said them?

My transformation from extreme social conservative to libertarian deserves some explanation. How was it that I opposed those measures only to become the champion of the Equal Marriage Act, the Lord Commissioner responsible for whipping it through all its stages in the Commons.

Long term readers of this column would have witnessed that transformation as it took place in these blogs. I call it a transformation not an evolution, because it was sudden.
I put my original prejudice down to intellectual laziness. I simply never challenged, or even thought about the views that I held. Furthermore, when I received a very large correspondence in support of my position and against the liberalising measures that we were debating, it was so much easier to simply reply by stating that I agreed with them, rather than investing any intellectual effort in the matter.

My mind changed when the Government presented Parliament with the Sexual Orientation Regulations. The purpose of this measure was to prevent the providers of any commercial service from discriminating against a potential client on the basis their sexuality.
It prompted a huge lobbying campaign by certain elements of organised religion. I received hundreds of letters, most of them containing the same example: a Christian couple running a B&B would be required by regulation to accept as guests a gay couple, notwithstanding the offence to their deeply held religious beliefs.
In a flash of enlightenment the question occurred to me ‘ what Gospel is it they could possibly have been reading?’
How on earth could they imagine that, were Our Lord the landlord, that he would have turned the quests away?
Having made that leap, I then put time and effort into studying the Scriptures. The result of which study I put to use when the controversy arose when the Equal Marriage Bill was before Parliament. I published a number of defences of the Bill from a biblical perspective. One of which, entitled Too Much Leviticus, was even written-up in The Guardian in a column by Chris Bryant MP (a former Vicar) and which prompted an attempt by a national evangelical association to reclaim me for the ‘truth’. It resulted in a very unpleasant meeting, the only one in which I’ve ever had to ask my guests to leave.

It is easy to forget the virulence and bitterness of the Campaign against the Bill. My stance led to a significant number of resignations from my political association. I was assured that I was destroying marriage, to which I responded that the marriages to which they were objecting would be occasions of joy and celebration to the participants, their friends and relatives, but wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference to anyone else.
Events have proved me right: marriage has survived and, I believe, it has been strengthened.

There are examples of politicians having radically revised their opinions. The ‘journey’ of John Bercow comes to my mind. Many of my colleagues derided him for it, but -though I still disagree with him about almost everything- I rather respect him for it.

For months now, I have been attempting to keep the focus of the Government and of the readers of this column, upon what was the stated Aim of our Coronavirus policy. (I have never doubted the wisdom of that aim, although I have always questioned the government’s lockdown policy as a means of achieving it)
We’ve all seen and heard it so often, and can call it to mind instantly: our united purpose is to save lives by protecting the NHS.

The logic is simple: if the NHS is overwhelmed by too many hospital admissions then not only will it be unable to provide care to those with suffering with Covid-19 – resulting in many more of their deaths, but equally it will be unable to treat people with many other serious and life-threatening conditions, so they will die in greater numbers too.
So, we aim to save lives by limiting the number of hospital admissions.
The aim is not just to save lives themselves, but to do so by protecting the NHS.
This is an important distinction.
Were the objective just to save lives, then we would only achieve it by a policy characterised as ‘zero Covid’.
This is the very ‘mission creep’ against which I have been warning. Right on cue this week Jeremy Hunt, Chairman of the Commons Health Select Committee, has argued forcefully that the aim should, instead of being expressed in terms of hospital admissions,  rather it should be a specific reduced target of daily infections.
By failing to maintain the original aim, we lose the proper sense of urgency about achieving it, as if we had the luxury of delay until some other desirable objectives were achieved in addition.
Of course it would indeed be wonderful, were it possible, if we extended our objective to complete ‘zero Covid’ so nobody had to die of it again, or as far along that path as can be practically achieved.
However fanciful this may sound, there is nevertheless a growing lobby in support of it. Daily it is expressed in cautionary statements about the need to maintain restrictions on our lives and not to lift them too quickly.
The danger is that we are losing proper and realistic appreciation of the cost in terms of the long term damage to livelihoods, education, and a terrible toll on mental health. In short, we’ve lost all sense of the cost/ benefit analysis of current lockdown measures, and the sense that we urgently need to lift them as soon as possible, before they inflict even more lasting harm.
That moment of ‘possibility’ was defined by a level of  hospital admissions with which the NHS could cope. Substituting some other new objective appears to be defined only by the length of a piece of string, keeping us in devastating elements of lockdown almost indefinitely.

As controversy has raged about my views on lockdown I have been encouraged by an enormous correspondence overwhelmingly in support of the stance that I have taken.
There is however, an element in that correspondence which I must contradict: When commenting on the staggering number of deaths, some of my correspondents add that overwhelmingly those who have died were elderly or suffered from other life-limiting conditions, as if this somehow made the scale of lesser importance compared to the deaths of others.  We must not diminish in any way those who have died. No life is worth less than another. All their lives were shortened and they have friends and families who grieve. 

* 

One other aspect of my correspondence includes unflattering international comparisons of  UK performance  in terms both of the number of deaths and the damage sustained to the economy. I suspect that the fatuous conclusions drawn are more the result of ignorance than malice, but the fact is that these comparisons do not compare like with like. There will come a time to focus on comparative performance and the lessons to be drawn, but not yet.
Of one comparison though, I am absolutely certain: if you are unfortunate enough to be struck down with the virus, then there is no better place to be in the world than in the care of the NHS and its fantastic staff. I’ve heard from so many of them: they’re exhausted and emotionally drained, yet they just carry on regardless. It has been a magnificent effort 

Should we bring forward school staff to the front of the vaccination queue? 
Clearly, if our priority is re-opening schools, it follows that this priority should be reflected in the vaccination programme.
The counter argument is more nuanced. We believe that schools are safe; they are not vectors of infection; that school staff are no more exposed to the possibility of infection than other occupations. The Schools are closed only because of the impact on community activity generated by children coming and going, which is at variance with the requirement to ‘stay at home’ (regular readers of this column will know that I have profound difficulties with this aspect of the policy, but I simply state the case as made by the Government).
Given all this, it would be quite wrong to fast-track hundreds on thousands of school staff at the expense of the most vulnerable citizens.
I’ve said it before: this is war!
The first principle of war is the selection and maintenance of the aim.
The selected aim is to save lives by preventing the NHS from being overwhelmed by hospital admissions. The key must therefore, be to vaccinate first those who -were they to catch the virus- be most likely to end up in hospital.
Once the most vulnerable have been vaccinated, by all means then prioritise school staff thereafter.
My question to the PM last Wednesday and his answer sum up the matter precisely.

Sir Desmond Swayne  To lift lockdown, will my right hon. Friend focus exclusively on the progress of vaccinations of those who are most likely to be hospitalised if infected? Mission creep beyond hospitalisations would inevitably lead to the diminution of our sense of urgency to lift the restrictions – wouldn’t it?

The Prime Minister My right hon. Friend is completely right and he gets to the heart of the problem in the pretend policy that has been announced by the Opposition party. If we were to interfere with the JCVI 1 to 9 list, which is intended to target those most vulnerable and those most at risk of dying or of hospitalisation, we would, of course, interpolate it with other people appointed by politicians, taking vaccines away from the more vulnerable groups and, as he has rightly said, delay our ability to move forward out of lockdown. He is spot on. 

The idea of paying everyone £500 for a positive Covid-19 test appears to have got the thumbs down. I was encouraged nevertheless, because it indicated that at least some government advisers are thinking radically. In that respect it was a mild corrective to the very depressing impression that there is a loss of any sense of urgency on the part of government about the need to find ways of expediting the lifting of lockdown restrictions. It is just incredible to hear government scientists musing in public about keeping businesses closed until June: There would be no such businesses left.
The cost of lockdown to the Government alone is £9 billion per week, never mind the cost to the Economy as a whole; the future of young adults; and of our children’s education.
 So profound are these costs that we should consider spending any amount of money on initiatives that could contribute to ending them. Whether paying for positive tests to encourage testing is an idea with such merit, is something on which we might reflect further.

But here is an idea from the Adam Smith Institute on we should spend vast amounts straight away.
Expediting the vaccination program is the principal means by which we can reduce hospital admissions and so prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed and therefore, justify ending the lockdown.
The restraint on our vaccination effort is limited supplies of vaccine.
The Pfizer vaccine costs £16 per dose, but the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine -because it was seed-funded by the Government on the basis of a not-for-profit distribution – costs a mere £2 per dose.
We should offer AstraZeneca a commercial rate for each dose in order to subsidise an exponential growth in its productive capacity, allowing us to proceed much faster with vaccinations and ending lockdown.
That greater productive capacity would also be a further contribution on our part to enable developing countries to acquire the vaccine inexpensively, leading to fewer new strains and greater freedom to travel.
It would be worth every penny, and seems vastly more promising that paying someone for testing positive.

I have been criticised by a family doctor on the grounds that a question I put to the PM in Parliament was ‘demoralising for NHS staff’.
I am at a loss as to how this could be the case.
The question to the PM was this:
“Pubs cannot compete with supermarkets for off-sales. Even within a household, people cannot play tennis or golf. Notwithstanding the assault on liberty and livelihoods, why are the regulations pervaded by a pettifogging malice?”
I used the word pettifogging to describe the interference in the minutiae of our lives, and malice because of the unfairness of allowing supermarkets -which have so done well out of lockdown- to sell alcohol for consumption off the premises but to prevent pubs from doing so.
In all this I merely represent the views of my constituents: I have been lobbied hard by pub landlords, golfers and tennis players. There is something rather vindictive about preventing one from playing golf alone, or with a member of your own household. It is hard to see how the restriction reduces the spread of the disease.
I’m sure that very few NHS workers were ever aware of the exchange, and I doubt that many more have had it brought to their attention by the intervention of this local doctor.
In any event, I’m confident that they will ignore it and carry on with the magnificent job that they have been doing on behalf of us all. 

From the very outset of the pandemic the objective of the Government’s policy has been to ‘protect the NHS’ from being overwhelmed with more hospital admissions than could be accommodated. The political imperative was to avoid the scenes of chaos at hospitals that we witnessed in Lombardy last February.
For this reason the restrictions were placed on human contact in order to reduce the rate of infection and so to slow the pace of hospital admissions. Stating the obvious, these restrictions have come at an enormous economic and social cost, so it is vital that they are lifted as soon as possible.
When to lift them has to be a political decision. Yet, over recent days a number of the Government’s scientific advisors have been speaking in public about the need to maintain restrictions to the end of the year and even beyond.
They need to be reminded that the main effort of the entire policy is not to eradicate the disease,  but it is to prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed.
The key issue, is to identify the point in the progress in the vaccination programme where a sufficient proportion of the most vulnerable groups (which, if infected, are more likely to be hospitalised) have been vaccinated so as to reduce the risk to the NHS to an acceptable level. The job of the scientists to model the data in an attempt to match vaccination levels with the potential for hospital admissions.
It is for politicians to consider the result of these deliberations, and to balance the risk of lifting the restrictions against the social and economic costs of keeping them in place.
Scientists have a legitimate point of view, but it is exactly that: only a point of view. 

In my speech in Parliament in on 30^th December in opposition to the previous tightening of restrictions (now overtaken by the all-England lock-down) I identified a need for competitive sources of expertise on which the Government could rely, even if only to frame the right questions to put to its current scientific advisors on SAGE -which suffers from all the disadvantages of decision-making by committee.
That speech has provoked a welcome email response from scientists from all disciplines, and in particular from some of our most eminent statisticians and mathematicians. They have sent me their analyses challenging the orthodoxy with which we are daily presented.
It is of some reassurance to know that you are not alone, and that that your stance is supported by credible experts. This is especially the case as the public debate has become more strident and toxic:  The derision with which dissident professors have been treated in the media is itself a form of censorship.

Two things are clear. First, the last 12 months have been by no means exceptional in terms of total UK deaths. This is not, in any way, to fail to recognise the suffering of people mourning those who have died, but it does raise questions about the accuracy of recording any death within 28 days of a positive Covid test as being a Covid death.
If one accepts the accuracy and validity of the figures for Covid deaths, then it follows that 10 months of lockdowns have failed to reduce them. The Lancet published an evaluation of lockdown policy across governments and of varying severities, here is the conclusion: 

‘Increased mortality per million was significantly associated with higher obesity prevalence and per capita gross domestic product…. Rapid border closures, full lockdowns, and wide-spread testing were not associated with COVID-19 mortality per million people’

In plain language, lockdowns didn’t impact on Covid deaths, neither did mass testing. Yet these are the two of the baskets into which we have placed most of our eggs. 

Setting aside the question of deaths, the main effort has always been to protect the NHS from being overwhelmed by the number of hospital admissions. As these have risen sharply over the last couple of weeks it is further testimony to the failure of lockdowns as a policy.
From the outset a number of us have argued that a lockdown merely postpones the progress of the disease: the moment social isolation measures are eased, then the disease accelerates until a further lockdown is ordered. Yet this failing policy comes at an enormous social and economic cost which will scar our collective life for a decade.

A sensible alternative would have been to identify the vulnerable groups most likely, if infected,  to be hospitalised and incentivise their isolation (bluntly: assist them and pay them to isolate). This would have been neither easy nor inexpensive, but it might well have delivered a manageable level of hospital admissions with very much less damaging social and economic consequences.

We expect now to be rescued by vaccines, vindicating the Government’s strategy of suppressing the virus until vaccines became available.
I would hope that the failure of lockdowns however, would be a lesson that we have learnt for the future, but the way that the critics of lockdowns have been silenced, derided and presented as mavericks, is hardly encouraging.

Regular readers of this column may recall that, looking forward at New Year, I often refer to my favourite reading: The Coffee Table Book of Doom. Here is a flavour from the advertising blurb:
“…with the apocalypse at hand, don’t fret about dying uninformed. The Coffee Table Book of Doom is a revelatory, brilliantly funny, superbly illustrated and erudite compendium of all the 27 doom-laden horsemen we need to worry about – personal doom, gender erosion, asteroid impact, pandemics, super storms, sexual ruin – and much more besides.”

So, this year we actually had the pandemic.
 Strangely however, despite a prediction of 500.000 deaths, an examination of the Office for National Statistics website shows that 2020 Spring/Winter deaths were far from exceptional over the last quarter of a century or so, and that the number of deaths have often been higher.
For years commentators will pick over the measures that we took to control the virus and history will judge. Even if I am ultimately proved wrong in the sceptical stance that I have taken, I believe the questions that I asked, and which have remained largely unanswered, have been the right ones.

Correspondents tell me to be silent because that I am unqualified to comment on science. I am sensitive to the criticism because it is true: I never got beyond O levels in 1973, indeed I failed Chemistry (having caused mayhem in the practical by using a 5 molar solution of sulphuric acid rather than a  .05 molar solution, or something like that anyway. Maths was always my weakness, although I did acquire a reputation as a boffin during a residential accountancy training course. One evening, a delegation of students came to my dormitory to see if I had managed to solve the simultaneous equation with which they were all having such difficulty. They found me relaxing with Jane Austen’s Persuasion. I cast my eye over the equations and immediately came up with the solution. They looked at me in awe. I’ve never been able to account for it, perhaps just a complete fluke. In any event, it was to no purpose as I had decided that there had to be an easier way of making a living and was already planning my escape.)

We cannot allow ourselves to be led by experts. They need to make their method and their conclusions understandable and persuade us of their validity. We cannot have Doctor Heinz Kiosk ordering us about because he alone understands that it is for our own good. I fear that this is what has in fact happened throughout this pandemic. Ministers, against their natural inclinations, have followed advice to introduce restrictive measures with devastating consequences. I believe that they were ‘bounced’ by science and data-modelling that they did not understand and lacked the ability to establish its validity. That’s why I’ve advocated a competitive set of advisors to, at the very least, arm ministers with the right questions to ask.

Of Course, I acknowledge the possibility that the authors of the latest dire warnings and lock-downs may turn out be right, but it is prudent to be sceptical. Acceptance and reluctance to challenge are the worst responses for a politician.
The temptation is to remain silent for fear of revealing ignorance. I remember attending a presentation by a think-tank recommended by David Cameron’s strategy guru, Steve Hilton. I went with Greg Clark, now Chairman of the Commons Science & Technology Select Committee, who has a brain the size of a planet. It was complete gobbledygook to me. What a relief when we left and  Greg turned to me  and said “I have absolutely no idea what that was about”.
Again, I recall attending a lecture on space and time by an eminent scientist who raised the possibility of the same object being in two places at one time. When he illustrated this with a table, pointing to one leg ‘here’ and then the other leg ‘there’. I knew immediately I had wasted an evening.

Remember it was not the little boy’s  courage that revealed that the Emperor was not wearing any clothes, rather it was naiveté.

7.25pm 30 Dec 2020
That the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers) (England) (Amendment) (No. 3) Regulations 2020 (S.I., 2020, No. 1646), dated 24 December 2020, a copy of which were laid before this House on 29 December, be approved.

Sir Desmond Swayne

This House legislated explicitly for specific arrangements to govern the celebration of Christmas, and no sooner than the House had risen itself for Christmas, the Government, by ministerial fiat, changed those arrangements. We are asked this evening to give retrospective legislative approval to the changes that they made. We are in the absurd position of being asked to vote for the ghost of Christmas past. Sometimes in a democracy, process has an importance.

I am constantly—daily—confronted by individuals and businesses facing ruin, notwithstanding the huge investment that they made in covid-secure premises and procedures. What we have never had, and what we have always been asking for, is the cost-benefit analysis that the Government made on each of the restrictive measures that make up the menu of their tier system.

I do not for one moment question the motives of Ministers. I do, however, question their ability, in exactly the way that I question my own ability.
When the House rose, the lobby of Government scientific advisers—a lobby, we should remember, that had already publicly expressed their frustration that their earlier strictures on how Christmas should be celebrated had not been fully taken on board by the Government—announced that they had discovered a new strain of the disease so much more transmissible than the earlier one. They bounced the Government. Whilst I have to accept, of course, the possibility that they may be right, but I know this: were I presented by such a lobby of eminent scientists—eminent people leading in their field—and told that they had discovered this new emergency, and that so many more people were going to die, and unless I did what they said, I would be responsible for their deaths, I would find great difficulty in having the wherewithal to identify and ask the right questions to be sure that they were on the money, or 100 miles from it.

What I would certainly want, and what I believe the Government need, is an alternative source of expertise—a competitive source of expertise—particularly statisticians leading in their fields, who would be able to furnish me, to arm me, to arm Ministers, with the right questions to ask about the validity of the modelling and the data. It can only improve the decision-making process.
But what is really galling in all this is then to hear on the airwaves Professor Ferguson being interviewed, giving his wisdom to the nation once again, to all intents and purposes as if he were still a key Government adviser. I do hope that the Minister winding up the debate will be able to assure us that that is most certainly not the case.

 I was always rather jealous of Poole, Christchurch and Bournemouth, because our infection rate in the New Forest was substantially lower than theirs, but they turned out to be in tier 2 and we were in tier 3. Now we are all together in tier 4.

Sir Christopher Chope

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that we are now in tier 4, but in statutory instrument No. 1646, which was laid before this House on 29 December, we were in tier 2. Today—one day later—we are in tier 4. Is that not a mockery?

Sir Desmond Swayne

The reality is this. These are the questions that my constituents put to me, and I am reduced to saying, “It’s one of life’s great mysteries.” The decision-making process is entirely opaque. That is why I voted against it when I had the chance.