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Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, I hesitate to speak against the very erudite speech of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, but I am concerned that this amendment would make the procedure somewhat clumsy. I have tried to think through different scenarios that might emerge. When you are making a decision, one of the difficulties is that situations constantly evolve; they do not necessarily comprise neat phases. If we take the worst case scenario of an extremely dangerous and infective episode occurring, where we do not want anyone to move around for a certain time, I am not sure that Parliament could be involved anyway. We would have to ask parliamentarians to travel unless we abandoned all parliamentary procedures and said that we would all vote over the internet, and I do not think that such an enormous change as that would occur. I have tried to envisage different scenarios and how the legislation would work. Recently, I attended a seminar on climate change and potential new diseases. It is extremely scary to think of the way in which different viruses might mutate, resulting in a sudden incidence of high infectivity and mortality rates. Therefore, I am minded to stick with the Bill’s wording and not make decision-making any more difficult. If an emergency occurs, the decision-making will be extremely difficult and I hesitate to put further hurdles in the way.