Former Brexit Party MEP Claire Fox has said that the government’s “restrictive, inhumane, and illiberal” lockdown measures need further scrutiny, but warned that debate on the response to coronavirus is being “demonised”.
Baronness Fox of Buckley, a recently-elevated life peer in the House of Lords, made the remarks while speaking to Mike Graham on talkRADIO on Thursday. Britain’s oldest talk radio station airs hosts and guests questioning government lockdown measures and was subjected this week to blacklisting by the Google-owned YouTube, before being reinstated on Tuesday.
On the matter of the importance of being able to discuss lockdown freely, Baronness Fox said: “They’ve [the UK government] just brought in legislation which said that it is illegal to leave home unless you have good reason. It is breaking the law to leave your house unless you can justify it. That is a very serious piece of legislation and if we deny a debate on why that’s justified, we are basically rolling over and letting anything happen.”
The peer added: “Emergency measures are now being brought into place that are absolutely frightening, if you believe in freedom and liberty. At the very least, one needs to be able to debate them.”
On Wednesday, MPs voted into law the measures that could effectively see lockdown last until March 31st. Despite the concerns expressed by Conservative MPs about lockdowns in the past, just 12 Tories voted against the measures — barely three per cent of the total Conservatives sitting in the House of Commons.
One of those who voted against the third lockdown, Sir Desmond Swayne, told talkRADIO on Thursday that the government’s current policy of forcing Britons into lockdown “has not been working. It would have been much wiser to have devised a policy that incentivised the shielding of those groups that happen to be particularly vulnerable to being hospitalised and let the rest of us live a normal life with much less damaging economic consequences.”
Mr Swayne said that opposition had been growing, but “took a step back last [Wednesday] night”, with less than half of those voting against the third lockdown than those MPs who objected in parliament to the tiers plan on December 2nd.
Sir Charles Walker, the Conservative MP for Broxbourne, also voted against the law, saying in the House of Commons that he “cannot support criminalising a parent for seeing their child in the park over the coming months. It is not within my DNA to do that.”
He then pointed out the hypocrisy of those in the House who are “comfortably off”, living in “nice houses” with gardens and “access to family” voting to isolate the average Briton for what could be almost three months.
He continued: “The same is true of the journalists who fill our TV screens every night with their wisdom and wit about how people should comply with these regulations, and they sneer at those who cannot.
“But the next three months are going to be really hard for a lot of people – people who do not have my advantages of a monthly salary and a monthly pension payment. They will be worrying about their job, their future, their mental health and their family relationships, because they will miss people terribly. They will be living in small environs that apparently they can leave only to exercise once a day.
“Sadly, some of those people will break. It will be too much for them. That is when we in this place – and the journalists up there in the Gallery with all their privileges – instead of sneering and dismissing them and calling them ‘covidiots’ should show some compassion and understanding. We should wear our advantages and privileges with great humility.”