‘The lockdown has caused a humanitarian tragedy’

The lockdown was one of the most restrictive measures ever introduced since Britain became a democracy. It was originally justified on the basis of ‘flattening the curve’ to protect the NHS. But since this was achieved some time ago, new reasons are always produced to keep us at home or prevent people from carrying out normal activities. Many of our legal rights are being infringed as a result. A legal challenge to the lockdown was launched by businessman Simon Dolan, who sought a judicial review of the government’s policies. Francis Hoar is a barrister who worked on his team. spiked caught up with him to ask why he thinks the lockdown was unlawful, and what damage he feels it has done.

Francis Hoar: It was arguably unlawful for three reasons. Firstly, the measures were not within the parameters of the 1984 Public Health Act. That act does not grant powers to lock down the country, impose restrictions on when people can leave their houses, go to church, meet others or protest. Secondly, the secretary of state for health, Matt Hancock, had ‘fettered his discretion’ in relation to how long the measures would last – that is to say, he provided five tests which had to be complied with, all of which related to the virus, before the regulations could be changed. This was unlawful because it prevented him from looking at all factors when making his decision.

spiked: In what ways were the measures disproportionate?

We also know that deaths peaked on 8 April. Chris Whitty admitted in evidence given to the House of Commons health committee that it was possible that the lockdown had had no effect on the R number going below one – the point at which infections decrease rather than increase. The average time from infection to death is approximately 23 days. This suggests that the R rate went below one around 16 March, which was well before the lockdown was introduced, and well before schools were closed. It was on that day that the famous Imperial College modelling was published and released to the public by the prime minister.

These harms were known to the government from an early stage. A government paper produced in April was recently published in the Telegraph, which forecast 200,000 deaths as a result of the closure of NHS facilities and the conditions of the lockdown. There is evidence to suggest the lockdown did not save many lives – in particular, research done at Bristol University and the remarkably similar trajectory Sweden had to the UK despite not having a strict lockdown are examples. We are therefore talking about a situation where vastly more lives were lost than saved. The lockdown has caused a humanitarian tragedy. And that is before we even think about the effects on education, on freedoms and on the economy.

Hoar: Irrespective of the lawfulness of its use of the 1984 Act, what is notable is that the government has used what’s called the Emergency Procedure under that act to introduce every piece of legislation that has restricted people’s movements, economic activity and so on. These have typically been introduced to parliament one working day before they came into force. None of them received any scrutiny by parliament before they were enacted. None of them were debated in detail in the media before they were passed – they could not be, because they were not published until a few hours beforehand. What scrutiny there has been came weeks later, often since there have been subsequent amendments to those regulations. The first time that parliament debated these changes was in late April, and that was around six weeks after they had been introduced. The Emergency Procedure allows for the regulations to be imposed four weeks before they are debated, but that is not four ordinary weeks – it is four weeks when the Houses of Parliament are sitting. They were not sitting in late March and April. Consequently, there was no obligation to put the measures before parliament and have any scrutiny for many, many weeks and potentially indefinitely. That’s a very real democratic concern.

That is particularly significant because we were in a process where the government had very considerable control over the news stories. It introduced daily press conferences at peak times, knowing that the broadcast media was likely to broadcast them live. The broadcast media then were dominated by these press conferences, which were played out to a public that was prevented from leaving home by the government, and so watched these conferences in enormous numbers. Those press conferences provided nothing but a fear narrative that was focused uniquely on the virus and provided one news story. The media did the government’s bidding by following that narrative entirely, failing to consider alternative scientific perspectives, failing to consider other elements that are affected by these measures that are not the virus – that is to say the economy, public health in general, suicides, cancer patients, and cancelled important operations.

spiked: How much opposition to the lockdown has there been from within the legal profession?

The response is that Article Two of the ECHR protects the right to life, and that justifies lockdown. Some lawyers no doubt agree with that. But the traditional understanding of Article Two is that it obliges the government to inform individuals of risks to their life, to protect against risks caused by government actions and to provide adequate investigation and redress against loss of life caused by the state. There isn’t any case law to suggest that the government has positive obligations to withdraw rights when there is a natural event such as a virus. In contrast, most of the rights protected by the ECHR have a venerable history in English law. All these very ancient rights have been removed by executive fiat under an act of parliament, without the need for parliamentary scrutiny.

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