No matter what our leadership suggests, we must ease out of lockdown together

For different parts of England to emerge from the lockdown at radically different paces risks a further contagion not just of Covid-19 but of hostility and envy across imaginary internal borders, writes Vince Cable

Bournemouth beach on Bank Holiday Monday (Getty)

One of the discoveries about our own country during the pandemic is the realisation that we don’t have a National Health Service; we have at least four separate services in the four nations. Meanwhile, areas like Cornwall have sent very strong signals that they don’t want to have to treat patients from elsewhere. Amongst the four, there has been serious divergence. This is not on ideological grounds, but on judgements about risk, different interpretations of uncertain science and different geographical incidence of the disease.

As the lockdown eases a little, several English cities are refusing to go along with an all-England policy of opening schools on 1 June. There is a serious question arising, which is whether such diversity is to be welcomed or to be discouraged. Is it a source of healthy local creativity and innovation or is it leading to fragmentation, parochialism and a waste of resources?

These questions are not unique to the UK and are starker in countries with a longstanding, well-developed system of devolved government. In Australia, where I was when the pandemic was reaching a serious stage, Victoria and New South Wales had different levels of severity and different policies through their state governments. Australia has been one of the success stories in fighting the pandemic with timely and effective lockdowns, albeit with small and manageable differences across the country.

That cannot be said of the US, where the federal system has aggravated the problems created by Trump’s chaotic and ignorant leadership. States have competed for critical equipment. And they have diverged wildly in the severity and duration of lockdown, reflecting the red/blue (Republican/Democrat) split in the country and the predilections of state governors that range from strong leadership and intervention in New York and California to extreme libertarianism and Covid-denial in parts of the south and midwest.

In India, despite the supposedly “strongman” government in Delhi, individual states have taken the law into their own hands to the extent of preventing residents from adjacent states crossing the state border to use local hospitals. While China is now the role model for a decisive, centralised response, its problems started with egregious incompetence and political failures at the level of the city of Wuhan and Hubei province.

Looking at the UK, what is striking is the enormous geographical variation in the impact of the disease and its progression. Wales has had roughly 50 per cent more deaths per head than the rest of the UK. The hardest-hit local areas in England, such as Newham and Brent, have between two and three times as many deaths per head as Norwich. London has had almost five times as many deaths as the least affected region, the southwest, and ten times more than in rural England. Meanwhile, some areas like the northeast, which were relatively unaffected at the start of the pandemic, are now being hit particularly hard.

Now that lockdown is being eased, and there are bespoke arrangements for individual sectors of the economy, why can we not let localism take over? Common sense suggests that face masks and social distancing matter a lot more on the London Underground and in blocks of flats than in country lanes or on mountain tops. But, at least in England, we are all subject to the same rules.

There are three good reasons against advanced levels of devolution. The first is that decision-making bodies probably don’t have the capacity to make scientifically informed decisions. Whatever we may think of the shambolic performance of Boris Johnson’s ministers, they at least have access to scientific advisers of high repute and the talents of the Sage committee. I doubt that Liverpool City Council or Cornwall Council are able to assemble such expertise – although they could argue that if a well-run country the size of New Zealand or Iceland, or a province as small as Northern Ireland, is able to do so, why can’t we? By contrast, the industry-level agreements being hammered out at present are at least national in scope and rely on the same body of expertise.

A second factor is difficult to quantify but powerful: the sense of solidarity that has generated the self-discipline required to operate the lockdown. What is truly remarkable about the British experience has been the weekly clapathon for the NHS across the UK, which I see in an area where very few people have been caught by the virus. The fact that people in virus-free, open country areas are expected to observe the same rules and participate in the same rituals as people in high-risk, crowded, multi-storey blocks in big cities helps to maintain at least some semblance of fairness. It also explains the anger when individuals, especially in positions of power and influence, are caught cheating.

A more fundamental problem is contagion. If schools remain closed in Liverpool, for fear of creating a second spike, but are opened in Cheshire, it is only a matter of time – hours rather than days – before an infected teacher or parent crosses a virtual border, taking the virus with them. The whole objective of the policy is then undermined. To use the jargon of the pandemic, the R value pretty quickly gets back above the figure one, since asymptomatic carriers “getting back to normal” could cause a quick reverse in progress.

No one would suggest that everyone travelling from Liverpool to Cheshire or England to Wales should be subject to two weeks of quarantine; we have simply stopped travelling. That travel limitations have been a key part of the lockdown makes it all the more bizarre that Priti Patel has only just noticed it was permissible to fly from hotspots in Italy to London but not to drive from London to Durham.

Such factors all reinforce the value of uniform regulations and minimum variation. The key is the concept of free movement. To take a related argument, around immigration, advocates of a more liberal policy than envisaged under the government’s latest immigration bill have been arguing that there could be more immigration to welcoming, anti-Brexit Scotland or London than to the unwelcoming, pro-Brexit West Midlands or Lincolnshire. The obvious problem is that migrants move around and would quickly re-establish themselves in areas where there are jobs or friends or family.

There is much to recommend radical decentralisation in the running of our public services, and for fair taxation locally to enable difference. But when it comes to the entitlement to live, work and travel, consistency is key. Even advocates of identity cards – widely seen in Europe – would not want to see them used as internal passports, capable of prohibiting someone from settling in Lincolnshire but giving them free rein in London. Regimes that have tried such measures include communist China, the Soviet Union and apartheid South Africa, none of which are appealing role models.

Core to the success of the lockdown, and of the country, is that maxim, “We must all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.” For different parts of England to emerge from the lockdown at radically different paces risks a further contagion not just of Covid-19 but of hostility and envy across imaginary internal borders. Solidarity between regions, as much as between the public and their political leaders, is crucial. But both are at risk this week.

Vince Cable is a former leader of the Liberal Democrats