Strong economy to fund the NHS – time to remember?

Lockdown has had a funny effect on all of us. I for one seem to be struggling to find my sense of humour. This could be something to do with sitting next to a dog all evening who does nothing but sigh. We’ve all been stuck at home for almost two months and I’m beginning to wonder what has happened to us.

Just two weeks ago the police in London decided the correct thing to do was to break apart a peaceful protest outside New Scotland Yard. In this I saw the decline of our democracy into the pseudo-scientific group think that has gripped the nation.

Democracy only functions if the rulers which we elect our accountable. This requires several things. Firstly, we have to be able to throw them out at the next election. This year’s Mayoral Election in London has been cancelled. Secondly, we need to have a free press. Most journalists have been allowed to go about their business, but (as much as I’m not a fan) Nigel Farage being visited by the police seemed rather extreme. Thirdly, we must be able to protest. Protest and petition are fundamental ways in which we must counteract the power of the government. 

And yet, here is our government stopping perfectly innocent, non-violent people from exercising their freedom to voice their opposition to government policy. This is surely the decline into authoritarianism which political theorists have sought to avoid for centuries.

I am clearly not going to start suggesting that we all go around hugging one another and going about our daily lives as if nothing has happened. However, one does begin to think it has all been blown wildly out of proportion. Especially when the government decides all of a sudden that it can use the police to keep the entire population under house arrest and break up protests of people trying to restore a balance of power. 

The government can clearly request that we stay at home, that we maintain social distance. I even think that it could (but shouldn’t) shut certain businesses. Keeping us at home by force though is a step that I still cannot believe that a government in our great nation could countenance.

In thinking about how we move forward we need to bear in mind quite how little risk this disease poses to most of the population. Just 26 people below the age of 25 have died over the course of this pandemic. This probability of death is no different to what we experience in terms of going about our daily lives. Clearly then, we need to shield those who are at risk, but ruining the lives of everyone else to achieve this seems unjustified.

It seems from the vague mutterings which our government deigns to offer us that the centres of disease are now firmly centred on hospitals and care homes. Why this then requires that the rest of us stay at home under house arrest seems somewhat ridiculous. How about we just shield off the population associated with those?

Not only is this lockdown having negative effects on our civil liberty and our democracy, it is also doing untold damage to our economy. Jobless figures in the US are eye-watering, and the only reason we don’t have the same is because we are currently allowing employers to not pay employees. The furlough scheme will end and with it will come mass unemployment. We have taken the demand side out of the economy. There will thus be a complete collapse in need for people to undertake jobs. There seems to be this bizarre idea in central government that we can in a way “put on hold” the economy. By spewing billions of pounds of debt into people’s pockets we somehow will save ourselves from impending economic doom. The government’s schemes are nothing more than a sticking plaster over a massive self-inflicted wound.

Labour recently have come out and said that we need to do more to ensure that “no one is left out of pocket” by the lockdown. This would be an unbelievable cost to the taxpayer. Not only is it massively economically inefficient to pay to keep people furloughed in jobs that won’t exist in the future the sheer cost must be prohibitive. Government works by taxing people on the income they make. Government cannot be the one paying them that income as well. With 25% of people now on some kind of government support we should all be worried.

There is going to be immense hardship to come. Some of the poorest parts of our country will be hardest hit by this pandemic. The government seems to be mulling over an announcement of a 14-day quarantine for all incoming air passengers. In a stroke they will destroy 10% of our GDP, tourism. The tourist industry often employs directly or indirectly some of the lowest earners in our society. They are often on zero-hours contracts and businesses are often small and not cash rich.

Lockdown is threatening our health, our wealth, our democracy, civil rights and is even brazenly non-sensical. Coronavirus, whilst posing a significant risk to our public health does not pose enough of a risk to wreak the destruction we are undertaking.

The NHS decides on how to allocate resources through the measure of Quality of Life Years. By most estimates 2/3 of people who have died in this pandemic will have died within the next 12 months. It is a tragedy that they have died earlier, but government is about weighing up costs. If there have been 30,000 to 40,000 coronavirus related deaths we can count the number of quality of life years lost in tens or hundreds of thousands. If this lockdown continues, we will be able to count it in the millions. A life under house arrest with no civil-liberty, economy or future is hardly one worth living. 

The government must consider a more nuanced approach. We need to be set free. We need to get back to work. Conservative mantra has been the same since the Cameron years. Without a strong economy there can be no NHS. We would do well to remember that now.

Toby Morrison (Ex-President) is a final year PPEist at Magdalen College