The Covid-19 virus is endemic, has spread globally and will endure. Consequently, public policy must be sustainable, comprehensible and relatively stable. The government’s erratic ‘stop-go’ approach to opening and closing society has failed to suppress the virus but has, instead, contributed to a growing state of public fear. Successive lockdowns wrongly prioritise Covid-19 deaths at the expense of all other – possibly greater – categories of mortality and threaten to undermine the liberties and embedded freedoms of the British people. Further, they risk causing a prolonged economic depression with generational effects on welfare and on wider society.
POLICY PLEDGES:
- Building NHS treatment capacity together with implementing reliable test, trace and isolate systems and supporting key workers shall be the prime governmental focus for tackling the pandemic.
- Government shall endeavour to keep hospitals, schools, universities and all other public facilities open alongside implementing long-term sustainable protective measures within those institutions.
- Guidelines for offices, shops, restaurants, public houses, cinemas and other businesses shall be formulated with the aim of both public protection and continuity of operation.
- All citizens are requested to abide by the following five basic protocols for the foreseeable future: shield if vulnerable, isolate if ill, wash their hands, maintain social distancing, and wear masks where necessary in enclosed public spaces.
- An expert governmental committee shall be convened (running parallel to SAGE and NERVTAG) tasked with assessing and quantifying current and long-term collateral costs of lockdowns and other virus suppression measures on health, the economy and welfare.
- The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) will be tasked with identifying the aggregate excess public debt generated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
- To make sure this debt neither imposes a new era of austerity nor undermines Britain’s financial credibility, it will transfer this debt to a separate UK Covid 2080 Sinking Fund, which will pay the debt off over 60 years.
- Income from bonds issued within the UK Covid 2080 Sinking Fund will be tax-free for UK citizens.