Ed Davey has penned a piece for the Yorkshire Post: End to free Covid tests is like a tax on carers.

Boris Johnson’s determination to remove all Covid precautions and his insistence that the public will have to take personal responsibility whilst removing their ability to assess the level of risk around them is absurd.

How on earth are people supposed to take responsibility for themselves when they may be forced to pay up to £600 a year for lateral flow tests at a time when the cost of living is skyrocketing?

Although Covid is not the threat it once was, thanks to heroic work of our NHS staff and care workers, as well as the scientists that invented vaccines in record time, it is still dangerous to the elderly and to those who are vulnerable.

Many of these people rely on carers, often family and friends, to support them, and if not shielding, are taking extra precautions.

What use is a free test for these vulnerable people if the carer they rely on daily cannot visit them for lack of affordable testing?

This week, I calculated that a carer doing just two tests a week would lead to costs of £622.96 a year. That’s nearly 20 per cent of their annual carer’s allowance of £3,500.

For the unpaid carers to endure so much throughout the pandemic and its aftermath, to then be slapped with this huge Covid test bill is disgraceful.

He summarises it thus:

This decision is little more than a tax on caring and a tax on visiting loved ones.
…
Boris Johnson must take action and ensure that tests remain free for all carers. He must stop taking them for granted and treating them as an after-thought.

You can read the full article here.

Sal Brinton, who is our Liberal Democrat spokesperson in the Lords for Health, writes about the same subject from a personal perspective in The House magazine:  We are desperate to return to normal life – but we must also be safe. Sal writes:

The Prime Minister’s statement last week, has left the “most vulnerable” bemused and worried.

As someone who is on long term heavy duty immunosuppressants, I was asked to shield from March 2020 till last September, among 3.7m others who are likely to get severe Covid and possibly die.

…

Government guidance still tells us to ask anyone visiting if they have been fully vaccinated before they come into our homes, or before we go into a shop or on a train.

It’s become a joke with my lovely local greengrocers as I shout before I enter “everyone double-vaxxed in here?” But they are supportive and will deliver my shopping to me if cases are sky high in Watford, to help protect me. Under the new arrangements, someone with Covid will no longer have to self-isolate.

…

Encouraging mask-wearing, testing, self-isolation for those with Covid – and payments for them to do so – are all part of the safety net to coming out of Covid safely. We also need surveillance, genomic sequencing, testing and tracing to ensure we monitor for future variants, as Sir Patrick Vallance warned we will see. We must be ready to stand up all these tools needed to fight future a variant as harsh as Delta.

In the meantime, those who cannot make or maintain antibodies after vaccines, and who remain at high risk of severe Covid need support. Above all that message needs to be transmitted more widely so others understand why some of us still wear masks, and open windows.

Believe me, we are all desperate for normal life to resume as soon as possible, but normal for us also has to be safe.