Why is the government being so boneheaded and cruel to medically vulnerable MPs?

Many of those in the vulnerable categories, or living with a partner or child deemed at higher risk from Covid-19, will have stories to tell after lockdown is over.

In the first phase of the emergency the government made the most terrible mess of handling the vulnerable lists, missing off perhaps hundreds of thousands of citizens with serious conditions or weakened immune systems. On one level – in the first few days – it was understandable. This was a health emergency on an unimaginable  scale. Who could have envisaged a crisis in which the entire country was told to stay at home and shop once a day and 2.2m Britons and their families would be ordered to not go beyond the front door for ten to twelve weeks?

But the government confusion on the vulnerable lists persisted for weeks. GPs were in despair. Some of their less vulnerable patients had letters. Some of the extremely clinically vulnerable were omitted, and only heard anything weeks later. Doctors, it seems, initially had no simple way of adding the excluded. There was a government helpline that led nowhere or took an age to get a response. When I tried to find out from senior members of the government what on earth was going on with the vulnerable lists in Robert Jenrick’s department, I’m afraid I quickly arrived at that troubling  point in the story where you realise they are in complete chaos. Oh dear, this is absolutely terrible, I hope they sort it out, said a senior minister apologetically.

At the most serious end of provision, the journalist Ian Birrell was battling to find out what was being done by government for vulnerable children and adults who rely on multiple daily visits from carers. The answer, shamefully, was not much at all, certainly early on.

At the more humdrum level, the lack of a government letter made it very difficult to get on to the list for supermarket delivery slots for food. Anyone trying found themselves in a classic British “computer says no” cul de sac of bureaucratic confusion.

People of means, with nice neighbours, can always find a way, and all manner of small businesses reinvented their business model and after a few weeks started to deliver and look out for those shielding. Churches and charities helped. But some of the less fortunate will have endured a scary few weeks in late March and early April.

Remember that a few weeks before this it had been fashionable in parts of the media to assail those in supermarkets “panic-buying” – completely missing the difference between panic-buying and the steady accumulation of essential supplies. I’ll wager quite a few of those accumulating supplies in late February and early March were those in vulnerable households, on the perfectly sensible basis – as it turned out – that the supermarket supply chain would be under strain in late March and the government could not be trusted to make quick provision for the vulnerable who, it turned out, could not get out to shop. Better safe than sorry turned out to be a good precaution

I mention all this by way of context, because I am baffled by how bone-headed and cruel the government is being towards MPs who are in the vulnerable categories. For weeks MPs have been able to vote remotely. Now, Number 10 insists that all MPs – even those deemed vulnerable and at higher risk – return to the Commons to take part in debates and vote. The digital voting that worked rather well in lockdown is to be scrapped completely, and if an MP is in a vulnerable category they can get stuffed, apparently.

The decision is so self-evidently nuts that it has provoked righteous cross-party anger. Ahead of a vote today on the government plan there is talk of a rebellion. We’ll see.

Liberal Democrat Jamie Stone MP points out that he is a carer for his wife. He cannot abandon those responsibilities, and he refuses to travel to London for fear of putting her health at risk on his return. Robert Halfon has spoken eloquently against the government’s refusal to consider exemptions for those MPs with good medical cause to stay away during a pandemic. Margaret Hodge for Labour is, rightly, fizzing with fury.

The row raises many questions, about morality and duty of care. Won’t the government – no doubt in syrupy tones – be demanding all year that employers make provision for vulnerable staff to work remotely? Why not set a good example with MPs?

The row also raises, again, the question of what on earth is going wrong with the government’s gathering of intelligence and its whipping. Are the whips telling Number 10 that its decision is terrible and not being listened to? Is there a failure of empathy or imagination? Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Leader of the House, is a charitable man with a kind heart. Is he following orders from Number 10 to push through this policy or has he missed the point here?

What is most baffling is that the government has, by now, surely had time to learn some basic lessons from the early days of the crisis. Logically that should lead Number 10 to more be alive to the need to protect the vulnerable and wherever possible to use digital technology to enable the vulnerable to take part.

Their enemies – a growing list – will conclude, wrongly, that the government didn’t care back in the early days of the crisis and they don’t care now.

Put ethical judgments to one side for a moment. In purely political terms, this is a bold look for a party that will soon be up against it and in desperate need of the benefit of the doubt.