Lockdown is 'thoroughly inhumane', claims Lord Sumption

9 February 2021, 09:18

Lockdown is 'thoroughly inhumane', claims Lord Sumption

Former UK Supreme Court justice Lord Sumption brands the policy of lockdown "thoroughly inhumane", claiming it has inflicted "utter misery" on millions of healthy people.

Lord Jonathan Sumption told LBC's Nick Ferrari that the lockdown became worse than the virus "quite a long time ago."

Nick posited the suggestion that "goalposts are being moved" for the justification and reasoning for lockdown: "First we had to save the NHS, then we had to get the number of deaths down. Jeremy Hunt would now say he wants cases below 1000."

Lord Sumption responded: "That seems to me to be an absurdity. We can't have zero Covid. WHO says there's only been two cases an infectious disease has been eradicated entirely.

"Smallpox took two centuries after the invention of a totally effective vaccine to disappear. Simply saying we want to eliminate the virus altogether or reduce it below 1000 cases I think is a completely unbalanced and fanatical approach."

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He continued that the "cost" of lockdown must be remembered, not just economically but in "human" terms.

"The policy of lockdown is a thoroughly inhumane policy which is due to one track minds that can only think about deaths but not about life."

Nick countered that many would argue lockdown has saved lives and ensured the NHS was not overwhelmed.

Lord Sumption responded, "It has probably saved some lives in the last three months. I don't believe it saved any last year, I think it simply deferred them to the later period.

"I don't think that the lives that have been saved weren't the staggering collateral damage at utter misery inflicted on millions and millions of healthy people."

The former UK Supreme Court justice also commented that the UK must "live with" the new variants, as viruses always mutate.

His remarks came after a mutation of the more transmissible Kent variant was detected in Manchester, leading to surge testing in the city.