And those with two wheels are supporting front line staff from their motorbike saddle by delivering blood and other critical items for the NHS, the demand for which has soared.

Jon Wood, who works in the maintenance section at Winfrith Site, has stepped up his usual volunteering with SERV Wessex due to the Covid-19 crisis.

SERV Wessex provide a free service to the NHS in Hampshire, Dorset and South Wiltshire. The volunteer motorbike riders provide a service to collect and deliver human milk and transport blood, plasma, platelets, medical samples and medical equipment.

Services have been extended during this current climate to support NHS hospitals and pharmacies to deliver much needed medication for vulnerable patients.

Jon said: “I enjoy my volunteering role, usually performed during the evenings. The new day time deliveries of medical supplies to vulnerable patients is rewarding and it is nice to see that my contribution can make a difference to the lives of many people.”

The new daily service has already had a significant impact, in the last week SERV Wessex have covered 2801 miles and delivered 104 items.

And on the other side of the country colleagues Phil Smith and Phil Sherriff from Sizewell A Site are also using their bikes to deliver vital products to where they are needed.

Engineering Manager, Phil Smith, who is a responder and controller with SERV Suffolk and Cambridge, said: “It’s a great feeling to turn up at a hospital and drop off products or samples, knowing you’ve helped someone in need, but also saved the NHS valuable money because the alternative would have been for the hospital to use taxis or couriers out of hours,” he added.

Project Manager Phil Smith volunteers with Norfolk Blood Bikes. All the charities, which receive no government funding, rely on donations from the public and fund-raising events, as well as charitable grants and awards.

Today (Tuesday 21 April 2020) new national measures have come into effect to safeguard the UK, and our forestry and horticulture industries, from a range of plant health diseases and pests including the devastating Xylella fastidiosa and exotic beetles which can kill ash trees.

These new regulations, detailed below, will add more stringent import requirements to protect UK plant health against these threats.

• Xylella – The import of Coffea and Polygala myrtifolia species is now prohibited, due to a high disease rate in these species, as well as stronger import requirements for other high-risk hosts (including Olive, Almond, Nerium Oleander, Lavender and Rosemary).
• Emerald ash borer (beetle) – New measures applying stronger import controls to countries within 100km of confirmed outbreak areas. This includes the removal of an option, within EU legislation, to remove the bark and sapwood to a depth of 2.5 cm for all countries regulated for emerald ash borer. This will help mitigate the risk of importing infected wood which has not properly met the official requirements.
• Plane tree wilt – More stringent ‘Protected Zone’ requirements for the UK including measures for plane trees, intended for planting other than seeds, which must now have been grown throughout their life in a pest free area or an EU Protected Zone. The new requirements apply to imports to the UK from Albania, Armenia, Switzerland, Turkey, the United States and the EU-27.

UK Chief Plant Health Officer Nicola Spence said:

Protecting our country from tree pests and diseases is key to protect our environment, economy and our health.

That is why we are introducing tighter restrictions on the importation of high risk host plants and trees for Xylella, emerald ash borer and plane wilt.

Xylella is a major threat to our landscape and industry and in this year of International Plant Health it is more imperative than ever that we do all we can to ensure the UK remains a Xylella-free zone. Emerald ash borer and plane wilt also represent significant threats, which is why we are bolstering our protection against them, in response to recent changes in the risk situation.

The new legislation will also amend an area of the EU Plant Health Regulation concerning the plant disease Elms Yellows and the UK’s Protected Zone. Elm yellows is a plant disease of elm trees that is spread by leafhoppers or by root grafts.

Professor Saskia Hogenhout, leader of the BRIGIT consortium at the John Innes Centre, said:

We welcome these new regulations which will be a key step in keeping the UK free from Xylella. Through the BRIGIT programme we are investigating how Xylella may spread in the UK environment, by assessing how symptoms may develop in plants, the prevalence and movement of insect vectors and how Xylella may move around the country via transport of plants.

We also organise public engagement events to distribute information about Xylella and risks associated with importing ornamental plants into the UK. All of these components are vital in developing an effective regulatory framework to manage the threat posed by the disease.

Further information on the new plant health national measures can be found on the Defra Plant Health Portal, here.

The new legislation is amending the Official Controls Regulations 2019, to address new plant health threats.

• On Tuesday 31 March Defra introduced legislation which implements new measures for Xylella following the recent consultation and Defra’s response, as well as new measures for emerald ash borer, canker stain of plane and elm yellows.
• The new legislation is summarised here with further details provided in an annex.
• The government recognises the challenges that the horticultural sector and individual businesses are facing at the current time due to the coronavirus pandemic, and has carefully considered the timing of these new regulations and agreed that it is important to proceed now to protect the UK’s biosecurity and given the support of industry and stakeholder representatives through the Plant Health Advisory Forum and Tree Health Policy Group.
• Further information on plant health imports and exports regulation can be read on the Defra Plant Health Portal.
• The UK will continue to apply the derogations in place for imports of wood of ash from the US and Canada (EU Implementing Decisions)

• Only go outside for food, health reasons or work (but only if you cannot work from home)
• If you go out, stay 2 metres (6ft) away from other people at all times
• Wash your hands as soon as you get home

Do not meet others, even friends or family.

You can spread the virus even if you don’t have symptoms.

I have been approached by a number of journalists asking for my comments on the possible use of symptom tracking applications, digital contact tracing applications and digital immunity certificates. Strictly speaking this is not part of my responsibility since my role is limited to the police use of biometrics both for criminal investigation and national security. However, the possible use of phone applications to track coronavirus (COVID-19) is a form of surveillance more normally associated with policing and could have a policing purpose, albeit one connected to controlling a pandemic. In that sense the way in which the police use of biometrics has been regulated may hold some lessons.

The first question about any public use of biometrics for surveillance is: is there a public interest in doing so? That is, not a private interest but one that benefits the society and its citizens to such an extent as to outweigh any intrusion into an individual’s general right to privacy. Such questions are of such significance that they should be decided by Parliament and enshrined in law, as was the case for the police use of DNA and fingerprints in the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (PoFA).

Given the general and public threat from coronavirus such a public interest test may well be accepted in this case. However, unless we believe that the coronavirus threat is permanent (and at present we do not know) then it may be that the public interest test is only passed for so long as the threat remains. That means that public surveillance to try and control coronavirus probably should be regarded as time limited and should be included in emergency legislation. Parliament certainly acted in this manner when it passed the Coronavirus Act 2020 which, in part, suspended some aspects of PoFA in response to the health emergency. It did so by insisting that the emergency provision had to be limited initially to 6 months and the relevant regulations made in consultation with the Biometrics Commissioner.

If surveillance of coronavirus is regarded as valid only during the pandemic then it is important that public trust in such a process is encouraged by regulation approved by Parliament as to the limitations of that surveillance. A group of university lawyers have produced a suggested Coronavirus (Safeguards) Bill that they believe would be necessary in order to protect an individual’s right not to participate, their anonymity, to limit the period for which it could be done and to regulate what use could be made of any data which was collected and who it could be shared with.

The Ada Lovelace Institute, an independent research body, have also carried out some initial analysis of the evidence and made some recommendations about accountability and the need for legislation. Such protections would go some way to limit use to the emergency period and to balance the immediate public interest against citizen’s longer-term interest in privacy and to ensure that such surveillance is not extended beyond the coronavirus emergency or into other areas of public life without further consideration by Parliament and further legislation. The coronavirus emergency has highlighted the very rapid development of new biometric technology in general and its possible use by the State but also by private interests and why that is something that needs a new framework of governance backed by legislation.

For more on this latter point see my forthcoming Annual Report 2019.