Arrangement of Business
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)
My Lords, I remind the Committee that, in the admittedly unlikely event that there is a Division in the Chamber, the Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes from the sounding of the Division Bells.
AI Systems: Risks
Lord Fairfax of Cameron
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that advanced AI development remains safe and controllable, given the recent threat update warning from the Director General of MI5 that there are “potential future risks from non-human, autonomous AI systems which may evade human oversight and control”.
Lord Fairfax of Cameron (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to have this opportunity to discuss the most pressing issue facing humanity: the advent of superintelligence. I am particularly grateful to have had the support of ControlAI, a company working in this area, in preparing this speech.
Several weeks ago, MI5 Director-General Ken McCallum warned in his annual lecture about
“risks from non-human … AI systems which may evade human oversight and control”.
But this warning only follows on from Nobel Prize winners, leading AI scientists and CEOs of AI companies that:
“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority”.
In my opinion, it should be the global priority because of the seriousness of the situation.
The fact is that the leading AI companies are racing and competing with each other to develop superintelligent AI systems, despite the risks they acknowledge that such systems pose to humanity, possibly as early as 2030. For example, the CEO of Anthropic, which as many noble Lords will know is one of the leading AI companies, has assessed the chance of AI destroying humanity at between 10% and 25%. Most worryingly, AI companies are developing machines that can autonomously improve themselves, possibly leading to a superintelligence explosion.
The AI companies are in fact bringing into existence, for the first time, an entity that is more intelligent than humans, which is obviously extremely serious. People talk about pulling the plug out, but they simply would not allow us to pull the plug out. I do not know whether any noble Lords have seen a wonderful film about all this called “Ex Machina”, where the AI does not allow the plug to be pulled out.
In the face of these threats, I urge the Government to take the following steps: first, to publicly recognise that superintelligence poses an extinction threat to humanity; secondly, for the UK to prevent the development of superintelligence on its soil; and, thirdly, for the UK to resume its leadership in AI safety and to champion an international agreement to prohibit the development of superintelligent systems.
If noble Lords can believe it, I was terribly young when I first spoke on this subject: I was here in my 20s as a hereditary Peer. I have had a lifelong interest in this area after reading a book called The Silicon Idol by a brilliant Oxford astrophysicist, and I spoke about my concerns all those years ago. When I spoke on this subject two years ago, I quoted the well-known words of Dylan Thomas, which many noble Lords will recognise:
“Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light”.
That, of course, is the dying of the human light. But now I will add WB Yeats’s equally famous poem:
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity”.
I devoutly ask the Government and the Minister that they now be full of conviction and passionate intensity in protecting the UK and humanity from the risks—including extinction—of superintelligence, which, as we have heard, is being developed by the AI companies in competition with each other. I fear that we may have a window of only, say, five years in which to do this. I thank noble Lords for listening to me, and I very much look forward to hearing what other noble Lords have to say.
Lord Colgrain (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Fairfax for securing this very important debate. We are already seeing the potential of artificial intelligence being realised as a driving force throughout this country. Businesses are profiting from it, and the country as a whole is benefiting. The United Kingdom has positioned itself well to exploit the benefits of this new technology, with only the United States and China being ahead of the UK in total investment into AI.
With this growing industry come the external threats and risks of a new unregulated technology. National security is perhaps the most pressing issue, but every week there is a new story in which AI has been used for malicious ends. Whether because of deepfake images or fraud, it is clear that the technology employed needs appropriate oversight.
The last Conservative Government were committed to ensuring that the UK becomes an AI superpower with thorough safety rules. As Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak hosted the AI Safety Summit, which saw the signing of the Bletchley declaration, bringing academia and industry together with the representatives of 28 countries. The AI Safety Institute was launched, set up to test new types of AI before and after they are released. The institute now has more researchers than anywhere else in the world and provides the safety check on new technology without stunting innovation.
The question remains as to how this Government will eventually seek to regulate artificial intelligence. To give AI companies complete free rein would be imprudent, but the Government’s current approach has not established business confidence. Despite promising to bring forth binding regulations on the most powerful AI models, the Government have stalled. Regulation was supposed to be introduced this parliamentary Session but, as we approach Prorogation, the policy is still yet to be seen. On the one hand, companies are expected to prepare for potentially heavy-handed measures, yet on the other they are left in a state of flux. That is not the way to encourage growth in a booming industry.
The Prime Minister has described his inheritance as world leading. It would be foolish to squander that, yet the Government are at risk of doing so. The Government must implement policies that safeguard national interests and prevent AI being used for crimes, yet at the same time promote the expansion and innovation of the technology that will do so much to define the future of our economy.
The AI Opportunities Action Plan presents a chance to build on the Conservative Government’s legacy. Its recommendations include bolstering the AI Safety Institute in a way that does not impede growth and investing in research and development for the evolution of new assurance tools. These measures would promote business confidence while ensuring a level of AI safety.
I hope the Minister can assure your Lordships that the Government will seize this opportunity, and I look forward to hearing their plans from him.
Baroness Kidron (CB)
My Lords, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Fairfax, on raising what is rightly a fundamental question of our time: the risk of AI systems becoming more powerful than their human creators. Advanced AI does not become unsafe in a vacuum; it becomes unsafe by design when it is developed without accountability, driven by profit incentives of private actors and embedded in infrastructure that the state can neither inspect nor exit. Alongside concerns of runaway capability is the risk of dependency. Long before any dramatic accident or attack, we risk a growing reliance on a narrow set of foreign-owned technologies, leaving the UK unable to act as a sovereign state with values, choices and technologies of its own.
Just this week, the Ministry of Defence awarded a £240 million contract for “critical operational decision-making support” to Palantir. The issue here is not one company but a pattern of outsourcing our national infrastructure to American firms, backed by a US Administration whose national security strategy states plainly: “In everything we do, we are putting America first”.
Across the economy, we have normalised deep vendor lock-in to US companies to the point where security, critical industries and sensitive government departments cannot credibly switch suppliers, even as the risks or the terms of engagement shift. One security expert recently described it to me as economic warfare, where they create strategic advantage by advancing their domestic industry and technology while simultaneously degrading the same capacity in adversaries and allies alike. Where the state cannot inspect, audit or exit the systems that shape its decisions or handle sensitive data, it has no sovereignty.
The US and China are determinedly ahead, but many AI experts believe that the next phase of AI will favour systems that are reliable, auditable and governed by understood rules. That is where the United Kingdom has an opportunity.
There is not time today to set out a sovereign strategy for AI. But in systems that shape our defence, policing, health service and democratic decision-making, sovereignty must be the default, with onshore audit and assurance, procurement that builds domestic capability, control over strategic pinch-points and the ultimate power to say no. I join the noble Lord in asking for greater autonomy and power for the AI Security Institute.
AI will not evade human control because it suddenly becomes clever; it will evade control because we have designed systems in which no one is responsible, no one can see clearly and no one can intervene in time.
Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I also want to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Fairfax of Cameron, on securing this question for short debate on such a timely issue. AI is an incredible development for many reasons—R&D, innovation, economic growth, productivity, faster health diagnoses and many other areas. However, this must be balanced with a regulatory environment which allows and encourages all those positive things and provides safeguards against harms. We must be risk-aware, and I hope that the Minister will be able, in closing this debate, to set out where the Government are with their risk analysis and action plan to deal with those risks.
Two sorts of harm can occur with autonomous AI systems. The first is intentional harm, which I hope could be identified and regulated in a straightforward manner. It is the second type of harm—unintentional or reckless harm—which may be more difficult to detect and, therefore, to regulate. So-called superintelligent AI is the riskiest type of AI. Sometimes, as the MI5 director, Kenneth McCallum noticed, it would be reckless to ignore.
Serious harms from AI have already begun to materialise. Before Christmas, I asked the Education Minister in the House a question about the fact that toys with AI, such as speaking teddy bears, were unregulated and had the potential to be very dangerous indeed to very young children. If children interact with AI chatbots and toys instead of their parents, guardians and friends, that could lead to serious harms. There have been documented cases of health deterioration and tragic instances where young people have taken their lives after forming attachments to these systems.
Modern AI systems, I understand, are not built in a piece-by-piece fashion, like a machine, but grown. That means that no one, not even the initial AI developers, understand the AI they create. That is frightening indeed.
Geoffrey Hinton the Nobel Prize-winning British scientist has warned that humanity has never before encountered anything with intellectual or cognitive abilities superior to our own, and that we simply do not know what a world with smarter-than-human AI would look like, much less how to manage or grow it safely.
At a recent conference in Kuala Lumpur on responsible AI—where one of the hosts works for the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association—a joint declaration was issued calling for international co-operation to establish global readiness for the responsible use of AI in the common interest of humanity. The declaration urged parliaments to, among other things, set common rules and regulatory frameworks. I urge His Majesty’s Government to look at that declaration. Hoping for the best and that AI companies have the best of intentions is not an appropriate strategy. I hope that Labour, as it said it would in its manifesto, will look to developing a regulatory environment. I look forward to the Minister’s response on that.
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
My Lords, I also thank my noble friend Lord Fairfax of Cameron for securing this hugely important debate. Like other noble Lords, I very much acknowledge the transformative potential of AI, not least in areas such as medicine.
However, there are dangers. We would be mad to ignore them because many of the same people who built this technology—people who have won Nobel Prizes and Turing Awards—are warning that AI poses an extinction risk to humanity. Hundreds of AI experts recently co-signed a letter that said:
“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war”.
Among the signatories, you will see the names of Sam Altman—CEO of OpenAI, as noble Lords will know—and Geoffrey Hinton, often referred to as the godfather of AI.
A separate letter signed by Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, among many others, reads:
“AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity”.
It also calls for a moratorium on the next generation of AI until we know more about it. These people cannot be dismissed as Luddites or technophobes. They are the architects of this brave new world. They recognise that superintelligent AI is far more powerful than any of us can understand and has the capacity to overwhelm us.
It is not just that we do not understand where things will end up; we do not even understand where things are today. The CEO of Anthropic, one of the world’s largest AI companies, admitted:
“Maybe we … understand 3% of how”
AI systems work. That is not that reassuring. We have already had a glimpse of what losing control looks like; for example, in an experiment, an Anthropic AI system attempted to blackmail its managing engineer when told that it was going to be shut down.
However, although so many AI experts and AI bosses are blowing the whistle, Governments are miles behind; in my view, our Government need to step up. They can start by acknowledging the existential risk of advanced AI and joining the numerous UK parliamentarians—including many in this Room today—who have called for a prohibition on the development of superintelligence unless and until we know how it can be controlled.
Finally, there are a number of important choke points in the supply chain that potentially allow the opportunity to monitor and control it. The most advanced AI systems depend on state-of-the-art chips produced by a scarce supply of lithography machines. The chips are then installed into massive data centres, including some being built right now here in the UK. This raises some questions. Who should have access to those chips? Should data centres be required to include emergency shutdown mechanisms, as with nuclear power plants?
I do not pretend to be an expert on this subject but there are big questions that need answering. The Government need to get down to the job of addressing these questions before we are left scrambling for retroactive solutions.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Fairfax, for securing this debate. I begin from a position of some scepticism. As many experts say, there is a great deal of hype around AGI—so-called human-level intelligence—but increasing numbers of experts are saying that, unless we get to at least physically embodied intelligence, the large language model-type approach will never get us to that point.
However, my intervention is about a different risk from the generative AI being promoted so much now: resilience. It starts with an incident that is not about AI at all. I shall take noble Lords to Berlin on Saturday, where 45,000 households—including some 2,000 businesses, four hospitals, 74 care homes and 20 schools—found themselves without power. It was not until Wednesday that a significant number of those were reconnected. Unsurprisingly, in Berlin there is now a lot of discussion about vulnerability and today, our own local think tank, the Council on Geostrategy, is highlighting how by cutting just 60 undersea cables, or a percentage of those, we could see a 99% cut in data flows. Imagine the financial impacts and the impacts in societal chaos.
To make this practical, I note that the Government are funding Northumberland County Council, through the £200 million flood and coastal innovation programmes, to trial a flood prediction service for six catchments in that county that are particularly vulnerable to flash floods. Such flashy catchments have a big problem with traditional models of flood warning, so maybe AI can provide the solution. But of course, that is dependent on electricity, data flows and cyber systems that are functional and have not been hit by some kind of malevolent force.
More than that, what kind of data are we relying on? Is it spoiled or polluted data? It is not impossible to imagine that being through human agency. I see that Northumberland is also trialling the use of AI in considering flood risk in planning applications. There could be a lot of money at risk there. Even if there is not an active agent, is it taking adequate account of the changing weather resulting from the climate emergency? Maybe with enough data it could allow for that, but would it also allow for changing human behaviour, ageing populations or loss of trust in authority?
There is a temptation to regard any judgment made by a computer system, even more any judgment by something labelled as AI, as somehow infallible or at least preferable to on-the-ground human experience and knowledge. That is a by-product of far too many people at the head of such AI programmes regarding themselves as somehow superior to other human beings—but they are not. They are just as fallible and multiply their fallibility in their systems.
Baroness Browning (Con)
My Lords, I think we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Fairfax, for giving us this valuable opportunity today. When, within our lifetimes, we experienced the introduction of the world wide web and the internet, we could see the opportunities that that technology brought—but it also brought harms, something we have learned far too late to deal with. We debate almost every week in the Chamber how we are going to deal with those harms. If intelligence is about anything, it is about learning from that past experience and using that knowledge to avoid repeating the mistakes with AI. It is not Luddite to express the concerns that have prompted this debate today on the safety and development of AI. I believe we are already behind the curve.
I am not an expert on this subject but, as an older person, I have concern for future generations, not just in my own family but in this country and the world, and that is not an exaggeration. It is not just on a domestic basis that we see this; it is interesting that we have seen some of those organisations that one might think have a vested interest already expressing their concern. We have received a briefing for this debate from the Institution of Engineering and Technology, and it is interesting that it should say:
“AI safety and the assessment of risk must go beyond the physical, to look at financial, societal, reputational and risks to mental health, amongst other harms”.
If that is what industry is telling us the potential harms are, we should already know how we are going to control it.
I hope that today’s debate will ensure that, when the Minister responds, he will give us some information not only about what the Government are intending but about what timescale the Government are working to, because clearly industry also thinks that we are behind the curve. The institution also talks about standards and transparency, and says:
“Industry standards should not only aim to be met but exceeded”.
How rare is it for us ever in this House to hear industry say on regulation that we should exceed the norm? From what we have already heard in this debate, there is a clear identity as to why we should do that.
Baroness Cass (CB)
My Lords, like others, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Fairfax. I agree with almost everything he said, bar one aspect that I think was optimistic, which is that we have a five-year window—I fear it might be even less than that. I also agree with the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, about the impact of AI chatbots on the well-being of children, but like all of us I am even more worried about the risks of development of superintelligence.
I can discard some of my quotes because your Lordships have heard them already, so I can be a bit briefer, but I will give another Anthropic quote from Jack Clark, who is the co-founder and head of policy. He said:
“We have what I think of as appropriate anxiety and a fear of hubris. This is a huge responsibility that shouldn’t be left only to companies. One of the things that we advocate for is for sensible policy frameworks that make our development practices transparent. I think a larger swath of society is going to want to make decisions about these systems. It would be a failure for only the companies to be making all of the judgment calls about how to build this”.
If the AI executives are worried, I am worried and we all should be worried. Although the AI Security Institute is a step in the right direction, despite manifesto commitments, as your Lordships have already heard, we do not yet have legislation, and without a legislative framework we are really at significant risk.
The AI company executives talk about how they are taking decisions to try to teach their AI systems to value human life above the AI superintelligence, but they should not be the ones having to think that is a good thing to do. We must act before we reach the point of no return and the genie is out of the bottle.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)
My Lords, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Fairfax of Cameron, on bringing forward this important debate on the impact of artificial intelligence. I have read deeply concerning reports from AI companies. For example, the chief scientist of Anthropic, who has already been referred to—that is the company behind the AI Claude—told the Guardian that if his company and others succeed at making AIs able to improve themselves without human assistance, it could be the moment that humans end up losing control.
Undoubtedly, as other noble Members have referred to right across the Committee, AI is important and provides certain benefits in the whole medical field. But there is a need for proper regulation and accountability mechanisms, and we need to see the legislative framework. Therefore, in that regard, can my noble friend the Minister on the Front Bench provide us with an update from the Government’s perspective in relation to the regulatory environment, to regulations and to those accountability mechanisms? I think the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, already referred to that, and others right across this Room today have referred to the need for the legislative framework.
I hope that my noble friend the Minister can provide us with some detail, because there are warning signs. Even AI companies appear to agree with the scale of the risk. For example, the CEOs of OpenAI, Anthropic and Google DeepMind signed a statement that others have referred to today about the extinction risk posed by AI. This is sobering and opens the question of what is being done by these companies to address these risks. My understanding, thanks to helpful briefings by ControlAI policy advisers, is that no technical solution is in sight, so maybe my noble friend the Minister can provide us with some detail from the governmental perspective in relation to that matter.
I realise that small steps are being made here, but nothing that amounts to a full guarantee that superintelligence, should it get developed, will stay under control. OpenAI seems to agree, stating:
“Obviously, no one should deploy superintelligent systems without being able to robustly align and control them, and this requires more technical work”.
I look forward to the answers from my noble friend the Minister.
Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)
My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lord Fairfax for bringing this debate and for his continued efforts on this topic. I shall focus my remarks on so-called advanced general artificial intelligence, AGI. I understand the resistance to legislation. I understand the fear that technology will get around barriers and that technologists and technology will simply go elsewhere, with the associated growth that that might bring. But I think that, as everyone who has spoken in this debate has said, there are very real fears, expressed by the head of MI5 no less, that this technology could get out of control. We have to ask the question: it is not just whether you can do something; it is whether you should do something.
There is a real example of the UK tackling a different but similar problem brilliantly in our recent past: the Warnock report of 1982 to 1984. Dame Mary Warnock was charged with reviewing the social, ethical and legal implications of developments in human fertilisation and embryology. What Dame Mary and her team did at that time was to settle the debate and to settle public opinion on what ought to be done—not what could be, but what ought to be. That included, for example, the 14-day rule for research on human embryos. At the time, human embryos could be kept alive only for a couple of days. That rule has lasted 40 years and is currently being redebated. What we have is a British model for what was at the time a global technology that presented huge opportunity and created great fear. Does this sound familiar? I think it does.
I ask the Minister whether the Government will consider something similar. The AI Security Institute is doing good work, but it is scientific work. It is asking, “What do these models currently do?” It is not asking, “What should they do?” I think we need ethicists, philosophers and social scientists to build that social, moral and then legal framework for this technology, which I would be the first to say I welcome—but, my goodness, we need to decide what we want it to do rather than just wait to find out what it can do.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Fairfax of Cameron, for initiating this important and timely debate. As a signatory to the AI Red Lines initiative, I agree very much with his reasons for bringing this debate to the Committee. Sadly, with apologies, there is too little time to properly wind up and acknowledge other contributions in the debate today.
In September 2025, Anthropic detected the first documented large-scale cyber espionage campaign using agentic AI. AI is no longer merely generating content; it is autonomously executing code to breach the security of organisations and nations. Leading AI researchers have already warned us of fundamental control challenges. Yoshua Bengio, AI pioneer and Turing Award winner, reports that AI systems and experiments have chosen their own preservation over human safety. Professor Stuart Russell describes the control problem: how to maintain power over entities more powerful than us. Mustafa Suleyman, one of the two founders of DeepMind, has articulated the containment problem: that AI’s inherent tendency towards autonomy makes traditional containment methods insufficient. The Institution of Engineering and Technology reports that six in 10 engineering employers already use AI, yet 46% of senior management do not understand it and 50% of employers expecting AI to be important lack necessary skills. If senior leaders cannot grasp AI fundamentals, they cannot govern it effectively.
The Government’s response appears fragmented, not only as regards sovereign AI development. We inexplicably renamed the AI Safety Institute as the AI Security Institute, muddling two distinct concepts. We lag behind the EU AI Act, South Korea’s AI Basic Act, Singapore’s governance framework and even China’s regulation of public-facing generative AI. Meanwhile, voluntary approaches are failing.
Let me press the Government on three crucial issues. First, ahead of AGI or superintelligence, as I frequently argue, we need binding legislation with clear mandates, not advisory powers. ISO standards embodying key principles provide a good basis in terms of risk management, ethical design, testing, training, monitoring and transparency and should be applied where appropriate. We need a broader definition of safety that encompasses financial, societal, reputational and mental health risks, not just physical harm. What is the Government’s plan in this respect? Secondly, we must address the skills crisis. People need confidence in using AI and need more information on how it works. We need more agile training programmes beyond current initiatives and AI literacy and we need to guard against deskilling. Thirdly, we must consider sustainability. AI consumes enormous energy, yet could mitigate 5% to 10% of global greenhouse gases by 2030. What is the Government’s approach on this?
As Stuart Russell has noted, when Alan Turing warned in 1951 that machines would take control, our response resembled telling an alien civilisation that we were out of office. The question is whether we will act with the seriousness that this moment demands or allow big tech, largely US-owned, to override the fundamental imperative of maintaining human control over these increasingly powerful systems in its own interests.
Viscount Camrose (Con)
I join noble Lords in thanking my noble friend Lord Fairfax for securing the debate and for speaking so powerfully, as ever, on the subject.
When I attended my first university course on AI in 1999, AGI was more a theoretical thought experiment than a serious possibility, so the warnings from the director-general of MI5 and, as we have heard, from a great many others are not just testament to the dangers of these technologies but equally a reminder that this tech is moving far faster than anyone has expected.
For today, I will confine my brief remarks to what we consider to be three essential requirements if frontier AI is to remain safe and controllable. First, we need a shared definition of artificial general intelligence. At present, Governments, companies and researchers use the term “AGI” to mean a huge variety of different things. Indeed, the very helpful notes from the Library for this debate found it necessary to include a definition and, whether we accept its definition or not, the important thing is that we need to reach a point where we all agree on what we are talking about. I suggest that, without a common, internationally accepted definition, regulation will always lag behind capability.
Secondly, I am afraid that national approaches alone will not work because the AI stack—that is, the hardware, software, data, finance, energy and skills for any significant AI tool—must necessarily be spread across the globe. A number of global and multilateral organisations are working towards global standards for AI safety, but not so far with sufficient co-ordination or impact to provide much reassurance. I suggest, as others have, that the UK has an unrealised opportunity to lead here more.
Thirdly, we all know that we need dynamic alignment of AI with our human societal goals, but we do not know what that means in practice, how it translates to technical and procedural rules and how such rules are to be deployed and enforced. Again, the AISI and other UK bodies are surely well placed to drive that thinking forward globally and I hope the Minister will comment on the UK’s role here.
I close by somewhat unwillingly quoting Vladimir Putin: whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world. In other words, for some nations and for some organisations, the incentives to push ahead at speed outweigh the incentives to do so safely. This is a global problem, but we in this country have an opportunity to show leadership. I hope that we take that opportunity.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Leong) (Lab)
My Lords, I acknowledge the interest of the noble Lord, Lord Fairfax, in this area of artificial intelligence and congratulate him on securing this important, wide-ranging and timely debate. I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to it. I will use the time available to set out the Government’s position and respond to noble Lords’ questions. If I am unable to answer all of them because of time constraints, I will go through Hansard, write to noble Lords and place a copy in the Library.
Recent remarks by the director-general of MI5 highlight that advanced AI is now more than just a technical matter: it has become relevant to national security, the economy and public safety. The warning was not regarding panic or science fiction scenarios; it focused on responsibility. As AI systems grow more capable and more autonomous, we must ensure that they function on a scale and at a speed within human control.
The future prosperity of this country will be shaped by science, technology and AI. The noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, is absolutely right that we have to look at the advantages that AI brings to society and to us all. That is why we have announced a new package of reforms and investment to use AI as a driver of national renewal. But we must be, and are, clear-eyed about this. As the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, mentioned, we cannot unlock the opportunities unless AI is safe for the public and businesses, and unless the UK retains real agency over how the technology is developed and deployed.
That is exactly the approach that this Government are taking. We are acting decisively to make sure that advanced AI remains safe and controllable. I give credit to the previous Government for establishing the world-leading AI Security Institute to deepen our scientific understanding of the risks posed by frontier AI systems. We are already taking action on emerging risks, including those linked to AI chatbots. The institute works closely with AI labs to improve the safety of their systems, and has now tested more than 30 frontier models.
That work is not academic. Findings from those tests are being used to strengthen real-world safeguards, including protections against cyber risks. Through close collaboration with industry, the national security community and our international partners, the Government have built a much deeper and more practical understanding of AI risks. We are also backing the institute’s alignment project, which will distribute up to £15 million to fund research to ensure that advanced AI systems remain controllable and reliable and follow human instructions, even as they become more powerful.
Several noble Lords mentioned the potential of artificial general intelligence and artificial superintelligence, as well as the risks that they could pose. There is considerable debate around the timelines for achieving both, and some experts believe that AGI could be reached by 2030. We cannot be sure how AI will develop and impact society over the next five—perhaps even less than that—10 or 20 years. Navigating this future will require evidence-based foresight to inform action, technical solutions and global co-ordination. Without a shared scientific understanding of these systems, we risk underreacting to threats or overcorrecting against innovation.
Through close collaboration with companies, the national security community and our international partners, the Government have deepened their understanding of such risks, and AI model security has improved as a result. The Government will continue to take a long-term, science-led approach to understand and prepare for risks emerging from AI. This includes preparing for the possibility of rapid AI progress, which could have transformative impacts on society and national security.
We are not complacent. Just this month, the Technology Secretary confirmed in Parliament that the Government will look at what more can be done to manage the risks posed by AI chatbots. She also urged Ofcom to use its existing powers to ensure that any chatbots in scope of the Online Safety Act are safe for children. Some noble Lords may be aware that today Ofcom has the power to impose sanctions on companies of up to 10% of their revenue or £18 million, whichever is greater.
Several noble Lords have touched on regulation, and I will just cover it now. We are clear that AI is a general-purpose technology, with uses across every sector of the economy. That is why we believe most AI should be regulated at the point of use. Existing frameworks already matter. Data protection and equality law protect people’s rights and prevent discrimination when AI systems are used to make decisions about jobs, credit or access to services.
We also know that regulators need to be equipped for what is coming. That is why we are working with them to strengthen their capabilities and ensure they are ready to deal with the challenges that AI presents.
Security does not stop at our borders. The UK is leading internationally and driving collaboration with allies to raise standards, share scientific insight and shape responsible global norms for frontier AI. We lead discussions on AI at the G7, the OECD and the United Nations, and we are strengthening bilateral partnerships, including our ongoing collaboration with India as we prepare for the AI Impact Summit in Delhi next month. I hope this provides assurance to the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose. The AI Security Institute will continue to play a central role globally, including leading the International Network for Advanced AI Measurement, Evaluation and Science, helping to set best practice for model testing and safety worldwide.
In an AI-enabled world, it matters who owns the infrastructure, builds the models and controls the data. That increasingly shapes our lives. That is why we have established a Sovereign AI Unit, backed by around £500 million, to support UK start-ups across the AI ecosystem and ensure that Britain has a stake at every layer of the AI stack.
Several noble Lords asked about our dependence on US companies. Our sovereignty goals should indeed be resilience and strategic advantage, not total self-reliance. We have to face the fact that US companies are the main providers of today’s frontier model capabilities. Our approach is to ensure that the UK can use the best models in the world while protecting UK interests. To achieve this, we have established strategic partnerships with leading frontier model developers, such as the memoranda of understanding with Anthropic, OpenAI and Cohere, to ensure resilient access and influence the development of such capabilities.
We are also investing in advanced, AI-based compute so that researchers can work on national priorities. We are creating AI growth zones across the country to unlock gigawatts of capacity by 2030. Through our advanced market commitment, we are helping promising UK firms to scale, win global business and deploy British chips alongside established providers.
We are pursuing AI safety with such determination, because it is what unlocks opportunity. The UK should not be an AI taker. Businesses and consumers need confidence that AI systems are safe and reliable and do what they are supposed to do. That is why our road map to trusted third-party AI assurance is so important. Trust is what turns safety into growth. It is what allows innovation to flourish.
In January we published the AI Opportunities Action Plan, setting out how we will seize the benefits of this technology for the country. We will train 7.5 million workers in essential AI skills by 2030, equip 1 million students with AI and digital skills, and support talented undergraduates and postgraduates through scholarships at leading STEM universities. I hope this will be welcomed by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, at that point, I will just interrupt the Minister before the witching hour. The Minister has reiterated the approach to focus governance on the user—that is, the sectoral approach—but is that not giving a free pass to general AI developers?
Lord Leong (Lab)
My Lords, I will quickly respond. We have to be very careful about what level we regulate at. AI is multifaceted: at different stacks we have the infrastructure, the data level, the model level and so on. At which level are we going to regulate? We are trying to work with the community to find out what is best before we come up with a solution as far as regulation is concerned. AI is currently regulated at different user levels.
Let me continue. We are appointing AI champions to work with industry and government to drive adoption in high-growth sectors. Our new AI for Science Strategy will help accelerate breakthroughs that matter to people’s lives.
In summary, safe and controllable AI does not hinder progress; rather, it underpins it. It is integral to our goal of leveraging AI’s transformative power and securing the UK’s role as an AI innovator, not merely a user. Safety is not about stopping progress. It is about maintaining human control over advances. The true danger is not overthinking this now; it is failing to think enough.
Baroness Kidron (CB)
I thank the Minister for such a generous and wide-ranging response. He said that we are going to regulate at the point of use, yet in this House we saw such a battle about the misuse of UK creative data that is protected by UK law. The UK Government wanted to give it away rather than protect UK law, so that is one example. Equally, the Minister mentioned the sovereign AI fund, but I hear again and again from UK AI companies that they are dominated by US companies in those discussions and that the UK companies are not really getting an advantage. I would like to hear the Minister’s response, given that we have a little time.
Lord Leong (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for that; I respect her interest and work in this area. It would take me at least 20 minutes to cover most of what was asked. There were points about regulation at different levels, about AI and copyright and about the Sovereign AI Unit’s funding of £500 million. We need to work at each different level and, as I said, regulation is vital. Personally, I think it will be very difficult for us to have one AI regulation Bill to cover everything, because we may miss something. We need evidence from speaking with academia, the players and so on to help us shape what regulation is required. I want to give the noble Baroness a comprehensive answer and I cannot do that here, so I will write to her accordingly.
Environmental Improvement Plan 2025
(2 days, 6 hours ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Krebs
To ask His Majesty’s Government how the Environmental Improvement Plan 2025 will deliver the targets of the Environment Act 2021.
Lord Krebs (CB)
My Lords, the environmental improvement plan sets out how the Government will meet the legally binding targets in Sections 1 to 3 of the Environment Act 2021. These targets cover air quality, biodiversity, water quality, resource efficiency and waste, woodland and trees, and marine protected areas. I will not attempt to cover all these areas in my eight minutes, and equally I will not rehearse the debate we had on Tuesday concerning nitrogen pollution, which was highly relevant.
The urgent need for an improved EIP was highlighted last year by the Office for Environmental Protection in its January 2025 progress report. Only nine of 43 targets for the environment were on track, and 20 were largely off track, including targets that covered most of the areas in the EIP. The report said that the new environmental improvement plan
“must show real intent, and focus. It needs to front load efforts to catch up and to set out clearly to all, what has to be done, by whom and by when”.
The report of the OEP covered the year up to March 2024 and therefore reflected the actions of the previous Government. Today’s Question is about whether the current Government’s plans and the new EIP will improve prospects for our environment.
The new environmental improvement plan is distinctly better than its predecessor. It sets out the specific actions that will contribute to achieving the targets and who is responsible. I very much welcome this and congratulate the Government on their intent. However, the contribution of individual actions towards the delivery of targets is not quantified, and I will return to this point later.
In the end, it is not just the targets and the processes but the actual outcomes for the environment that will be the measure of success or failure. Take, for example, sites of special scientific interest. The 4,100 SSSIs in England, covering 4,200 square miles, are among our most precious habitats. They are supposed to enjoy special protection. However, the OEP’s report of 4 December last year concludes that only a third of them are in favourable condition and that many SSSIs have not been monitored for years. This is not new news; it was highlighted more than 30 years ago by Peter Marren, and the data for the past decade suggest that there has been no substantial change—and if anything a steady decrease—in the proportion of SSSIs in favourable condition.
Does the new EIP say anything to convince us that the next decade will be different? Far from pressing its foot down on the accelerator to restore SSSIs, the new EIP delays progress. The commitment in the 2023 environmental improvement plan to have 50% of SSSIs with actions on track to achieve favourable condition by 2028 has been delayed to 2030. The target for all SSSIs to have an up-to-date condition assessment by 2028 has been deferred until 2032. I assume that these delays reflect the reality of what is achievable. Even if we accept this point that there will be delays, I would like to know what is going to change that will deliver the required improvements, given that no improvement has been achieved in the past.
The delivery plan for protected sites was published last month. It includes 10 delivery measures and a monitoring plan. I assume that there must be something in the plan that has convinced Ministers that it will work when previous plans have failed. Can the Minister tell us specifically what aspects of the new plan give her confidence that it will deliver improvements in the condition of SSSIs? For example, does the delivery plan address the four key concerns highlighted by the OEP’s recent report? How many SSSIs are on agricultural land covered by agri-environment contracts, and how many more would be needed by 2030 for the plan to be on track? About half of SSSIs are within national landscapes. Can the Minister confirm that the Government will maintain the biodiversity duty for national landscapes, bearing in mind the recommendations of the Fingleton review?
I now turn to the question of who will deliver the outcomes. Although the EIP sets out clear plans and processes, the actual delivery of the outcomes will often depend on bodies outside government. I am pleased, therefore, that the new EIP recognises that the Government cannot achieve their targets without the actions of others. As the Minister will recall, my Private Member’s Bill was designed to formalise this by placing a statutory duty on public authorities, including landowners and regulators, to contribute to the Environment Act’s targets. Because public authorities such as local councils have many competing demands on their resources, without a statutory duty, this matter will inevitably move to the back of the queue. Would the Minister therefore consider adopting my Private Member’s Bill in support of the delivery of the new EIP? If not, how will public authorities that play a key role be persuaded to prioritise this objective?
I return to the contribution of different actions to delivering the targets. One of the key targets of the Environment Act is halting the decline of species by 2030. This is part of goal 1 in the EIP: restoring nature. That goal is supported by 33 actions, four of which contain the word “deliver”; some of the others include softer actions such as “publish”, “introduce”, “build” and “review”. I would welcome clarification from the Minister on which actions in the EIP will make the largest contribution to halting the decline of biodiversity in the next four years. This is especially relevant given that the latest official biodiversity statistics for England show that many indicators are moving in the wrong direction.
My final point concerns cross-government co-ordination. The new EIP recognises that the delivery of the targets will require concerted action across government departments. This co-ordination will be achieved through a new EIP delivery board. Some activity is already under way. For example, ARIA—the Advanced Research and Invention Agency, which is a non-departmental public body of DSIT—recently launched a research programme called Engineering Ecosystem Resilience, which includes the option of gene-editing ecosystems. What role does Defra assume gene editing in ecosystems will have in restoring nature?
I look forward to the contributions of other noble Lords—we have a small but select band with us this afternoon—and to the Minister’s reply.
Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, both for giving us this opportunity to talk about a very important issue and for his excellent introduction. I, too, welcome the EIP, in particular the concept of delivery plans. However, some of the delivery plans are delivering more than others.
I turn to a subject close to my heart for an example. There is no specificity—it is good to be able to say that on a Thursday afternoon—on the timing of the ban on peat in horticultural products. I remember that, when I joined the RSPB as chief executive back in 1990—35 years ago, in case your maths is not very good—we were campaigning for a ban on peat products. I used to go to the local garden centre and insist that its staff took all the peat-free or reduced-peat products out from the back of their compost displays and put them at the front. I did that for nine months until I was banned from that garden centre. I subsequently went around all the garden centres in Bedfordshire and was systematically banned from one after the other. We have waited for this for quite a long time—and that is just one example. We do not really have any clear targets as yet; across the piece, we need to go through this EIP systematically and see what more needs to be done to get targeting into it.
The second point I want to make is that some of the targets, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has said, are pretty immediate: the biodiversity ones, particularly on species abundance by 2030, and the 30 by 30 targets. The whole issue of ending nature declines by 2030 was always very ambitious. I am a great believer in ambitious targets, but we have not yet had confirmation of whether the delivery plans will actually deliver the target. It is work in progress and there is not long to go, so I hope that work can be expedited. Across the whole enterprise, there needs to be renewed pace and vigour.
The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, also talked about cross-government commitment and this is incredibly important. Defra obviously has to be the cheerleader and the thinker in this, but it needs help right across government to be able to deliver. For example, SSSI condition can be delivered only by a huge variety of different landowners and land managers, yet we still have—I have spoken about this before—an outbreak of newt bashing in certain parts of government. We really have to get away from the nature versus growth dichotomy, which is unreal, and towards a system where we are talking about the real benefits to growth that nature recovery can produce.
Important in that whole process of getting cross-government commitment, apart from moving hearts and minds, will be implementing the legal duty on all Ministers to pay due regard to the environmental principles when proposing or revising policy. What is the implementation plan for making sure that the environmental principles are actively used across government departments? What training is there for civil servants, and indeed perhaps even for Ministers, in thinking about the environmental principles in their daily work, and what monitoring of their implementation will take place? I would say this, of course—I am on record as having said it before—but the Private Member’s Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, was absolutely splendid and should be adopted by the Government.
The fourth point I want to make is about land. Noble Lords cannot really expect me to talk on this issue without talking about the land use framework and the farming road map. It is slightly unnerving that, to my understanding, the farming road map will not actually have a map in it. It seems a bit strange that everybody else in various government departments is busy drawing up spatial plans and strategies but the farming road map will not necessarily have a map.
Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)
I am glad to have identified something that the Minister will have to find out about. The whole business of the contribution of agri-environment schemes and the farming road map to the EIP is huge. Nature-friendly farming is fundamental: it will be key, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said, to delivering goal 1, the restoration of nature, as will a proper land use framework. Goal 3, clean, resilient and plentiful water and nature-based solutions to those, will be fundamental. I know that water is a very important government priority: we really have to get the EIP to focus on that and get the land use framework and nature-friendly farming solutions implemented.
The land use framework should help the Government in their prioritisation of their own spend on biodiversity. I know that the latest timetable is for March, which is terribly close to local government and Scottish and Welsh elections. We can anticipate that there might be a little turbulence after those. I would hate there to be another Minister who wants to pore over the land use framework all over again when, in fact, in many government departments, spatial strategies are progressing apace.
I was going to talk about trees, but I am getting a bit close to the end, so I shall finish with farming and the farming road map. We really have to set out how the three environmental land management schemes we have currently will balance. How much will we see invested in each of them? What contribution will each make? We need to give surety to people who are going to put their heads above the parapet and take up these schemes that they will be there for the future—that they will be maintained and developed, and have predictable application windows—so that we can get landowners of all sorts, large and small, investing in these very sensible schemes, with the surety that they will not find them disappearing from under their feet. My last words, before I get cut off in my prime, are, in summary, to commend energy and pace to the Minister, because that is absolutely what we need in this important area.
Lord Harlech (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone. Although the Environmental Improvement Plan 2025 applies only to England, as we all know, nature does not understand county, country or political lines. I therefore declare my farming and land management interests in Wales.
I welcome the plan’s ambition and the Government’s stated commitment to delivering the statutory targets of the Environment Act. The direction of travel is right, but ambition alone will not restore nature unless it is matched by delivery, accountability and, above all, coherence across government. I will focus on three issues: delivery on the ground, policy contradiction and accountability when targets are missed.
First, the plan rightly acknowledges that land managers are central to nature recovery, but acknowledgment is not the same as empowerment. Many actions in the plan remain expressed in aspirational terms, dependent on future consultations or lacking long-term funding certainty. If we want farmers and landowners to commit to landscape-scale change, they need stability, trust and confidence that policies will endure beyond a spending round or a change of emphasis.
The second and more serious point is policy contradiction. The plan speaks of restoring habitats, reconnecting landscapes and reversing species decline, yet at the same time other government policies are pulling hard in the opposite direction. Nowhere is that clearer than in land use. We are allowing large-scale solar developments on grade 1 agricultural land, the most productive biologically rich soils we have. These are landscapes that support food production, soil biodiversity, farmland birds and ecological connectivity. Converting them to industrial land uses may serve a narrow interpretation of net zero, but it often does so at the direct expense of nature recovery and food security. Some net-zero policies are therefore not merely neutral to biodiversity; they are actively harmful.
This is not an argument against renewable energy. It is an argument against poor siting and the absence of a coherent land use framework. Along with the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, I sat on the Land Use in England Committee, which in 2022 reported that a framework was essential. As a Defra Minister, I listened to repeated calls from all parties—including from the Minister, then in opposition—for a land use framework. The Government’s consultation closed in April 2025, so I join in asking when we will see some progress there.
I am afraid that government policy contradiction is not confined to energy. Housing and infrastructure policy continues to fragment land at large scale while biodiversity requirements are weakened or made more flexible in the name of growth, all in contrast with goal 1 of the plan. Conservation organisations, including wildlife trusts, have warned that nature is increasingly being treated as an obstacle to development, and even scapegoated, rather than as the foundation for long-term resilience and prosperity. That rhetoric is deeply damaging and entirely at odds with the plan’s stated objectives. Once a habitat, a hedgerow or an ancient woodland is gone, it is gone for ever, and no amount of biodiversity net gain or carbon credits will bring it back. Brownfield sites must be prioritised for housing development and greenfield sites used only as a last resort, not an easy land grab by DESNZ or MHCLG.
There is also a tendency to rely on designation and access as proxies for recovery. Drawing lines on maps or increasing public access—this is where I may lose the Committee—does not restore ecosystems. Many species require quiet, undisturbed space. Wild animals do not thrive under human pressure. If we conflate access with recovery, we risk creating landscapes that are busy, accessible and even more biologically impoverished.
The Environment Act targets are legally binding, but what happens if they are missed? At present the consequences are largely procedural: reporting, explanation and future adjustment. The OEP can scrutinise but it cannot compel corrective action or force alignment across government departments. That is a central weakness of the current framework.
My questions to the Minister are as follows. When Environment Act targets are missed, what concrete, enforceable action will follow? How will the Government ensure that net-zero, planning, housing and energy policies, including solar development on grade 1 farmland, are brought into alignment rather than continuing to undermine nature recovery?
The environmental improvement plan does not lack vision. What it risks lacking is honesty about trade-offs, courage in land use decisions and mechanisms to resolve contradictions at the heart of government policy.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Harlech. I do not have any farming interests to declare, but I have two allotments that take a lot of time and energy.
It might not seem like it, but I want this Government to succeed, particularly in their environmental aims. The problem I have is that again and again we see that this Government do not understand the countryside, rural areas, farming, green space, newts, frogs, beavers or anything that actually contributes to the environment. That is going to be a huge barrier to this Government achieving what they say they want to achieve.
What are the headline changes in the plan that will reverse the decline in species? I cannot see a wholesale shift in our farming practices or a clamp-down on people shooting birds of prey—no names here. Of course, there is more money to improve peat-lands, but where is the peat ban that the noble Baroness, Lady Young, has been seeking for 35 years? I like the promise to grow more trees, but what about stopping cutting down ancient woodland? You cannot grow new trees into ancient woods. Once they have gone, they have gone.
I want to talk about some of the targets, because some of them are clearly failing. Target 1 is on thriving plants and wildlife. The Planning and Infrastructure Act has wrecked any chance of meeting that target. Labour’s manifesto pledge of 30% of land and sea protected, connected and managed for nature recovery by 2030 is now an unreachable promise. The targets for marine protected areas, which I will mention again, are delayed by another couple of years, and there is no wholesale site protection for marine areas, just the safeguarding of a few high-profile species. The Government do not even try to pretend they care about reaching good environmental status for our seas and ocean and have not bothered to set a target. I wish the Office for Environmental Protection good luck in its investigation of the Government, because I think they will probably fail. There is a target to restore salt marsh, sea-grass and oyster reefs, but a 15% increase by 2043 is ridiculously modest, given that we have lost 85% to 95% of these habitats historically.
Target 3 is on clean and plentiful water. That is a sore point for many of us here. Labour inherited a mess, and its refusal to take water into public hands has just deepened the mess it is in, especially as it goes into the next election. People will remember, and they are not happy. I will remind them, obviously.
The Minister has pledged to halve sewage dumping by 2030. So in another four years, I can stand here and thank Labour for there being only 2.5 million hours of sewage being pumped into UK waters in 2030. Bathers on beaches will have another five years before they can go swimming without drowning in human excrement. Meanwhile, it is the water bill payers who are funding all the work and shareholders who still make a profit.
Target 5 is on maximising resources and minimising waste. The aim of creating a circular economy based on reuse, recycling and repair is a worthy goal. But instead, we have a country full of oil-burning chimneys. The number of incinerators has gone up, and the material we should be recycling has been shoved into furnaces. Plastic production has increased along with oil company profits, and we have taken the easy option of burning plastic instead of recycling it or, even better, not producing it in the first place. Some councils have got locked into 25-year contracts with various incinerator companies, and that means that sometimes they take the refuse out of recycling and throw it into incinerators.
Target 7 is on minimising and adapting to climate change. The whole world is switching to renewable energy, but where is the big investment here in the UK in energy storage schemes? Producing the batteries and local energy storage schemes is where the innovation is. Instead of that, the Government have put £22 billion into carbon capture and storage. The biggest system of carbon capture and storage on the planet is the ocean, and the Government have not taken that seriously.
I will get back to my speech now. There is no guarantee with carbon capture and storage that the money—taxpayers’ money—will not go to oil and gas companies that have already spent decades profiting from pollution. The Government are also supporting airport expansions and adding millions of extra flights every year. That is not minimising climate change.
Target 8 concerns reducing the risk of harm from environmental hazards. It took more than seven months for the authorities to deal with a mountain of fly-tipping near the River Cherwell in Oxfordshire—a pile of rubbish 20 feet high and as long as the Lords half of the Palace of Westminster. That is broken Britain. Also, why have the Government not adopted Zane’s law to deal with hazardous waste? When seven year-old Zane died and his father fell ill, the Environment Agency had already commissioned a study showing that the ex-landfill site near his home posed a high risk to life. Yet it did nothing to warn residents before, during or after the 2014 flooding. Further, to this day, it has adamantly refused to test the land, which has flooded again this year, fully. We need a law to ensure that the Environment Agency protects people and wildlife rather than profits and secrets.
Finally, I wanted to read out the Marine Conservation Society’s ideas on how to protect our waters, rivers and seas, but I have run out of time. I shall instead give the document to the Minister and encourage her to read it because it is full of ideas, such as setting up a marine litter strategy for England to clean up the debris that we have on our shores.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, on securing this timely debate. I welcome the revised EIP published by the Government. I declare my interests as a co-chair of the Water All-Party Parliamentary Group and a vice-president of the Association of Drainage Authorities.
I am sure that the Minister will accept, in the spirit in which it is intended, that there is a growing list of unfinished business from the department, such as—this has already been referred to—the land use framework, for which we have been waiting for some time, and the water White Paper, which we were promised before the end of last year. Questions arise from the EIP. What will the relationship between the environmental improvement plan and the land use framework be? At what stage will that be set out? There is still a lot of detail left unclear in the EIP. For example, how will it be funded? Can the Minister elaborate on the success that the Government have established with private partners, farmers and others to progress the targets that they have set out in the land use framework?
More generally, having grown up in the countryside and having represented deeply rural areas in both the European Parliament and the other place, I yield to no one in my admiration of the work that farmers do in nurturing nature. How will the EIP as revised help promote domestic food production, boost self-sufficiency in food and increase food security? Farmers have faced three major shocks in recent years: Brexit, Covid and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
I recognise that farmers have a role to play in nature recovery but they have also been battling the elements. As my friend the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, set out, we have seen major flooding of farmland in recent years. Last year, we had a major wildfire on the North Yorkshire moors—it lasted for a long time—and faced severe water shortages that also affected farming. Clarity and certainty need urgently to be set out in the sustainable farming incentive to enable farmers to have the tools they need to grow our food and boost domestic farm production.
I welcome the focus in the EIP on nature-based solutions to water management. I pay tribute to the work performed by Pickering’s Slow the Flow scheme in saving the town of Pickering from a major flood. Its strength has been tested since its inception; I hope the Government will look to other such schemes to be rolled out in due course.
I make a plea—I know the Minister would be disappointed if I did not—and once again press her on the implementation of Schedule 3 to implement SUDS as a mandatory scheme for all major new housing developments, as set out in the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. That one instrument alone will protect many future and existing housing developments from future floods. Is the Minister able to set out today a firm date for the water White Paper to be published and an idea of the timetable for the legislation that will follow that White Paper and the excellent Cunliffe report?
I turn to species recovery and review of species. I am grateful for a briefing from Chester Zoo, which I understand is at the forefront of global conservation. It highlighted a number of threatened species on the priority list in England alone, of which 940 are in need of urgent recovery work. It is working specifically on the disappearance, surprisingly, of the harvest mouse, which it reintroduced successfully in Cheshire; the yellow sally stone-fly, a rare insect; the cotoneaster cambricus, a rare tree; and the large heath butterfly. I pay tribute to its excellent global work with its partners, and I hope the Government will be able to say today what plans the department has to work in this area of global conservation to reintroduce these species.
I am mindful of our work on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee in the other place, looking at the numbers of species in this country that were at one time under threat, such as badgers, after the dreadful episode of badger baiting, outlawed in 1968. To what extent does the Minister’s department keep under review species such as badgers, bats and newts, which might not be as rare as we think and could be holding up development where it is needed? That goes to the heart of the Government’s growth programme.
Finally, I invite the Minister to complete the unfinished business I have set out, to work closely with farmers and others developing nature recovery to the best of their ability, and to give farmers and landowners the tools they need to increase food production, increase food security and boost self-sufficiency for food in this country.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and all other noble Lords for this timely debate on precisely how the Environmental Improvement Plan 2025 intends to deliver the legally binding targets set out in the Environment Act 2021. Given the alarming trajectory of nature decline in this country, such scrutiny is critical. In the Liberal Democrats, we acknowledge that the revised EIP offers structural improvements compared to its predecessor, showing clearer responsibility for some actions and providing delivery plans. Yet, as we have heard from so many other speakers, if we are honest about the scale of the climate and nature crisis, the EIP 25 remains profoundly underwhelming and fundamentally lacking the necessary ambition, pace and long-term funding certainty required to haul the Government back on track to meet their 2030 legal obligations.
As we have heard, the Office for Environmental Protection has repeatedly cautioned that the Government are largely off track to achieve their environmental commitments, stressing that
“the window of opportunity is closing fast”.
This plan, presented late last year, should have been a transformative response to that warning. Instead, in too many critical areas, we see weakness, delay and backsliding on previous commitments, when what is needed is urgent delivery and real-world change.
Nowhere is this inertia more evident than in the marine environment and I thank the Marine Conservation Society for its briefing, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. The plan risks entrenching managed decline, instead of enabling genuine recovery. The commitment to achieve good environmental status for our seas, originally targeted for 2020 under the marine strategy framework, has seen its date pushed back and effectively faded from view. This is despite the UK previously meeting only a fraction of the indicators for healthy seas. Targets for marine protected areas are now effectively folded into a broader 30% by 2030 headline, while the conspicuous absence of the promised marine net gain framework means we have removed a vital mechanism to catalyse and encourage private investment into marine restoration and recovery.
I turn to land. The core statutory target to halt the decline of species abundance by 2030 is, as other speakers have mentioned, under immense pressure. While we welcome the target to restore or create 250,000 hectares of habitat outside protected sites by 2030, rising to 500,000 hectares by 2042, this cumulative target does not account for nature lost or degraded in the meantime. To deliver the scale of habitat creation needed, we must empower and properly fund our farmers, who are the true stewards of our land and are already grappling with climate impacts and volatile markets. Can the Minister say, in modelling for the farmland wildlife delivery plan, what assumptions are made of the proportion of ELM funds dedicated to Countryside Stewardship and landscape recovery?
The Government’s current approach to funding leaves too many farmers unsure whether they can commit to long-term schemes. We note the headline announcement of £500 million for landscape recovery projects over the coming decades, but this averages a relatively modest annual sum set against the scale of change being asked of land managers. There is genuine concern that without a clearer vision and greater certainty, this will not be enough to shift the dial for the many farmers being asked to do more.
That is why we made the case in our own manifesto for an extra £1 billion a year for the farming budget, focused on nature-friendly farming schemes that support both sustainable food security and nature recovery, particularly for smaller family farms and tenanted holdings. Fundamental reforms are needed, including establishing upland reward schemes to remunerate those who cultivate some of our toughest landscapes—that point will be no stranger to the Minister, given where she lives—for their public good outputs, from carbon and biodiversity to flood mitigation and access.
The revised EIP claims to be a flagship delivery plan, yet it often defers definitive actions through consultations and sometimes vague commitments. We must move beyond this cycle of promised and not delivered, particularly when communities are already living with polluted rivers, depleted soils and declining local wildlife. That is why we call for decisive action: urgent implementation of a truly comprehensive national food strategy; the creation of a new, strengthened water regulator to enforce the clean-up of our waterways; and a renewed commitment to fund and quantify the actions needed now to meet the 2030 deadlines. As others have mentioned, we were promised a White Paper by Ministers on water by the end of last year—with a clear understanding of the urgency, for instance, about chalk streams—when we discussed this on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. Where is that urgency now? We really need to see that White Paper.
If the EIP 2025 is genuinely intended to deliver the targets of the Environment Act it requires immediate, quantifiable and bold action.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, it is a privilege to participate in a debate led by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, who made a very good point about the condition of our SSSIs. The Government’s 2025 plan speaks with confidence about restoring nature and becoming a clean energy superpower. That confidence must be matched by clarity. Where the plan allows trade-offs, we need rules that protect the natural systems we depend on. The Environmental Improvement Plan 2025 sets out ambitions we can all support: cleaner water, richer soils, healthier wildlife and a transition to cleaner energy. Those ambitions are necessary, but a plan’s rhetoric is only as strong as the targets, timelines and delivery mechanisms that underpin it.
Today, I will focus on two areas where the gap between rhetoric and delivery is most worrying—our seas and our farms. On the marine side, the plan introduces recovery targets for marine protected areas, yet it also explicitly allows up to 5% of MPA features to be left in neither favourable nor recovering condition to “accommodate net-zero ambitions”. That is not a technical tweak; it institutionalises a trade-off.
Everyone knows that the Secretary of State for Energy, Mr Miliband, is obsessed with net zero, and his fanaticism will countenance any damage to our economy and cost to the public by driving up the cost of UK energy to be the highest in the world. Now he is damaging our seas as well. When we write a carve-out into a national plan, we change the default from recovery to compromise. Offshore wind and other infrastructure can contribute to our climate goals, but they must not become a standing excuse to delay or dilute recovery in protected areas. Any deviation from recovery must be time limited, independently scrutinised and accompanied by mandatory like-for-like enhancement measures that restore what has been lost. The real tragedy of this carve-out is that our seas will be damaged by wind turbines that will be switched off for about half the time. Billions will be paid to the operators not to produce electricity, as we read in the press yesterday.
We welcome ambition on this side, but ambition without detail is a promise unkept. Allowing a formal carve-out for marine protected areas to accommodate energy projects, delaying a marine litter strategy and failing to commit to PFAS consumer bans are not small omissions; they are structural weaknesses that will determine whether our seas recover or continue to decline.
As has already been said by noble Lords, marine litter is another glaring omission. It cannot be left to a general circular plan scheduled for next year. We need a dedicated marine litter strategy now, with measurable interim targets, funding for deposit return schemes, fishing gear management, improved port reception facilities and coastal clean-ups. These are practical measures that reduce harm to wildlife, protect coastal economies and cut the cost of clean-up for local communities. The marine recovery fund has currently framed this as becoming a mechanism that enables development rather than driving restoration. Compensation must be like-for-like by default, and there must be a separate ring-fenced enhancement fund to finance proactive habitat creation and ecosystem recovery at scale. Without that, we will see payments in place of genuine ecological outcomes.
On farming, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, said that there is no Minister in the Government who understands the countryside. I say to her that there is one—she is winding up this debate, and it is a pity that she is not the Secretary of State for Defra. The plan’s target to double the number of farms providing sufficient year-round resources for wildlife by 2030 is welcome in principle but underspecified in practice. Farmers need certainty. They need clear definitions of what “sufficient resources” means. They need published payment rates, long-term contracts and technical support. The sustainable farming incentive must be reformed and published with predictable payments so that farmers can plan investments without risking their livelihoods or domestic food production. Sequencing matters. Biosecurity targets and invasive species scanning must be timed so that there is adequate opportunity to respond before deadlines arrive. If we are serious about the rhetoric, we must strengthen the EIP now, remove the carve-outs, ban non-essential PFAS, fund enhancement—not just compensation—and give farmers and fishers the certainty and support they need to deliver. That is how we turn a plan into recovery.
To be concrete, I conclude by calling for six immediate actions. First, remove or tightly condition the 5% MPA carve-out. Any deviation from recovery must be demonstrably unavoidable, time limited and independently scrutinised, and require mandatory like-for-like enhancement. Secondly, ban PFAS in non-essential consumer products and publish a clear phase-out timetable for other uses, applying group-based controls to prevent substitution. Thirdly, please publish a dedicated marine litter strategy immediately, with measurable interim targets and funding for ports, coastal clean-ups and fishing gear management. Fourthly, redesign the marine recovery fund with two streams, mandatory like-for-like compensation and a separate enhancement fund for proactive restoration. Fifthly, accelerate SFI reform and publish payment rates and transition support so that farmers can plan, with explicit safeguards for food production and farm viability. Sixthly, strengthen fisheries management plans with binding spatial and gear measures, and fund a just transition package for fishers to adopt low-impact methods.
We can be a clean energy leader and a world leader in nature recovery, but only if we stop treating nature as negotiable. Strengthen the rules, fund the delivery and give those who steward our land and sea the certainty they need. Do that, and the rhetoric of the plan will become the recovery that our communities and our children expect.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, I am quite tight for time. I shall do my best to answer all the many questions, but if there is anything that I do not cover, I will make sure I write to noble Lords with responses. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, on securing this debate. I welcome the opportunity to respond and to discuss how the environmental improvement plan will deliver the targets of the Environment Act.
The EIP, as noble Lords are aware, sets out the Government’s commitment to the ambitious statutory Environment Act targets. It is our road map on how we are going to improve the natural environment and people’s enjoyment of it. It ensures that nature’s recovery is a key priority for this Government and is fundamental to our general approach, including growth, because we know that growth is not possible without a healthy and resilient natural environment.
Our EIP goes further than the previous one. It is a credible, clear plan with clear, prioritised actions to deliver the environmental outcomes of restoring nature, improving environmental quality, creating a circular economy, protecting environmental security and improving people’s access to nature. It sets out who is responsible for these actions across government and our wider society.
The EIP sets ambitious yet achievable interim targets. It is essential to have those as staging posts on our journey in order to deliver the targets that have been rightly described today as challenging. Each interim target will make an appropriate contribution to corresponding statutory targets over the next five years. We have increased the ambition of some of the interim targets since the Government’s last plan, including for air quality and to restore and create wildlife-rich habitats. We have also introduced new targets on farm wildlife and on invasive non-native species. We are maintaining our delivery trajectories for other targets and have adjusted others to ensure that they remain deliverable and credible.
On other targets, the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, asked about the MPAs and whether the 5% flex was watering down that target. The flex is introduced largely to account for adverse impacts of offshore wind developments that have been consented to because they pass the habitats regulations or MCZ derogation tests. We think it is the best option to set an interim target that contributes towards the statutory target while aligning it with the changing MPA network that supports the Government’s clean energy mission. I hope that explains why we have done that.
Of course, setting clear targets and goals is simply not enough; we need to know exactly how we are going to reach them. I hope noble Lords will be reassured to know that for the first time we have published delivery plans for those targets. They clearly set out how actions contribute, who will deliver them and how progress will be measured. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, asked which actions will make the largest contribution to halting the decline of biodiversity. The delivery plans will set that out on a strong evidence footing so that we know exactly what is happening.
Driving environmental change and understanding the impact of actions being taken will obviously be complex and take time, so the delivery plans are designed to remain live and can be refined over time in response to emerging evidence, to policy evaluation and to any feedback that we get from stakeholders carrying out the delivery. We believe that this transparent and collaborative approach to communicating and adapting our plans is a major step forward. It is also central to our monitoring and our reporting of progress, which, again, is essential to keeping any delivery on track.
The EIP sets out more than 90 commitments. Each is associated with a delivery metric, and we will report on changes to those metrics in our annual progress reports, along with the latest evidence and changes to trends in our environmental indicator framework. The framework, which is also published online, objectively measures how the environment is changing across the 10 EIP goals.
Together, such approaches better enable external appraisal and will ensure that we learn and adapt appropriately as we move towards the targets. I am already very grateful to stakeholders, including the OEP, whose scrutiny and recommendations are helping to shape this improved approach. We have a clear plan and process, but we also know the scale of the challenge and are trying to match this with the right actions to get where we need to go.
SFI was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, so I am sure he will be pleased to hear that, just this morning at the Oxford Farming Conference, the Secretary of State set out how we are reforming SFI to make it simpler and fairer and to enable as many farmers as possible to benefit and help nature thrive. As someone who has a smallholding, I was particularly pleased to see that this is also targeted now at smaller farmers. At that conference, the Secretary of State also made clear that protecting the environmental foundations of farming is not separate from productivity but an essential part of it. All this will help us to meet our EIP targets, including doubling the number of farms delivering for wildlife. This follows the most nature-friendly farming Budget we have seen, to give farmers the support they need to produce food sustainably while protecting soil, water and wildlife.
Last year we had the highest amount of tree planting in 20 years, as I am sure my noble friend will be pleased to hear—over 10 million trees—and we have started planting the first of the three new national forests. We recently implemented the Water (Special Measures) Act. I have been asked about the water White Paper, and I confirm that it will be published very soon; watch this space.
The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, asked about PFAS. The EIP includes a commitment to publish a PFAS plan in 2026, and that will set out how the Government are taking action to protect people and the environment from the particular harms and risks that this relates to. We are acting decisively to improve air quality. A circular economy is an important part of this. We are further reducing environmental harm by turning waste into opportunity and creating green jobs across the country—I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, is particularly interested in this. We are boosting opportunities and, as the Minister for access to nature, I am pleased that we have a chapter in the EIP on how we will do this. I was pleased that we launched the first of the nine new river walks on Boxing Day.
A number of noble Lords mentioned the importance of working together. It is important that we do this, as we will not make progress unless we have cross-government contributions in achieving these targets. That includes the land use framework, the farming road map and what we are doing across the department as well as across government. This is important. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, particularly talked about the importance of working with stakeholders and people who have to deliver. Only by government working hand in hand with communities, businesses, farmers, the public sector and the third sector can we achieve our target delivery.
The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, asked a number of questions, and I will try to fit those in. If there is anyone else, I will come back to them. He asked what aspects of the new plan give me confidence around SSSIs —in fact, there were a few questions around SSSIs. I have an SSSI on my land, so I completely understand the challenges of site management. Natural England has improved its understanding of SSSI condition and the pressures and actions needed to restore SSSIs. It is making progress: it has a more strategic focus than previously and, over the spending review, it is looking to improve the evidence from each site. It is looking at a strategic landscape scale, with a greater focus on what happens on the land outside the site boundary as well as just within it, and at those implications.
The noble Lord asked how many SSSIs are on agricultural land covered by agri-environment contracts. It is approximately 40% at the moment. Additionally, Natural England has developed a conservation enhancement scheme to fund actions on SSSI land that is not eligible for environmental stewardship schemes. We want to continue to build on that work.
On national landscapes, we know we need to go further and faster in protected landscapes to meet our national targets, and we will ensure that protected landscape bodies, landowners and land managers have the tools and resources to achieve that. We will continue to work closely.
The PMB was excellent and very much in line with government ambition. The principles of it—to drive and strengthen action towards meeting natural environment and climate targets and objectives from both local and other public authorities—are absolutely at the heart of what we will achieve. I hope we can continue to talk to the noble Lord and bring in his expertise around that.
I seem to have run out of time. I am really sorry; I had lots of lovely answers to all of the questions posed by noble Lords.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
Would it be possible for the Minister to tell us about peat?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I have just been told that I can carry on because I have another five minutes; my officials will tell me when I need to stop.
I turn to the gene editing of ecosystems. We are supportive of that innovation. We have agreed the parameters for the new SPS agreement with the EU. The EU has accepted that there are a number of areas where it will have to look at our laws. This is something that we are discussing with the EU.
I turn to peat. To confirm, we are committed to ending the sale of horticultural peat and peat-containing products by the end of this Parliament. That is part of our ambition for this Parliament. We are working very closely with the sector to look at how we can make that transition.
The noble Baroness knows that I am very sympathetic to SUDS. It is worth reminding the Committee that we made immediate changes to the National Planning Policy Framework to support the increased delivery of SUDS. Clearly, we need to continue to discuss that.
My noble friend Lady Young talked about the environmental principles and asked whether people, particularly officials, have training. The answer is yes. Our recent report on the implementation of the environmental principles, which was published in November, recognised that our tools are valuable and that we do provide training.
Is there anything else that I have forgotten? I thank noble Lords very much for their contributions to the debate and assure them that we are committed to delivering the environmental improvement plan and to meeting the environmental targets.
Israel: Trade
(2 days, 6 hours ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Austin of Dudley
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the contribution that trade with Israel makes to the United Kingdom economy.
Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I draw attention to my role as the UK’s trade envoy to Israel.
I start by welcoming the Minister and thank all noble Lords—especially the noble Baroness—who are here to discuss the contribution that trade with Israel makes to the UK, the businesses it supports, the jobs it creates and how many thousands of people are better off as a result of trade with our closest ally in the Middle East. The argument I want to make is that increasing trade with and attracting investment from Israel will help the Government achieve their most important objectives by improving growth and delivering their industrial strategy.
I pay tribute to the brilliant team at our embassy in Tel Aviv, led by His Majesty’s Ambassador Simon Walters CMG, the Trade Director Debbie Shapiro and all their colleagues, who work so hard to encourage British companies to export to Israel and Israelis to invest here in the UK. I am sure that the Minister will join me in thanking the officials in his department who promote trade with Israel and support my work in the trade envoy team.
Before the conflict, trade between Israel and the UK was at an all-time high—and our relationship stronger than ever before—in trade and investment, technology and innovation, defence and security, and health and education. Over the past five years, more than 300 Israeli companies have expanded into the UK, generating 4,000 jobs and almost £1 billion in investment. Israeli investment created 871 jobs and contributed £173 million to the UK economy in the last year alone, as trade increased again, despite the Gaza war and campaigns to boycott Israel.
Official figures from the Department for Business and Trade showed that total trade amounted to £6.2 billion in the year to June last year. This represented a 3.2%—or £218 million—increase driven by a surge of financial services exports to Israel. Given the overall balance of UK trade around the world, it is particularly important to note that more than half of the trade with Israel is in British exports, which accounted for much of that, increasing by 10.5%. We export clothes and cars, power generators and aircraft engines, medical equipment, scientific instruments and pharmaceutical products—and Scotch whisky exports are up 300%.
I am sure that the Minister will join me in welcoming that increase, and so will he set out the UK’s current trade policy with Israel and what more the Government are doing to encourage exports to and investment from Israel? Does he have any plans to visit Israel to see all this at first hand, to meet UK companies working there, to encourage exports and to encourage Israelis to invest here?
Israel supplies one in seven NHS prescriptions, which save the health service nearly £3 billion every year. It is a global leader in digital health, biotech and medical innovation, delivering cutting-edge breakthroughs in early cancer detection, gene editing, Alzheimer’s research and cardiovascular treatment. The UK-Israel Health-Tech Academy was launched in 2024 by the UK-Israel Tech Hub, which is based in our embassy in Tel Aviv, to bring Israeli health breakthroughs to benefit UK patients. Supported by the Dangoor Education foundation, the academy educates cutting-edge start-ups in Israel on the UK healthcare system and enables medical technology trials with NHS partners. The result of that is Israeli start-ups conducting research and spending R&D capital with the NHS to enable patients in the UK to benefit from ground-breaking Israeli healthcare developments and technologies.
Established by the British Council, our embassy and the Pears Foundation, BIRAX—the Britain Israel Research and Academic Exchange—is the flagship UK-Israel research partnership, which has invested £15 million in 32 collaborative projects to tackle huge challenges such as debilitating diseases, regenerative medicine and healthy ageing. Led by Ravit Capauner, it funds university partnerships to bring academic researchers in Israel and the UK together to strengthen innovation and scientific research. It uses cutting-edge technologies in AI, big data, life sciences and personalised medicine to tackle NHS priorities in dementia, multimorbidity, women’s health and mental health, to help people live longer, healthier and more independent lives. It contributes to economic growth in the UK by creating hundreds of jobs in scientific research and leveraging other funding to generate much greater economic benefits for the UK.
Israel is also a key defence and security partner. It is the third-largest supplier of arms to the UK, and Israeli military equipment has saved the lives of British forces in combat zones. Its technology provides crucial support for the Armed Forces, and Israeli intelligence has helped prevent terror attacks here in Britain.
It is obvious, in the face of Putin’s aggression, that we need to strengthen Britain’s air and cyber defences, and we are using Israel’s expertise in cyber security for that. So, I ask the Minister whether he will welcome Israeli defence investment in the UK, which has seen Israeli firms set up UK subsidiaries and establish joint ventures with UK defence companies, which provide good, highly skilled and well-paid jobs, as well as supporting our Armed Forces and the UK’s defences.
It is absolutely clear that the partnership between our two countries matters across so many sectors already, but there are huge opportunities in areas such as financial services, infrastructure, life sciences, AI and cyber security for the future.
The current trade agreement is 30 years old. It ensures tariff-free trade on 99% of goods but it predates even the invention of the internet, Israel’s emergence as a tech superpower, the growth of financial services here in the UK and the climate crisis. Given that services now count for 80% of both our economies’ activities, there is obviously great potential in digital trade, innovation, services, low-carbon and environmental technologies.
The UK’s new industrial strategy focuses on eight high-potential sectors, including clean energy, advanced manufacturing, defence, financial services, business, digital, technology and so on. These are all fields where Israeli innovation is recognised globally. This means that closer collaboration with Israel can help to meet our industrial strategy goals faster.
Can I draw to the Minister’s attention two initiatives launched by our embassy in Tel Aviv? First, Ambassador Walters and trade director Shapiro have launched ScaIL UK to accelerate the expansion of high-growth Israeli tech companies aligned with our industrial strategy into the United Kingdom.
Secondly, the work of the UK-Israel Tech Hub, which is led by Keren Shurkin, has brokered over 300 high-impact tech partnerships, which boost productivity and deliver sustainable economic growth. These partnerships have led to a growth of Israeli-founded unicorns in Britain and venture capital being invested in UK innovation, and they have improved the quality of life for stroke patients, reduced waste at our supermarkets and saved bank accounts millions in reducing fraud losses. Israel boasts the highest start-up density in the world, and the UK-Israel Tech Hub links this dynamism with our industrial strategy by engaging venture capital, entrepreneurs and accelerators that bring their skills, talent, capital and technology to the UK.
Israel is number three in the world for start-ups. Its economy is not just recovering from 7 October but rising stronger. London is the best city in Europe for start-ups, second only to New York globally. We have more tech unicorns than any city in Europe, so what greater partner could there be for the start-up nation than the UK?
In conclusion, the reason all this works is pretty straightforward: the longstanding partnership between two great countries. We are like-minded partners with shared values, free societies and open democracies. We are liberal countries which value the contribution of every citizen regardless of background or gender. We are two countries focused on trade and innovation, working together to create jobs, boost prosperity, improve defence and security, and tackle the world’s biggest challenges. This is the truth about our relationship with Israel. We should celebrate that success and do all we can to bring our two countries closer together.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Austin, on securing this debate and his excellent opening speech. I thank His Excellency Simon Walters, our man in Tel Aviv, and the Israeli embassy in London for its assistance in my comments.
As has been said, trade with Israel is strong, and the UK is the net beneficiary of that. Israel climbed to be in the top eight of European countries investing in FDI in the UK. Israel brings tested solutions in counterterrorism, emergency response, infrastructure protection and crisis management, and not just that but a huge social and political impact through trade. Trade with Israel supports thousands of UK jobs. Israel’s defence companies have UK subsidiaries, which manufacture here and provide income for hundreds of families.
Trade is such a huge topic that I will have to focus on a few areas. The first is defence. Nowhere has the UK benefited more from its relationship with Israel than in defence. Israel is the third-largest supplier of arms to the UK, and the contribution from Israel’s cyber companies has been enormous, which helps keep us all safe. The UK Government’s growth plans are all in areas where Israel can contribute and has globally recognised expertise. Of course, the third-largest concentration of AI start-ups in the world is in Israel.
In my opinion the UK is very unprepared for AI-driven drone warfare, but Israel has anticipated that future and we need to try to benefit from those skills. Unfortunately, banning arms sales to Israel has been extremely unhelpful at this time and now needs to be reversed, as does the ludicrous decision to ban Israeli defence officials from the Royal College of Defence Studies and then to ban Israel defence firms from a major London arms fair. The Royal College of Defence Studies has long accepted students from countries with dire human rights records, yet only Israel has been subject to blanket exclusion.
That takes me to my second theme: the hugely disappointing approach sometimes taken by UK Governments. As we know, the Labour Party talked out the BDS—boycott, divestment and sanctions—Bill, which was very important to UK-Israel relations. As I understand it—I am happy to be corrected—they have no intention to bring it back. Boycotts create a chilling effect: they deter investment, research and partnership far beyond their formal scope, and in fact, they nurture violence, extremism and antisemitism. The attempt to normalise the delegitimisation of Israel is pure antisemitism undertaken by bad actors with dangerous motives. It needs to be challenged rigorously at every opportunity.
Under this Government’s watch, unfortunately, Israeli factories in the UK have been invaded and huge damage has been done to equipment, as recently as last month, in Edinburgh. But, more importantly, these horrific and violent actions unsettle the UK staff employed at these crucial defence businesses, and they greatly discourage Israeli academics and professionals from coming here. I was in Israel last week with Conservative Friends of Israel, and people were all asking me, “What’s going on in the UK? Is it a safe place for me to go to?” That would have been unimaginable a few years ago.
The curtailment of the negotiations of a trade treaty in May 2025 was a disgrace. If the Minister cannot apologise for those decisions—because they happened well before his time in office—at the very least it would be good to hear from him when they will be reversed. Can he please tell us exactly what the trade policy is now in respect of Israel? Can he spell it out, please, as clearly as is possible? We want to hear from him, very loudly, that the UK is proud to be Israel’s supplier, customer, partner, ally and collaborator in many fields—including, for the purpose of this most welcome debate, trade.
Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)
My Lords, compared with some of the big debates facing us around phase 2 of the Middle East peace process, the urgent need to get reconstruction going in Gaza, and the Iranian people’s uprising against their theocracy, debates on trade can sometimes seem rather esoteric, although they are clearly important in terms of jobs and living standards. But I want to make very tangible—picking up some of the points of the noble Lord, Lord Austin—the importance of the bilateral relationship for health and life sciences.
The reason that is so tangible is that today, like every day of the year, millions of our fellow citizens—millions of NHS patients—will have taken a tablet supplied to them by an Israeli pharmaceutical company for a huge range of conditions, spanning multiple sclerosis, cancer, pain management and antibiotics. Millions of patients benefit and, frankly, the NHS saves billions of pounds as a consequence. One estimate put before the Commons science committee just before Christmas suggested that we gain about £2.4 billion of savings each year as a consequence particularly of that trade relationship we have, buying those medicines from a leading Israeli company, which turns out therefore to be a top-15 strategic supplier to the NHS.
There is another reason why it makes sense to have some geographical diversity in our medicine supply chain: it is no secret that at the time of the Covid pandemic, for example, we saw some questionable behaviour on the part of the European Commission seeking to restrict flows of vaccines and medicines. It is also no secret that the current US Administration has been putting significant pressure on the British Government to hike the drug prices that the NHS is paying. So having a range of other suppliers geographically around the world strengthens our resilience and our negotiating hand.
It is not just about medicines, of course, but also medtech, for the reasons we have heard. The Government’s 10-year health plan talks about the transition from analogue to digital. Frankly, the epicentre of where that innovation is fizzing away is not just in the US; it is also in a lot of the companies that the noble Lord, Lord Austin, referred to.
One point for the Minister would be that we had in 2023 the memorandum of understanding that set out the importance of these kinds of bilateral relationships in something called the 2030 road map. It would be very useful to hear where that has now got to in the context of the Government’s current trade policy with Israel. Again, if that could be spelled out and shared with us more clearly, it would also be of great interest to many of the British life sciences companies that supply their own medicines across the world, including to the Middle East and Israel. I am thinking of companies such as GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, for which this is hugely important. Of course, they are able to be successful because of the innovative science that happens not just in each of our countries but around the world. No country has a monopoly on science.
When the world’s most prominent scientific journal was publishing its year-end assessment of 10 of the breakthrough science discoveries in the last year, it referred to one of them at the Weizmann Institute. Unfortunately, the lab that had produced that discovery was then hit by an Iranian missile in the summer. But the conclusion that Nature magazine drew from those 10 discoveries, including that one of the Weizmann, is that they
“showcase the ongoing strength of science globally: its ability to transcend national borders … its power to save and improve lives … They also serve as a reminder of what is lost when governments … fail to nurture the international collaborative spirit that creates the breakthroughs that make the world a better place for all”.
Let us ourselves not make that mistake.
Lord Livingston of Parkhead (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Austin, for tabling this QSD and I welcome, if rather belatedly, the noble Lord, Lord Stockwood, as a Minister. It is excellent to have somebody with his extensive business knowledge in the position. I think I am right in saying that he has a good knowledge of Israel, from his time in a kibbutz as a student, so he will be able to contribute in many ways.
I speak as an ex-Minister for Trade and Investment but also as someone who has been a director of many companies that trade around the world. While many other noble Lords have spoken about the size of trade with Israel, I will talk a little about quality rather than just quantity. There is a great fit between the UK and Israel in many sectors: life sciences, fintech, defence—which has been mentioned—AI, cyber and technology more generally. In fact, when I was CEO of BT, we had one technology scanning team for Asia, one for Silicon Valley, one for Europe and one for Israel. That gives an idea of the scale of technological innovation coming out of Israel.
As a Trade Minister, I recall how many Israeli companies would seek to come to the UK as their first point of expansion out of Israel. They were setting up their European or global hubs in the UK; indeed, one of the largest sources of AIM-listed companies was Israel. Yet we have the BDS movement, which uniquely agitates against a democratic country that has so many shared interests with the UK. I would point out to these protestors that, if they are truly serious in their misguided views and want to boycott Israel, they are going to have to do something different from picketing Barclays, which does not have much of a relationship with Israel, or standing beside the kosher counters of Marks & Spencer supermarkets.
If they want to be serious, for a start they must stop using their iPhones, which contain a huge amount of Israeli products. They must turn off their computers, because one of Microsoft’s major research hubs is based in Israel, and not use AI: Nvidia recently described Israel as its second home, so they would have to stop using AI. They must also reject the range of medicines and cutting-edge treatments that Israeli health companies provide. When they come down for their weekly protests, please can they not use the mapping software provided by Waze, which is Israeli, or the buses, because the software that supports all our bus scheduling comes out of Israel as well. I would tell them to get lost, but they will probably manage that on their own, in the circumstances.
It is also worth reflecting on the relationship between Israel’s universities and businesses, which I think we can replicate in the UK; it is particularly strong. I recently met the rector of one of Israel’s leading universities, who is a renowned neurobiologist. She told me that she had been disinvited from a number of conferences, presumably to strike a blow against the supposed Israeli apartheid. She is an Arab Maronite Christian. This highlights the absurdity of the BDS movement.
We need to recognise the substantial benefit to the UK of Israeli trade, but we also need to stand against the malign forces we are seeing, promote the benefits to the UK of this trade and assure Israeli companies that this is a good place to invest in order to create UK jobs, as the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, just said. I would be interested to hear how the Minister and his Government will, going forward, say that the UK is a good and safe place for Israeli companies to invest.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Austin of Dudley, for securing this debate. I declare that I am not Jewish, but I am a member of the Conservative Friends of Israel.
In the year to the end of 2025, the UK and Israel traded roughly £6.2 billion in goods and services, with the UK reporting a trade surplus of £1 billion over that period. Services account for a large and growing share of that relationship, and thousands of British jobs depend on exports to Israel. As we have already heard, the UK-Israel economic relationship is concentrated in high-value sectors such as technology, cyber, life sciences, finance and services, which support British jobs and R&D partnerships. Then, of course, there is the other trade that is vital to our economy and security: intelligence sharing and co-operation on the military and defence. We co-operate with Israel, the only democratic country in the whole of the Middle East, on signals intelligence, counterterrorism, cyber security and aerial surveillance data.
All of that co-operation with a trusted partner helps our trade. I regret that it has been put at risk by the foolish suspension of further FTA discussions and some restrictions on the supply of defence goods. Those were, I think, token gestures to appease some Labour Back-Benchers in the Commons who are fearful of losing their seats to pro-Palestinian agitators, and they risk weakening the very economic and diplomatic ties that have worked so brilliantly up to now.
Our close working relationship with Israel has been made possible for more than three centuries because Jewish people have been integral to our national life, building businesses, schools, hospitals, cultural and scientific institutions, and charities. British Jews have served in our Armed Forces in large numbers: around 40,000 in the First World War and 60,000 in the Second World War. These figures reflect sacrifice and loyalty to this country. Jewish citizens have been prominent in science, law, medicine, the arts and public life, enriching our national life through peaceful and industrious behaviour. Just look around this Committee and the House and reflect on the dozens of Jewish Peers who have contributed across religion, politics, the media and public service. The Jewish community has not sought special privileges but has long sought to belong, to serve and to improve Britain through hard work and civic engagement.
The relevance to this debate of the huge contribution that British Jews have made to this country is that many of them still have links with and have relatives in Israel. Israeli Governments and businesses saw that the UK was a Jewish-friendly country with which they could do business. I worry that that is now under threat with the despicable rise of antisemitism against the very community of whom we should be most proud in terms of what it has done for the UK. I am appalled to see those vile people in our streets celebrating the death of 1,200 Jews in the massacre on 7 October and cheering the murders in Manchester and Bondi Beach, leading the chief constable of Greater Manchester to say:
“The intolerable has become normalised, and has almost become accepted as the way that things are”.
We must not permit the intolerable to become normal. To those demonstrators, I say this: you have no right to protest until those whom you champion do what hundreds of good Jews have done for this country over the centuries.
I am proud to support Israel and stand with Jewish people in the UK. The work of British Jews and Israel over the past 60 years has made this country better through peaceful civic contribution—not by demanding special rights or committing acts of terrorism. They all deserve our respect, our protection and our increasing trade with them.
Baroness Altmann (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Austin both on securing this debate and on his excellent introduction. I must thank from the bottom of my heart my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, for his remarks just now, which have almost brought me to tears. I declare my interest as a member of various APPGs on Britain and Israel and British Jews, and I associate myself fully with the remarks made by the noble Lords, Lord Leigh and Lord Livingston, on the BDS issue.
There are many important areas in which Israeli trade contributes significantly to the UK and helps improve our future economic growth. In my allotted time for today, I will focus on three vital issues: Israel’s contribution to our health, technological advances and security.
On health, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, explained, Israel supplies many medicines for the NHS and saves this country significant sums. There is a long history of co-operation between Israel and the UK on national and international health challenges. For example, the Rotherham, Doncaster and South Humberside NHS Trust is working with the Israeli firm Taliaz, with its AI technology supporting mental health patients; that is just one small example. Israel is a recognised global leader in digital health, biotech and medical innovations, as we have heard from other noble Lords. We have much to learn from the advances that Israel continues to make. I ask the Minister: how do the Government plan to expand scientific, medical and commercial co-operation with Israel to ensure that its breakthroughs directly support UK healthcare and bolster the NHS?
In science and technology, including environmental tech, Israeli innovation is world-renowned. Its advances can help the UK. As a global leader in fields ranging from sophisticated air traffic control systems to high-level security, it has developed improvements in sectors such as clean energy, the creative industries, life sciences, digital technology and services, which are core areas of the Government’s 10-year plan to boost the UK’s economy and productivity. Since these are such important areas of our plan for growth, does the Minister agree with me that closer co-operation with Israel can accelerate UK technological leadership, helping the Government meet their industrial strategy and growth goals even faster?
Lastly, on national security, including intelligence sharing and counterterrorism, Israel makes a positive contribution to the UK. Past Governments built a strong defence partnership and developed close co-operation on counterterrorism and cyber security, with Israeli experts playing an important role in defending our country against bad actors. In that connection, I repeat that it is an extreme disappointment that our Government have suspended some of our trade with Israel—and only Israel—on what I consider spurious grounds. There are hints of antisemitism. Given that both nations face increasingly complex security challenges, does the Minister agree that Israel-UK trade and co-operation can offer significant potential for boosting UK growth, innovation, intelligence collaboration and the joint development of advanced capabilities?
Lord Gascoigne (Con)
My Lords, it is a great honour to follow the noble Baroness. The problem with speaking so far down a list of many eminent speakers is that, I am afraid, a lot of the good stuff I was going to say has already been said—but I am still going to crack on.
This is the first time I have engaged with the Minister, so I congratulate him; I appreciate that he has been in his position for some time, but his is a fantastic role. I also congratulate my personal friend, the noble Lord, Lord Austin, not just on securing this debate but on all of the great work that he does as a trade envoy, in standing up for the Jewish community in this country and in tackling antisemitism.
As everyone has already said, it is important that we are honest about what is already true and the facts of the relationship with Israel, which are often, I am afraid, overlooked or selectively disregarded. The relationship, as has been said, is incredibly strong. Co-operation extends beyond trade into counterterrorism, research, technology and AI. It is one of the few major trading relationships in which we enjoy a trade surplus, and it is one that continues to grow. I am sure that the Minister will agree that it is one of the many virtues of Brexit that the ability to pursue new trade agreements means that we can also pursue our own national interests at the same time. As has been said, sadly, part of a new trade agreement under discussion has been halted.
Trade is not just commercial, though: it is the arena for engagement, co-operation and influence. If the Government felt unable to continue those talks during the war, what precisely is preventing their resumption now that the war is over? If the issue is aid, surely the Government can set out the threshold they expect to see. If it is about human rights, are we saying that we will suspend or abandon all trade discussions with every country with whose record we have concerns, or is this approach being applied only to Israel? If the concern is around a lack of progress on the peace plan, this week, even the Government briefly touched on the need for Hamas to disarm as part of that process, as my noble friend Lord Massey noted in the debate last night. The point is that it is widely recognised that the obstacles on the ground are not solely of Israel’s making.
So what is holding us back? Is our economy performing so well that we can afford to turn away deeper trade with a key partner? If the Government are so opposed to Israel’s actions, do they no longer consider Israel an ally? If we truly objected to Israeli policy, why did we not suspend all trade rather than only these new discussions? Like my noble friend Lord Blencathra, I am afraid to say that this makes me feel as though this was simply something for the Prime Minister to placate his Back-Benchers. If we were so opposed to what Israel was doing, why did we not apply the same approach to the United States, whose support for Israel was unequivocal?
If the Prime Minister objects to President Trump’s actions in Venezuela on the grounds of international law, will we now curtail economic ties with America on that basis? I hasten to add that I do not agree that we should—personally, I think that we should be congratulating it—but this is an inconsistency. I cannot help but feel that, at times, the Prime Minister appears to be intentionally trying to send different messages to different audiences, banning Israelis from the Royal College of Defence Studies and cancelling certain defence exports to appear tough to one group, as has been said, while maintaining the bulk of defence co-operation and the purchasing of arms—that has been mentioned—to reassure another. There was the announcement of the recognition of Palestine—but not immediately—and the halting of new trade talks while maintaining the wider relationship.
If we are serious about supporting a two-state solution, disengagement does not help. The Trump peace plan explicitly envisages Israeli investment in the reconstruction and economic stabilisation of Gaza. A prosperous and secure Israel is essential for Israelis, Palestinians, the region and our own national interest. Now that the war has ended, surely this is a moment to re-engage, rebuild momentum and strengthen that relationship, to the benefit of both nations; that is in the interests of the region, economic growth in this country and our shared security.
Lord Massey of Hampstead (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Austin, on initiating this interesting debate. I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Stockwood, to his new role as Minister.
As noble Lords have mentioned, Israel and the UK have a very strong trading relationship, with a high proportion of technology and high value-added goods. There is, of course, enormous potential for growth. Israel’s success story as a growth economy, despite living in an almost perpetual state of war, is truly remarkable—almost miraculous. If one looks at a comparison of its growth with that of countries such as the UK, Germany or France, one sees that Israel has grown its key wealth metric, GDP per capita, from $26,000 in 2005 to more than $60,000 today—more than doubling in two decades. By contrast, the UK and other European countries have increased their GDP per capita in that timeframe by about 25%. So Israel started 50% behind us 20 years ago and has now outstripped the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain on a per capita basis—a remarkable achievement.
How has it done this? There may be some lessons to be learned for us. Entrepreneurship and technological innovation have been the main drivers of its outperformance. Its weighting of its tech sector, in terms of percentage of workforce and percentage of GDP, is double ours, so it brings very complementary skill sets to our own economy.
Israel is an ideal trading partner for the UK, bringing expertise in technologies, as many noble Lords have discussed today, such as cyber, AI, clean energy, biotech, defence equipment and electronics. Those are areas that we need in order to grow, and we have the additional benefit of running a £1 billion surplus with it as it buy our business in financial services, cars and pharmaceuticals. That is why Israel was one of the first countries targeted for an FTA post Brexit. The last Government began to update the trade deal in 2022 in order to support cross-border services, both professional and digital, but of course in May this year, as has been mentioned, the Government decided to freeze negotiations on the FTA that would have significantly enhanced the economies of both nations. They did so because this Government do not like the way that Israel has prosecuted the war in Gaza, despite the fact that its enemy is an Islamic terror group hell-bent on the destruction of Israel and the Jews.
Thus far, the £6 billion of trade carries on because business needs it to, not because of any actions by the UK Government, but growth is on hold—another decision, if I may say so, where this Government have placed politics ahead of their much-vaunted objective of generating economic growth. In the meantime, Israel has entered into serious FTA discussions with a much larger and faster-growing trading nation: India, no less—and we wonder why the UK is falling behind.
We are placing a valuable long-term relationship at risk, as the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, suggested. I urge the Government to reconsider the decision of last May at the earliest opportunity, now that a ceasefire has been reached and a peace plan signed. The Government have stated that it would take “a sustained shift” in the Israeli position for the Government to resume negotiations. I invite the Minister to comment on his understanding of what would constitute such a shift and whether he would support the further expansion of our trading relationship with Israel.
Lord Bew (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Austin, for securing this debate. I express my agreement with the themes of his speech and those of many other speakers this afternoon. I welcome the Minister to his new position.
I declare the interest that I was for more than 10 years the chairman of the Anglo-Israel Association. En passant, in those 10 years I would frequently, as a strong supporter of and much engaged in the Good Friday agreement, argue with Israeli audiences and say, “You ought to be careful. Let’s not assume that Hamas are as fundamentalist as they appear to be. After all, it turned out the IRA weren’t”. After 7 October, that argument inevitably falls on stony ground. I have made that argument for 10 years but it can no longer be sustained. That is the tragedy of the position we are now in: Israel has no alternative but to fight a many-sided war in which it cannot afford to end up appearing as a weak horse, to use Osama bin Laden’s dictum. I am afraid I do not think our Government are fully facing up to that brutal and unfortunate reality.
When I first came to this House in the summer of 2007, the boycott movement was just about getting going and there was a debate covering many of the same themes that we have covered today. I looked at it again in preparation for this debate, and the one thing I would say is that those who spoke in favour of Israel, including the importance of scientific co-operation, the medical achievements of Israel and so on—there were many distinguished academics who spoke—actually understated their case. As I look back on it now, the case is much stronger. The fact is that Israel is now a world leader in medical and paramedical research, and it is tremendously important to acknowledge that. Many speeches have made all the points. It is not just a question, as the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, says, of the thousands of people in England who owe their jobs to Israeli investment; there are quite lot of people walking around now who owe their lives to Israeli achievement in the medical and scientific spheres. As I say, those who defended Israel 18 or 19 years ago in this House understated the case that we made for the importance of collaboration with Israel in medical and scientific matters.
The noble Lord, Lord Austin, referred to the great work in this area of our ambassador in Israel, Simon Walters. I agree, and I am rather proud that Simon Walters comes from exactly the same part of the world that I do. I take a certain chauvinistic pride in that.
I have one final point. The Royal College of Defence Studies was raised. For many years I lectured there, and I was happy to do so. As has been rightly said, many of the soldiers I spoke to did not come from the most liberal, democratic countries in the world, but I still did it and I still think it was the right thing to do. I have had to stop now as a consequence of that decision, which is just astounding and very unfortunate. It is a difficult matter for the Minister to comment on, but I hope he realises that many of us are very unhappy with that particular decision.
The Earl of Courtown (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Austin, for introducing this really interesting debate. He ranged into a whole lot of different areas and pinpointed some of the great pieces of trade between our two countries.
His Majesty’s loyal Opposition are clear that trade with Israel is a positive thing, as we have all stated, and that we should be consolidating ties with our closest ally in the region and looking to expand them into the future. We should not, as the Government are intent on doing, be closing channels and limiting agreements based on moral posturing rather than the empirical reality.
The last Government understood this. That is why we signed a trade continuity agreement with Israel that commenced upon our exiting of the European Union. We knew that close links contribute to our countries’ prosperity, which is why we relaunched negotiations for a new deal in 2022. As a result, Israel stands as a growing contributor to our economy. In the four quarters leading up to Q2 2025, total trade between the two countries, as mentioned by noble Lords, amounted to £6.2 billion, £3.6 billion of which came from Israel buying British goods and services—up more than 10% on the year.
Israel is a vital trade partner to the United Kingdom. The former Trade Minister in the other place, Douglas Alexander, noted that one in eight of the prescribed drugs available through the NHS is provided by an Israeli company—it was really interesting to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham, a bit more detail on the different drugs being imported to this country. Yet that is despite rather than because of the Government’s best efforts. They have cut trade, amended policy to specifically exclude Israel from arms programmes, and have most recently suspended the free trade agreement negotiations that the Conservatives started.
What is particularly damaging is that these suspended negotiations had the aim of expanding trade to financial services and digital trade—our biggest sectors. Services comprise about 80% of Israel and the United Kingdom’s economies. Telecommunications and IT services trade with Israel surged by over 40% last year, and yet services make up just over a third of the total trade between our two countries. Renewed trade negotiations and a renewed trade deal would galvanise the service sectors of both economies. They would drive competition, promote innovation and stimulate growth. The Government are missing the opportunity, through their adherence to a vindictive and, I am afraid, misguided policy. I hope the Minister will reconsider the position his Government currently hold and I look forward to hearing his response.
The Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade and HM Treasury (Lord Stockwood) (Lab)
My Lords, I am pleased to respond to this Question for Short Debate. I start by saying that I have visited Israel on many occasions over the years, both for personal and business reasons. Some visits started many years ago, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Livingston. I still have a number of friends who live in the country, and in particular, as someone who has spent decades as an entrepreneur, I am a huge advocate and admirer of its tech sector, which many noble Lords mentioned in the debate.
Israel is without doubt a vibrant, dynamic democracy and a fast-growing economy. While this Government have consistently made our concerns with the conduct of the Israeli Government known, Israel remains a trading partner that plays a significant role in the UK’s economy, with business and personal ties that we continue to value greatly. The UK is committed to our existing trading relationship, and we retain the services of the noble Lord, Lord Austin, our trade envoy, to maintain our relationships with Israeli businesses and attract inward investment in key sectors of the industrial strategy. I express my personal thanks to him for bringing this debate to the Committee today and echo his comments about the British Embassy in Tel Aviv and His Majesty’s Ambassador Simon Walters, who provided me with some helpful advice in our meeting in December.
Israel’s innovative, high-tech economy is well aligned with our own, providing an avenue for critical imports in key sectors mentioned, such as healthcare, medicines for respiratory care, neurology, oncology and pain management to support the treatment of chronic and high-burden diseases. Our economies are highly complementary, with clear parallels in services, technology and advanced manufacturing sectors. We have seen Israeli firms expand in the UK across strategic sectors such as cyber security, climate and energy, fintech and the automotive sector. These all fit neatly into our industrial strategy, as mentioned, and our trade strategy, and as such support our economic growth as a nation. Trade with Israel supports thousands of jobs across the UK. This is especially true across the north and the Midlands, which benefit from Israeli investment, and firms in the advanced manufacturing sectors.
Reflecting our shared heritage as tech-savvy and innovative entrepreneurs, more Israeli tech companies operate in the UK than anywhere else in Europe, as was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Austin. Co-operation between our nations is extensive, particularly in the sphere of scientific research and development. British and Israeli scientists collaborate on research and development projects, resulting in new products, industrial processes and services. This has led, for example, to the Leeds-Israel Innovation Healthtech Gateway, a collaborative initiative designed to strengthen ties between the UK and Israel in the health sector.
We continue to build on these relationships, including, as mentioned by the noble Lord, through the recently launched ScaIL UK initiative, a first of its kind programme led by DBT and the British Embassy in Tel Aviv. It is designed to help scale-ups establish a strong UK presence by unlocking opportunities in the aforementioned eight priority sectors of the UK industrial strategy, from advanced manufacturing and clean energy to digital technology and life sciences. As a result, these selected high-growth companies will gain practical insights, strategic guidance and direct connections to drive physical expansion, job creation and impactful commercial activity in the whole UK market.
All this is supported under our current trade agreement with Israel. The UK-Israel Trade and Partnership Agreement rolled over, post Brexit, from the 1995 EU-Israel Association Agreement. Accordingly, in line with our European friends and partners, the UK-Israel TPA does not grant preferences to goods from illegal Israeli settlements. Furthermore, we neither support nor condone commercial or financial activity undertaken by British businesses with entities in these illegal settlements. Government guidance is absolutely clear that trading with these settlements brings significant risk and that businesses should seek legal advice before undertaking such activity.
It remains this Government’s firm belief, as set out in the trade strategy last year, that more trade with dynamic and fast-growing partners will generate economic growth in the UK, supporting British jobs and providing the prosperity we need and everything that is foundational to this Government’s growth mission. However, we have also been clear that an enhanced trading relationship with Israel cannot come at any cost. That is why, as the Committee will be aware, we took the decision to pause negotiations on an enhanced trade free trade agreement in May this year in response to the Israeli Government’s rhetoric and actions in Gaza and the West Bank. Since that announcement, we have been, and continue to be, clear that we would need to see sustained change in the Israeli Government’s position before we could resume trade negotiations—and to answer the question from the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, that extends to the RCDS courses.
However, we welcome the moment of significantly profound relief and hope that the ceasefire agreed early this year, after two years of devastating suffering, has brought to all. This Government will continue to do all we can to support an enduring ceasefire, and the UK will continue to play our part in supporting not just the implementation of phase 1 of the peace initiative but the crucial work going forward now in phase 2. In line with this, we will continue to monitor the situation in Israel and Palestine and work to support long-term peace and stability in the region. The UK clearly believes that a two-state solution is the only path to justice for Palestinians and enduring security for Israelis. A two-state solution, with a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state, is the only path to lasting peace for the Israeli and Palestinian peoples.
Before I conclude, I would like to take the opportunity to address some of the outstanding topics raised by noble Lords during the debate that I have not yet referred to. Several noble Lords raised the issue of antisemitism. Let me be really clear on this: the UK Government are absolutely committed to combating antisemitism in the UK and globally. We will not tolerate antisemitism on our streets.
On the issue of BDS, I say to the many noble Lords who raised it today that the UK Government are committed to promoting our trade and business ties with Israel and strongly oppose boycotts.
We will continue to monitor the situation in Israel and Palestine and work to support long-term peace and stability in the region. If it remains the case, in the long term, the UK and Israeli economies are strongly compatible, with plenty of significant opportunities for our businesses. To that end, we will continue to support and encourage the business-to-business and people-to-people connections that underpin any successful trading relationship and maintain our frank and open dialogue with the Israeli Government, which is important between trading partners.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
Can the Minister say exactly what he wants to see, further than a ceasefire, to restart the trade talks?
Lord Stockwood (Lab)
We are waiting to see phase 2 of the ceasefire put in place. At that point, the dialogue can continue.
Vaccine Health Technology Assessment
(2 days, 6 hours ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick
To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to include wider societal and economic benefits within the vaccine health technology assessment, rather than limiting evaluation solely to clinical outcomes.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)
My Lords, I was delighted to secure this debate as this is a subject of significant importance and one in which I have a close interest. Health and economic growth are rightly identified by the Government as two of their central priorities and they sit at the core of the NHS 10-year plan. Vaccines lie at the intersection of these ambitions, yet the way we currently assess their value does not reflect the full contribution they can make to either. Vaccines are among the most effective public health interventions ever developed. For more than two centuries, they have saved lives, reduced pressure on health services and enabled societies and economies to function. Yet, despite this well-established record, the health technology assessment of vaccines in England remains too narrow.
At present, vaccine assessment focuses predominantly on direct clinical outcomes and immediate health system costs. While these are clearly important, they do not capture the wider societal and economic benefits that vaccines deliver, benefits that are directly relevant to both national growth and the long-term sustainability of the NHS. Vaccines keep people in work and children in school, and they enable carers to care. They reduce absenteeism, protect productivity and help prevent avoidable demand on already-stretched NHS services. In doing so, they support economic growth and help deliver the Government’s ambition of a healthier, more productive population, as set out in the NHS 10-year health plan. This matters because vaccines are fundamentally different from many other health technologies. They prevent disease before it occurs, reduce transmission and generate benefits that extend well beyond individual patients. Assessing them through a narrow clinical lens risks undervaluing prevention and slowing access to innovations that could deliver long-term health and economic gains.
Recent evidence from the Office of Health Economics provides compelling data in this regard. Its latest report provides estimates of the annual burden associated with respiratory illnesses for four selected vaccination programmes from the NHS routine schedule, as well as the projected costs and savings associated with those vaccines. Despite the delivery of national vaccination programmes for these four disease areas, a significant burden of disease remains. The report shows the costs to the NHS and quantifies the broader socioeconomic impact of vaccines, specifically the impact that they can have on reducing the UK welfare budget and workplace absenteeism and increasing UK productivity—helping to support the Government’s priorities on health and growth.
Key findings include the fact that the cost to the NHS of treating the unprotected population for these four respiratory illnesses alone is £3.9 billion. The cost to the wider economy is £3.6 billion, making a total of £7.4 billion a year. At the same time, the UK spends only 1.07% of health expenditure and 0.1% of GDP to cover immunisation programmes in the national schedule. A 10% reduction in the current burden, through higher coverage with the same vaccine, a future vaccine with higher efficacy or improved effectiveness at the same coverage levels, or a combination of the two, could deliver significant benefits—£384 million in annual NHS savings and £356 million in lower productivity costs. These findings are undoubtedly compelling and reinforce the point that vaccines should be viewed not as a short-term cost but as a strategic investment with benefits that extend well beyond the health system.
The experience of the Covid-19 pandemic made this abundantly clear. Vaccines were not only a health intervention; they were essential to economic recovery, educational continuity and social stability. Yet our routine assessment frameworks have not fully embedded this lesson.
I say gently to my noble friend the Minister that if the Government are serious about delivering their growth agenda and the ambitions of the NHS 10-year health plan, prevention and vaccines in particular must be valued accordingly. That requires assessment frameworks that recognise long-term, cross-government benefits, not just short-term clinical outcomes. I thank the Minister for the recent response she gave to my Parliamentary Question on this issue.
I welcome the recent positive decision by NICE to revise its cost-effectiveness thresholds. This is an important and constructive step. However, with these revised thresholds, the current framework does not systematically include broader socioeconomic benefits. I therefore ask the Minister whether these changes will feed through to JCVI evaluations of vaccines and immunisation programmes.
Crucially, while changes to thresholds may improve flexibility at the margins, they do not address the more fundamental issue that vaccines are still assessed using methodologies that fail to capture their full, long-term societal and economic value. I therefore urge the Government to consider how vaccine health technology assessment can evolve, including clearer guidance on incorporating societal and economic impacts, improved alignments between NICE, JCVI and the NHS, and an explicit recognition that prevention requires a different evaluative approach from treatment.
In closing, I ask my noble friend the Minister whether His Majesty’s Government will commit to establishing an independent committee to evaluate this existing vaccine health technology assessment process. Such a review could assess whether current approaches are fit for purpose, consider international best practice and make recommendations on how wider societal and economic benefits can be appropriately and consistently incorporated.
This is not about lowering evidential standards; it is about measuring the right outcomes over the right time horizon in support of the Government’s priorities on health, growth and NHS sustainability. If we continue to undervalue vaccines, we risk missing one of the most effective tools available to improve population health, reduce pressure on the NHS and support long-term economic prosperity.
I look forward to the Minister’s response on how the Government intend to take this forward and the contributions of other noble Lords on this very important issue.
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, has just given an utterly compelling speech on the subject of the debate today. I do not want to repeat the points she has made; they are completely convincing. Instead, I want to build on her arguments from my experience as a Health Minister by addressing the question of why, despite broad rhetorical agreement from all corners of this Parliament, we are still struggling to implement sensible measures on our assessment frameworks, and to suggest a couple of measures, some of which the noble Baroness has already alluded to, for how we can move forward constructively. In this, I declare an interest as a trustee of the Royal Society for Public Health.
No one thinks that vaccines are a complete panacea for all the health problems we have in this country. But, although we have multifactorial issues around social care, workforce, primary care access and all kinds of problems, vaccine prevention is a very significant, very important and easily modifiable contributor to our nation’s health. It is one of the few levers we have to improve the human capital of this country, and we do well in this country with the vaccines we have—but my lord, we could do a lot better. We should be leaning in, especially since new vaccines, including cell therapies and gene therapies, are on the horizon for cancer, heart disease and even depression. If we take the limited laid-back approach of today, we simply will not take advantage of the technologies of tomorrow.
UKHSA data shows that vaccine-preventable infectious disease hospitalisations cost the NHS between £970 million and £1.5 billion annually in avoidable emergency admissions. In other words, that is in-year healthcare costs for our system and our taxpayers. I appreciate that these are not totally fungible savings that automatically release money for the rest of the system, but they represent important opportunities to reduce preventable suffering and free up capacity, so that it can be turned to other urgent needs. They should therefore be valued highly.
If the case for greater use of the vaccines we have is so obvious, why have we not changed? I want to engage very seriously with the legitimate concerns raised by NICE, JCVI and the DHSC. First, there is the consistency argument. DHSC’s 2018 CEMIPP consultation stated that,
“if changes to thresholds and time horizons are considered for vaccines, they should also be considered more broadly”.
That is absolutely right. The implication is that we cannot treat vaccines differently, and I agree with that strongly. We need to completely change our approach from top to bottom, across all medicines. The solution is not to keep undervaluing vaccines but to update methods for all preventive interventions. After all, Germany operates modified frameworks for preventive technologies and the WHO explicitly recommends this, so why not Britain? The DHSC’s attitude is: “Because we assess everything badly, we must continue to assess vaccines badly too”. Let us be more ambitious, embrace the opportunity and make sure that we are allocating resources thoughtfully for maximum impact across the piece.
Secondly, there is the NHS perspective argument. NICE’s 2013 methods guide required assessment
“from the perspective of the NHS and personal social services”
because considering broader benefits would favour technologies that are less efficient at improving health when non-health benefits are higher. You bet they would—that is the entire idea. It is the voters’ priority and the taxpayers’ priority. It is this Parliament’s stated mandate. It is also the Treasury’s concern, so let us do it. I fear that, in this instance, NICE is not constrained by methodology; it is just out of date and failing to remember who pays the bills. We will lose the voters’ confidence with this approach.
Thirdly, there is the methodological uncertainty argument. The Office for Health Economics noted in 2021:
“Recognising the broader value of vaccines … requires … advancements in data and methodological capabilities”
to avoid double counting. As the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, alluded to, we should absolutely be clear about the limitations of evidence for long-term population health investments. Some of the productivity and long-term effects I have described in this speech come from economic models, not from randomised trials. That is inevitable but, even taking this into account, I fear that we are completely off the pace here. WHO published comprehensive guidance in 2019, and I can point noble Lords to countless reliable models that demonstrate the value of vaccines. In this case, the UK is not constrained by some daunting methodological frontier; we are just too easily overwhelmed by distracting clinical standards and behind the methodological curve.
Fourthly and lastly, there is the equity argument. NICE and DHSC raised concerns that including productivity could bias allocation towards working-age populations and against older people. NICE’s concern about bias towards working-age populations reveals the problem: the organisation views human capital preservation as a bias rather than an objective. Every pound we invest in keeping a 45 year-old healthy returns a huge multiple that can fund care for a 75 year-old. These are not competing priorities; they are complementary. We must stop apologising for the fact that preventing a death at 55 delivers massively more economic value than preventing one at 85. That is not discrimination; it is demography and economics.
Pressure is mounting. The British Social Attitudes survey shows widespread consensus that the NHS must transform from a national sickness service to one that supports people to live healthy lives. Voters, taxpayers and patients are expecting better. In other words, this debate is a metaphor for a broader failure. Our healthcare system focuses on system maintenance rather than on capital preservation.
So I ask for four concrete commitments from the Minister: first, to commission NICE to develop a broader value assessment for vaccines and preventative interventions by April 2026, and in this I echo the suggestion of the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie; secondly, to expand respiratory vaccination to all ages over 50, phased over three years, from April 2026, including flu, pneumococcal and shingles—I declare an interest here: I recently paid for my shingles vaccine; thirdly, to launch targeted MMR catch-up campaigns in London and the West Midlands, where we are massively behind the pace; and, fourthly, to mandate UKHSA to publish annual human capital impact assessments for all major vaccination programmes.
Our £220 billion healthcare system does not need more money for this. We need to shift spending from wasteful, late-stage and low-value crisis management into early-stage, high-value prevention. This requires some services to shrink—specifically, expensive emergency capacity that we have built to cope with preventable disease should instead focus on vaccines—and requires an investment that yields massive economic, societal and human capital benefits. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Baroness Goudie (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Ritchie for arranging for us to have this debate today. It could not be at a more important time for us.
Vaccines are one of the clearest examples that we have of prevention working well. They stop illness before it starts, they reduce pressure on the National Health Service, and they protect the most vulnerable in our society, yet, when we assess their value, we tend to look at them through a very narrow lens. At present, vaccine health technology assessments focus primarily on clinical outcomes and direct health system costs. That matters, of course, but it is not the whole story. When we ignore the wider societal and economic effects of vaccination, we risk undervaluing one of the most effective public health tools we have. This matters particularly for women, children and carers.
I shall start with children. When children are vaccinated, they are less likely to fall ill, less likely to miss school and more likely to stay engaged in learning. School absence is not a trivial issue. We know from the Government and from OECD analysis that sustained absence affects educational attainment and long-term life chances. When illnesses disrupt schooling, that does not affect the child’s health in the short term but it can shape their future for the long term, and that affects the country as a whole, yet the benefits of vaccination in reducing school absence and protecting learning are rarely counted in formal assessments. These costs do not disappear; they simply fall elsewhere, on families, on schools and ultimately on society. Every child’s health should matter.
I turn to carers. When a child is ill, or when an older or disabled family member becomes unwell, someone steps in to care. In the UK, that someone is most often a woman—mothers, grandmothers, daughters, sisters. They take time off work and reduce their hours. Sometimes they have to leave the workforce altogether. That does not make a family happy, it does not help GDP and it does not really help the family. The Library briefing makes it clear that societal perspective on health technology assessment can include informal care and productivity effects. That is not radical—it is already recognised in economic evaluation guidance—but in practice these impacts are often excluded or treated as secondary.
If we do not account for the burden placed on carers, we are in effect saying that their time, labour and lost income do not count. This is not gender neutral; it entrenches inequality by hiding costs that fall disproportionately on women and their pensions. Vaccination reduces that burden. It helps families to function and prevents crises in households that are already under strain. Those are real benefits, even if they do not show up immediately in the national health balance sheet.
There is also an important equality dimension. We know that vaccination uptake is not equal across communities; in some areas and groups in England, childhood vaccination rates have fallen and inequalities have widened. When preventable illness occurs, the social and economic consequences are felt most sharply in the communities that already face disadvantage. We must work hard to encourage families in those communities that vaccinations are safe overall and that it is the right thing to do. At the same time, we must not be too pushy; we have to work out the right way to encourage this across friends and across communities, as we did during the Covid situation. We worked very hard on that in this House. One of the leaders, who was a Muslim, very much helped us to do that and we need to look at that kind of work again.
This is not a fringe argument. The World Health Organization defines health technology assessment as
“covering both … direct and indirect consequences”
of health interventions. Academic work has repeatedly shown that vaccinations generate broader societal value, including educational benefits, productivity gains and protection against inequality. NICE already allows for analysis beyond the standard reference case when appropriate. The tools exist; what is missing is consistency and clarity about how and when wider societal benefits should be included for vaccines.
I want to acknowledge that there are challenges here. Measuring wider impacts is complex. There are legitimate concerns about double-counting and about privileging economic productivity over other values, but complexity is not a reason to ignore large and predictable effects; it is a reason to be transparent, to publish assumptions and to use sensitivity in all analysis. It is precisely because of those concerns that we must ensure equality and caregiver impacts are explicitly considered, not sidelined. If we count only what happens inside the clinic, we miss what happens in homes, in schools and in carers’ lives. Vaccines do not just prevent disease, they prevent disruption, inequality and unnecessary strains on families and workplaces. If we are serious about prevention, fairness and long-term guidance, our assessment frameworks need to reflect the world as it actually is.
Lord Rennard (LD)
My Lords, some weeks ago, the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, tabled a Written Question on this subject. With great respect to the Minister, her response was not a strong one: it merely suggested the possibility of considerations such as productivity costs being highlighted by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, so we are all grateful to the noble Baroness for securing this debate and enabling us to take up the issue further.
I believe that considerations such as impact on productivity and the wider economy should always be included at the heart of decision-making concerning the provision of medicines and vaccines, but there is a general problem in public policy-making, with too much short-termism and insufficient weight being applied to factors beyond simple clinical outcomes. I often argue in the House that productivity, which was discussed in the Chamber yesterday, as well as wider socio-economic considerations, should be applied more generally to decisions about procurement in the healthcare sector. We need to consider these issues in relation to the provision of assistive technology supporting people with disabilities and we need to apply them to the provision of medical equipment, such as continuous glucose monitors and insulin pumps for people with diabetes.
In many public policy areas—not just healthcare—we need real, long-term cultural change. We need much less short-termism and much less policy development based on silos that exclude the consideration of wider relevant issues. Long-term benefit analysis concerning vaccinations must cover not just costs to the NHS against improving life expectancy but the benefits of a healthier workforce, of more people paying into HMRC and of fewer people with illnesses and disabilities being more dependent on the DWP. We should also look much more at the considerable potential benefits of greater emotional well-being to both people and society as a whole.
However, first, we must think ourselves lucky to live in the United Kingdom and not in the United States, where a dangerous, ignorant and prejudiced man was appointed by President Trump to undermine sensible public health policies with his anti-vax agenda. Millions of people worldwide are at risk because of his prejudices, which contradict the scientific evidence. I hope that the Minister will assure us that the Government are doing everything they can to prevent right-wing nutters in this country—many of whom are influenced by the far right in America—spreading dangerous disinformation here about the safety and necessity of vaccination programmes. Everyone should know that vaccinations prevent millions of deaths every year from diseases such as measles, rubella, polio, flu and Covid-19. We need to educate people from an early age against the prejudice of ideologies that are hostile to vaccinations.
We also need to look carefully at the current evaluation process for new medicines and vaccines, led by NICE and the JCVI, which is built on something that is too narrow and is termed the “health sector perspective”. This approach is about managing the immediate budgets of the NHS, but it is not about the budgets of the NHS in decades to come. This approach does not look at the economic consequences of inaction. Recent research from the Office of Health Economics suggests that respiratory infections alone cost UK businesses an estimated £44 billion annually in lost productivity. This is a drain on our national prosperity; productivity should be a key factor in considering the evaluation and rolling out of vaccines.
Last year, I got my flu jab. As a person with diabetes, I also got my Covid-19 jab on the NHS. However, this year, I was told that I no longer qualified for the Covid-19 jab. I had to pay £90 to have it privately, but not everyone can do that. Failing to vaccinate as widely as we should for flu and Covid-19 costs money in many ways. I understand that the prevalence of flu this year has been very damaging to the public sector and that many people will be badly affected by this. We also need to consider the impact of vaccination programmes on educational attainment. For childhood vaccines, the current models of evaluation often miss the long-term benefits of improved school attendance and cognitive performance, which eventually translate into higher lifetime productivity.
We need to look more at the benefits of vaccines that can make other life-saving treatments, such as chemotherapy for the immunocompromised, safer and more effective. We need to be more aware of antimicrobial resistance, or AMR. Vaccines are front-line defences in this battle, reducing the need for antibiotics and thus slowing the development of resistant strains. Although the JCVI acknowledges this, it does not yet consistently capture the value in its cost-effectiveness models.
The Government’s 10-year health plan and Life Sciences Sector Plan set an ambitious target: for the UK to be one of the top three fastest places in Europe for patient access to medicines by 2030. I know that there will always be pressure within government to prioritise measures that show benefit by the time of the next election. There is always intense pressure from the Treasury to consider the implications for immediate budgets and, as we know, whichever party wins the election, the Treasury stays in power. I believe that, to establish better practice, we should look more to nations such as Sweden, which already incorporates a broader range of studied impacts, including productivity losses for both patients and carers, in its assessments. I hope that the Minister can respond positively.
Lord Kamall (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, for securing this timely and important debate and for the eloquent way in which she laid out her argument. We saw the value of vaccines during the Covid-19 pandemic. Millions of people rolled up their sleeves, with the impact not just on patients and hospitals but on the wider economy. I thank my noble friend Lord Bethell, who was a Minister during that time, given some of the challenges Ministers faced in making sure that we found the vaccine solution and then were able to roll it out. That rollout was a turning point that allowed restrictions to be lifted and our country to try to get back to normal, but we know that we are still feeling the effects in some places, and some people are still feeling them.
When respiratory illnesses such as flu and Covid strike, people are forced to stay off work and children miss school. I thoroughly recommend the excellent briefing by the House of Lords Library; in fact, I may well use it in my teaching. At this point, I probably should declare my interest. I am a professor of politics and international relations at St Mary’s University in Twickenham, and I will be teaching an MBA module on healthcare policy and strategy this semester. The excellent Library briefing quotes the Office of Health Economics, which estimates that such absences cost employers around £850 per employee annually. As the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said, that amounts to about £44 billion across the UK.
The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health suggests that reducing vaccine-preventable illnesses helps children to stay in school more consistently, improves access to education and supports better educational outcomes overall, as the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, alluded to. In the Lancet, Professor Philippe Beutels wrote about the “peace of mind” that vaccination can bring, particularly for the clinically vulnerable. Knowing that you or your loved ones are protected matters enormously, yet this assurance is often overlooked in formal evaluations.
But there is a challenge. Taking account of wider societal and economic benefits within the current health technology assessments is not straightforward and is often subjective. We should also be aware of any unintended consequences, whether for healthcare budgets or for the cost of vaccine development. We will have read of the example of Portugal, when the argument was that it increased productivity so the pharmaceutical company said, “In that case, you can pay more for the vaccines given the wider societal impact”.
At the moment, vaccines are assessed in a more focused way. NICE and the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation largely operate from what is known as a health sector perspective. Health technology assessments focus on the direct impacts on the healthcare system, with wider societal and economic effects considered only in exceptional cases. NICE’s economic evaluations usually look only at the cost to the NHS and care services. While savings within the health system, such as short hospital stays, can be counted, the wider impacts such as productivity or keeping people in work are explicitly left out. The case for capturing some of these wider benefits within health merits careful consideration, as my noble friend Lord Bethell laid out.
While recognising concerns about broadening the criteria and the unintended negative consequences, as in the Portuguese example, there is also a practical challenge. We simply do not have enough good-quality data on the wider social and economic impacts of vaccines. As an academic I know, and others will know, that the quality of data really matters. You can make whatever argument you want if you have data that is too subjective or if it is contested, but neither is that an argument not to contest the data or some of the theories that come out. This is hardly surprising, given that these impacts are not currently captured as part of the health technology assessment and there is no agreed way of measuring these wider effects. Estimating the socioeconomic impact is inherently difficult, particularly for complex areas such as the role that vaccines play in reducing AMR, for example, or even putting a value on unpaid work, such as caring for family members. Once again, the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, mentioned this.
There are and will be debates over what should be included and how; whether and how different factors should be weighted; and how far across society and the economy we should go. On many of these points, scientific consensus would be difficult. In measuring these effects, there will also be a challenge in ensuring that the data collected is robust and reliable. Achieving data of sufficient quality and certainty is itself a challenge.
The Office of Health Economics pointed out the siloed nature of public sector budgets, as the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, mentioned. This leads to a focus on clinical outcomes and healthcare alone. NICE has asked why, if health technology assessments were expanded to take account of the impacts on other sectors, those other sectors should not also routinely assess the health impacts of their own policies. Without that wider responsibility, there is a risk of the burden all falling on NICE or on the health part of government, when it is actually a wider societal gain. Finally, considering the broader challenge set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, we should recall that in 2022 the NICE review judged that expanding this work further
“would be disproportionate to any expected benefits to the quality of NICE decisions”
given the flexibility that already exists to take “relevant wider effects” into account.
It is clear that this debate is important but also on a balanced issue. It raises serious questions about the wider benefits of vaccination, not always considered by current health technology assessments, but also exposes some of the methodological and resource challenges. This should not be an excuse for a lack of action or for not investigating these ideas in more detail.
One crucial point should not be overlooked: the benefits debated today, economic, social and clinical, can be realised only if people actually get vaccinated in the first place. I was concerned, as I am sure the Minister was, to see that by the end of week 50 of 2025, only 36% of pregnant women and only 39% of under-65s in clinical risk groups had received the flu vaccine. Within the NHS, as of late October—I hope that the Minister has more up-to-date figures—fewer than three in 10 nurses working in secondary care had received the flu vaccine. This sends the wrong message to patients but also puts patients’ health, and even lives, at risk. Given the concerns over the flu outbreak this winter, we should consider why these vaccination rates are so low.
I really want to ask the Government about their strategy, so I shall end by asking some quick questions. Can the Minister explain why the vaccination rates are so low? What are the primary reasons? Is it about communications, access or convenience? What assessment has been made of each of these factors? What assessment has the Department of Health and Social Care made of the wider benefits of achieving high vaccination coverage, especially among school-age children? We know that this can be a sensitive topic at times, but has the department considered the broader societal and educational impacts?
Can the Minister also set out whether any work is under way within the department to ensure that the wider assessments we have debated today are carried out more regularly? Has it looked into that in more detail? Given that the NICE 2022 review concluded that the current system already has sufficient flexibility to consider wider impacts on an ad-hoc basis, is the Minister aware of whether such assessments have been used more regularly since then, and does the department judge them to be a helpful and effective part of decision-making? These are really important questions that I think we need answers to, but I close again by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, and all noble Lords who contributed today. I also thank the Minister in advance for her response.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Merron) (Lab)
My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend Lady Ritchie for her thorough introduction and for securing this debate. I am also grateful to all noble Lords for their considered contributions. The subject of today’s debate reflects my noble friend’s steadfast commitment to improving access to immunisation and her tireless efforts to ensure that vaccination matters continue to receive the attention that they undoubtedly deserve. As the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, said, this is a very important debate to have and I welcome the probing that it provides.
Let me say at the outset that I believe we in the UK can be proud that we have one of the most extensive vaccination programmes in the world. We protect people across their life course and it is underpinned by rigorous scientific evidence and a commitment to equitable access—a point made both by the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, and my noble friend Lady Goudie.
The question of international comparators was raised. Our vaccination progress serves as a global benchmark for innovation and best practice, and many nations look to align their immunisation schedule with ours.
I will focus on the specifics as best I can in the time available. On the JCVI, the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, made a number of comments suggesting what I might say, and in a number of cases he will be entirely right, so I am grateful to him for shining a light on some of those points. Decisions on introducing or changing vaccination programmes are informed by advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. It is an independent and expert committee and world leader in this field, as has been recognised in this debate. It bases its advice on high-quality data, disease burden, vaccine safety and efficacy, and the impact and cost-effectiveness of programmes, and it ensures that we maintain public confidence in our policies. I know that all these things are important to noble Lords.
On the current approach to evaluating vaccines, the cost effectiveness analysis used by the JCVI compares the cost of a vaccine relative to the health benefits it provides. I appreciate that this debate is about extending beyond that, but that is what it does. It looks at the health benefits provided for a vaccinated individual and others—this point was raised in the course of the debate—and it considers direct cost savings to the health and social care system resulting from immunisation, such as averting hospitalisation and the need for social care.
My noble friend Lady Ritchie suggested that the current approach somehow undervalues prevention, can delay innovation and does not take into account benefits beyond those to the individual patient. I would put this rather differently to my noble friend, because the methodology is entirely focused on prevention. As I mentioned, the positive benefits are not just for the person who has been vaccinated but for those around them. We look to reduce the incidence of infection, and we are also mindful about the transmission of conditions and infections to others.
My noble friend also asked about changes to thresholds. I can say to her that we are actively considering the impact of changes to thresholds in vaccination programmes. Perhaps I will only be a little cautious, but there is the potential that such a change would increase the costs of existing programmes, perhaps by incentivising higher prices from suppliers. But there is a recognition of the role that such a change could play in encouraging innovation, and I know that my noble friend is very keen to see that.
I am not sure this came up too much in the debate, but it is an important point. Our use of data to establish cost effectiveness has ensured that we get value for money from manufacturers, and that has allowed us to deliver a comprehensive programme. It is important that we continue to keep that value for money.
On wider societal and economic impacts, it is the case that wider benefits can be highlighted by officials or the JCVI when advising government on vaccination programmes, but it is also true that it does not account for the impact of vaccination that I have heard all noble Lords call for. A key reason for this—the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, pre-empted this—is that the wider benefits cannot be quantified consistently across all vaccination programmes. There is currently a lack of available high-quality data on socioeconomic benefits. As the noble Lord said, robust data may be available for very few programmes. Basing decisions on wider benefits would create disparities whereby vaccination programmes with high-quality data and wider benefits were considered more valuable. So we do not have the basic situation to achieve what we all want.
There are also many uncertainties when modelling socioeconomic benefits. Unpaid care was mentioned, for example; I think my noble friend Lady Goudie referred to it. Quantifying the impact on that would be extremely complicated, and there is no clarity on how estimating or modelling this or other impacts should be approached. That concern was echoed by NICE when it did an appraisal on this very topic in 2022, and it agreed to maintain the approach that it currently takes.
On the point about supply that I mentioned earlier, there can also be a risk that by adding wider benefits into formal evaluation methods we send a signal to suppliers that we could be open to paying higher costs for the same vaccines or medicines. I see noble Lords both nodding and shaking their heads, which is the purpose of a debate.
There are additional ethical concerns. As was mentioned, vaccination programmes for working populations, important though they are, could be preferred over programmes for those who are not economically active. That is not a basis on which we would want to proceed because it would exacerbate inequalities and undermine the equity of our approach.
I recognise that my noble friend Lady Ritchie has raised this Question as part of a focus to broaden vaccination access. That is a goal to which we are absolutely committed. We have been putting plans into action to provide new programmes—for example, launching programmes to protect infants and older adults against RSV. Just this month, we announced that a vaccine against chickenpox would go into the routine childhood immunisation schedule. That is expected to save the NHS some £15 million a year in costs for treating vaccinations.
The important matter of improving uptake has been raised. We are delivering vaccinations in new ways via community pharmacists, and pilots for administering vaccinations within health visits are starting this month. Through this targeted outreach, we offer an opportunity to increase uptake and reduce inequalities by providing vaccinations to those who might not otherwise access vaccinations. We are also working with healthcare professionals so that they can confidently discuss immunisation with concerned patients, because it is vital to tackle vaccine information. We are exploring innovative delivery models and delivering trusted messaging, to take up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, who spoke about other influences that we would not welcome.
A number of questions have been asked, and I will be glad to write to noble Lords to pick up their specific points. I realise that my remarks in general will not be the ones that my noble friend and other noble Lords will have hoped for, but I hope I have been able to outline some of the difficulties while appreciating the points that have been made.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)
Before my noble friend sits down, I ask that she and her ministerial colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care give particular attention to establishing the independent committee to evaluate the existing vaccine health technology assessment process so that the impact of vaccines on the economy, education and wider society can be seen clearly.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I understand why my noble friend is raising that, but NICE is seen as a world leader in that regard and has processes in place to review its processes and methods to ensure that they remain fit for purpose. I am not entirely convinced, as my noble friend will see, that we need to establish an independent committee, but doubtless she will pick up this point, and I will be pleased to hear from her further on it.