Public Procurement: Data Offshoring

Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I will speak to my noble friend Lord Coaker and ask him to provide a letter responding to that point.

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford (Con)]

My Lords, the heart of this Question is the safety of public data and the resilience of services. As we saw with the ransomware attack on Synnovis in the summer, cyberattacks of these sorts on supply chains can cause significant disruption to public services. Can the Minister say exactly how the cybersecurity Bill that is coming up will improve the regulatory framework for the supply chain, and when exactly it will be brought forward?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I can give a bit more detail on what the Bill will focus on. I cannot give a precise date for when it will be brought forward, but it was in the King’s Speech, so we can anticipate it coming forward in due course in the relatively near future. The Bill will make crucial updates to the legacy regulatory framework by expanding the remit of regulation, putting regulators on a stronger footing and mandating increased incident reporting, which will give the Government better data on cyberattacks, including where companies or organisations have been held to ransom.

Older Persons Commissioner for England

Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I am very pleased to say to my noble friend that we are investing £1.34 billion in education and skills training for adults through the adult education budget. We have the flexible support fund, which we can use on a flexible basis, and have launched a £2.4 billion national skills fund. On my noble friend’s point about the horticultural industry, there is a wide range of vacancies, all paying well. We think that people with mental health problems really benefit from being in that sector: I will cite one example. The lady Mayor of Merton has purloined half of a large allotment facility in Mitcham. She is a Labour mayor; her name is Joan and I think she is cracking. My sister, who has real difficulties, has one of the mayor’s allotments and it has turned her life around. She now has five customers whose gardens she does, so we are right behind this type of thinking.

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford (Con)]

My Lords, it is a rare occasion when you will find me agreeing with the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, but on this occasion I would ask the Government to think again. We will all remember the horrific cases during the pandemic, when blanket DNACPRs were put out across care homes. I cannot help but think that had there been an older person’s commissioner in place, some of these cases would not have happened. We have also had the cases at Edenfield and across other care homes. Will the Minister please take this away again and reconsider cross-party working and representation for older people?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I think the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, has a recruit to his group. I hope that my noble friend will take up that opportunity. I am sure that, given the benefits of such a position as she described, it will be for her to build up the case and put that forward.

Border Checks on Imported Goods: New IT Systems

Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure that my right honourable friend is capable of almost any form of conversation. I repeat: this is not a delay. It is a deliberate decision to take a different approach and part of that decision is that the 2025 target is being brought forward, as I explained to your Lordships earlier.

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford (Con)]

My Lords, as the Minister develops the border protocols for 2025, will he reconsider prioritisation for medicines and other life-saving products? If we have learned anything for the pandemic, it is that some of these supply chains really are quite fragile. This could do with another look.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend makes an important point. I will certainly take it away and discuss it with colleagues.

National Insurance Numbers: Electoral Register

Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con) [V]]

My Lords, the Government do not support compulsory voting, and, in fact, it has very limited public support, but I agree with the need to encourage participation. We have the parliamentarian youth engagement toolkit, as well as the secondary schools’ resource, introduced in 2018. I hope that, following remarks from my noble friend Lord Lexden, these will be increasingly used.

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the proposal to remind young people to vote, but for those who somehow do not get an automatic national insurance number, Covid-19 restrictions have made it almost impossible to get one. Those waiting in the growing backlog, through no fault of their own, should not be further disadvantaged from registering to vote. I know that, at the moment, you cannot register online without a national insurance number. Has the Minister made an assessment of how many people have been affected in this way? What steps does he have to address this?

[Lord True (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I do not have an assessment to hand, but my noble friend raises an important point. I will pursue that matter and report back to her.

EU: Visa-free Short-term Travel Mobility

Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I simply say to the noble Lord, who represents a party that has been very critical of this Government’s attitude to European nationals, that the position he outlined demonstrates the openness of the future Britain.

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford (Con) [V]]

My Lords, conferences and short-term visits as part of international collaboration are engine rooms of scientific discovery. They are vital for exchanging ideas, forming relationships and building careers. I realise that Covid is temporarily suspending some of this activity, but our immigration system must be fit for the future and there is consensus on the long-term benefit of researcher mobility for the UK’s science and innovation sector. So can the Minister please assure me that the Government will seek a light-touch, reciprocal arrangement, allowing researchers in innovations to travel for short, work-related visits, preferably visa free?

[Lord True (Con)]

Yet again, as other noble Lords in this short exchange have done, my noble friend raises an important point. In negotiations, we are seeking a reciprocal agreement that would bind both parties to agree a list of business activities that could be performed in either party without a work permit on a short-term basis, as she asks. Unfortunately, we are unable to comment on the detail of these arrangements, as discussions are ongoing.

EU: Customs Arrangements

Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True]

My Lords, without going into competing versions of past events, I repeat that we are publishing a document very shortly with which I hope all interested parties engage positively.

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford (Con) [V]]

My Lords, if we have learned anything from recent shocks, it is the fragility and complexity of medicine supply chains that bring 37 million packs of medicines from the EU to the UK every month. The new border operating model is an opportunity to account for this complexity, and wherever possible, mitigate future supply risk. What technical and regulatory measures are planned to enable the new model to identify and prioritise category 1 goods when necessary?

[Lord True]

My Lords, again, I must ask my noble friend to await the details, but I assure her that the specific question of medical and pharmaceutical goods is certainly understood and taken into account.

Covid-19: Scientific Advice

Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True [V]]

My Lords, with the greatest respect, I am answering a Question about the SAGE meeting on 11 February. If Members wish to ask questions about further stages, I will have to reply to them in writing.

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford (Con) [V]]

My Lords, the Science and Technology Committee, on which I sit, has received a very sensible suggestion in evidence to our Covid-19 inquiry. It proposes establishing a working protocol for SAGE to clarify the relationship between scientific advice and political decisions, and to improve transparency of processes. It is modelled on the already effective protocols of ACMD and the investigatory powers committee. Does the Minister agree that this could be a sensible step forward? Would he meet the distinguished scientist who proposed it?

[Lord True [V]]

My Lords, my noble friend makes a very valuable suggestion. I will make sure that it is drawn to the attention of my colleagues progressing this matter.

Outcome of the EU Referendum

Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman and I agree on this issue, and we spent some time on the campaign discussing it. It is important to use all these forums to maximise Britain’s influence. We will obviously have to find a way, under the new Government, to work out how to work with the European Union to get the maximum effect for the British stance on climate change, on Syria, on how we try to prevent refugees from leaving Libya, and all the rest of it. Those will all be issues for a future Government. I know from all that happened in the campaign that this is not about Britain withdrawing from the world or playing less of a role in the world, and we will have to work out the way forward.

[Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)]

I would like to add my voice to the tributes to the Prime Minister from across this House. He is a true statesman who has made Oxfordshire proud, and we will miss him. Will he take this opportunity to reassure the science and innovation sector that the Government will fight to protect access not just to Horizon 2020 funding but to valuable research collaborations, and also to effective recruitment and retention of the brightest and best of EU researchers? They are essential to our knowledge economy and deserve to know that they will be a priority in ongoing negotiations.

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for her kind remarks. It has been a great pleasure and privilege being her constituency neighbour and working together. How we maintain the advances in British science and competitiveness in our universities will be one of the issues that the EU unit will want to look at. Clearly we have done very well out of this bit of the European Union, and so it will be for the new Government to look at the evidence on that and how we can continue to move forward.

Local Growth Deals

Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman was the last Labour Member standing, while there are still plenty of Government Members standing. The great advantage of the arrangements is that he can take his case to Greater Manchester. It should no longer require a Minister to agree to a local project; as a result of this deal, the people who now have the budgets to implement such things are those in the Greater Manchester authority.

[Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)]

Like our city deal, Oxfordshire’s growth deal is great news for local people: it will deliver more jobs and more housing; it will close the skills gap by delivering vital skills opportunities; and it will take us a big step closer to delivering flood protection. I do not want to seem ungrateful, but will the Minister also consider vital A34 improvements at every future opportunity, because they are essential to our long-term local economic plan?

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is nothing if not tenacious. She has had a city deal, she has had a growth deal and now she wants another one. I have said that we will reopen negotiations, and it sounds as though Oxfordshire will be first in the queue.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford Excerpts

Wednesday 30th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

It is perfectly proper for Government Ministers to use the same language in Government communications as they use in their political communications. Ministers do not suddenly not become politicians when they speak as Ministers. It is just possible that I may have used today some of the same language as I would use in a purely political environment.

[Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)]

T6. Brilliant social enterprises such as the Oxford student hub propeller project can lead the way in finding innovative solutions to social problems, but they struggle to find sustainable funding. Can the Minister tell me what progress is being made on increasing the availability of social impact bonds, which could make all the difference?

[The Minister for Civil Society (Mr Nick Hurd)]

My hon. Friend is entirely right: we have fantastic social enterprises in this country and they need easier access to capital. This country leads the world in developing social investment. Today we are launching two new funds that will unlock more social impact bonds to deliver what we expect to be better results for thousands of young people at risk of becoming NEET.