Personal Protective Equipment: Accounting

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The Department of Health and Social Care’s anti-fraud unit has acted quickly to investigate allegations of fraud. Indeed, this question came up when I was on a call with the unit earlier today; I was told that it saved £157 million in prevention and recovery by identifying and preventing high-risk contracts in the early days of the pandemic. There is a single company that is a potential source of loss, where we paid it and then terminated the contract as a preventive measure. I commit to write to the noble Baroness with a fuller answer.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, on Monday, at col. 650 in Hansard, the noble Earl, Lord Howe, promised to write to me and answer my specific questions about the origins of and deficiencies in PPE, some of which originated at the hands of slave labour in the genocide state of Xinjiang—where the Foreign Secretary herself has said a genocide is taking place. Can the Minister confirm that the reply will be with us before Report stage of the Health and Care Bill, and will he ensure that a copy is placed in the Library of the House? Will the Minister reconsider his statement made to me in reply to a Parliamentary Question that no organisation or individuals will be censured—especially bearing in mind what he has just told the House about the continuing inquiry by the fraud squad into allegations of fraud? If such allegations were found to be true, how can that rule out the possibility that anyone will be censured?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for his persistence in asking a number of questions. I think all noble Lords appreciate that we want to recognise the huge suffering of the Uighurs in China, and that we should not do anything that can be seen to support it. I would also like to correct the noble Lord, Lord Alton: it was not the fraud squad; it was the Department of Health and Social Care’s anti-fraud unit, which has been investigating these contracts throughout the pandemic. But I will speak to my noble friend Earl Howe and check when the answer will be available. The normal process is to make sure it is available before the next session of Committee.

Health and Care Bill

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Monday 31st January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

I, too, have my name to this amendment and support it, as I have previous amendments to other Bills relating to genocide. Health procurement is a very problematic area that warrants the special attention of Parliament. Not to put too fine a point on it, we will probably all have been wearing slave-made masks, even here. But it is a particular concern if great institutions such as our National Health Service are purchasing them in contravention of the standards we would like to set.

According to the Institute for Government, the UK has spent at least £15 billion on PPE since the onset of the pandemic. To put this into context, the normal annual spend on PPE is around £150 million. Perhaps we should have been putting aside more money for it. Anyway, many PPE contracts use products sourced from China. We do not know how much came from the Uyghur region but one news report alone alleged that we had purchased millions of pounds-worth of PPE from a company strongly suspected of using forced Uighur labour. That is just one report and I suspect we will see more investigations and more coming to light.

Even where the PPE is not manufactured in the Uyghur region, it may contain cotton, plastics and some other constituent parts that were. It has always surprised me that we do not have the import control regime that the United States has had for some time. The USA requires importers to document the source of products, not just the town and city but the particular factory, and to make tracking possible. Indeed, DNA tests can locate the source of the cotton, for example—the very region where it has come from.

What do we mean when we talk about serious risk of genocide? These are not just words. They represent the trigger for state responsibility under the genocide convention, as other speakers have mentioned. The International Court of Justice in 2007, in a judgment of a case involving Bosnia and Serbia, was crystal clear that state responsibility to prevent genocide arises

“at the instant that the State learns of, or should … have learned of … a serious risk”

of genocide. We have taken the words from that judgment. By incorporating those words into regulations, we are providing the Government and Parliament with a mechanism to take action to prevent genocide. This is something they lack in their current policy, which makes all actions dependent on a judgment from an international court—which, as we know, bears the Catch-22 that the very countries getting close to genocide or in the process of committing it do not usually want to play by the international rules of law.

Why should a serious risk of genocide be our procurement threshold? There will always be widespread human rights abuses with attendant supply chain risks for businesses where already there is talk of a possible genocide being in play. This should not represent an obstacle to the United Kingdom because since the Modern Slavey Act—which we passed here proudly as leading the world back in 2015—our aspirations have been to ensure that no business can sell slave-made goods into our market. A serious risk of genocide represents a higher threshold than any modern slavery offence, so the bar is set high here. The ban on procurement that a positive finding of serious risk would attract is proportionate. We need take these steps urgently. It is not, as others have said, just about China, but the amendment would, we hope, have an immediate effect in the Uyghur region.

As many noble Lords will know, last autumn the Uyghur Tribunal sat not very far from here, in Church House, led by a sort of jury of persons and the distinguished international lawyer Sir Geoffrey Nice QC. The tribunal concluded that China was, in fact, committing genocide in the Uyghur region and there was a violation of pre-emptory norms in international law that ought to require government action, by us. We are under a duty to act. If a genocide is in train or in progress, we have a duty to try to prevent it. That is what the convention says.

Although the amendment, rightly, does not identify any single country, I would expect it to have some immediate effect in China. The situation is urgent, and we are having this debate because 800,000 Uighurs are working to produce goods against their will. By some estimates, as many as 300,000 children are separated from their parents, which is really part of a process to take them away from the culture, religion and traditions of their people and to deracinate them. At any one time, up to 1 million are in re-education camps. There has also been shocking evidence of forcible sterilisation of Uighur women and many other heinous crimes. There really is an international legal obligation upon us. This House has expressed its views in previous votes and I hope we will eventually be joined by many noble Lords when this comes at some point to a vote.

We are looking at our supply chains and they are being seriously tainted by human rights abuses. We have taken proud steps, leading the world, in seeking to do something about these supply chains, and here is an opportunity to take it even further.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to support the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, who so ably moved this amendment; to concur with the speeches just made by the noble Baronesses, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, Lady Harris and Lady Brinton; and to associate myself with friends from across the House in respect of the work they have put in over many months to push to the top of the agenda the issue of honouring our duties under the 1948 convention on the crime of genocide. I have two things I would like to add. The first concerns our international treaty obligations, referred to a moment ago, what we are required to do from the moment we know that a genocide is under way, and how we must never utilise to our benefit slave labour in a state credibly accused of genocide. The second concerns the way in which the lack of transparency in our procurement policies has led to the improper use of public money.

The amendment is a logical extension of the debates on the genocide amendment, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, said earlier, was passed by three-figure majorities in this House in an attempt to provide a mechanism in the Trade Act 2021 to evaluate when a genocide is or is not taking place. Many promises were made by the Government during that amendment’s many iterations, including the provision of an effective mechanism to determine what constitutes a genocide and to honour our obligations under the 1948 convention. Demonstrably, those promises have not been kept. Worse still, we have established the illusion of a procedure to examine and deal with this most odious and reprehensible of crimes. The fact that we cannot, under that procedure, even look at what is happening in Xinjiang with the Uighurs shows how inadequate it really is.

Can anyone doubt the seriousness of this issue, not least in the light of the pronouncement by the Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, that a genocide is under way in Xinjiang; or the resolution passed by the House of Commons; or the December judgment just referred to of the Uyghur Tribunal; or the declaration of genocide by United States President Biden; and much more besides? Do we have any excuse, therefore, for not taking action?

The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, referred to a report by the British Medical Association, which seems particularly pertinent in the context of this Health and Care Bill. It sent a letter on 26 January, which noted

“the shocking reports of human rights abuses, including torture, forced labour, political indoctrination, and reported forced sterilisation. Since then, the situation has developed in the most abhorrent manner and we”—

the BMA—

“issued a joint statement with the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and other Royal Colleges in December”—

I repeat, December—

“urging the UK Government and international actors to exert pressure on the Chinese Government without delay.”

It goes on to refer to the independent tribunal, saying:

“It found beyond reasonable doubt that the People’s Republic of China … is guilty of genocide. The Tribunal determined that biological genocide is occurring through restriction of births by forced sterilisation and abortion, segregation of sexes within the detention centres, and forced matrimony and procreation between Uyghur women and Han men. Furthermore, mutilation and biological experiments take place in the detention centres.”


If anybody is in any doubt about the enormity of what is taking place, they should read some of the personal testimonies which were given to the Uighur tribunal. I sat through many of its hearings and found the whole process incredibly harrowing. Let us be clear that there will be amendment after amendment to every possible piece of legislation until the promise to hold to account those responsible for these most heinous crimes against humanity are actually honoured. So my first point is that continuing to source goods for the NHS from Xingang is clearly not consistent with the duties laid upon us in the convention on the crime of genocide.

Medical Devices (Coronavirus Test Device Approvals) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2021 Lords Chamber

This seems to me to raise two points. First, we should do everything we can to ensure the manufacture of high-quality tests in this country, rather than rely on imports from countries whose human rights record is nothing but utterly deplorable. Secondly, it must call into question the whole future of CE marking. I want to ask the Minister whether we can take the action being taken by the Government—essentially applying their own standards to these tests, because the current CE marking is not sufficient—as a precedent for the future. Does it lay the foundations for a new regime in relation to the regulation of medical devices?

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for giving us the opportunity to have a discussion around this; I will support her amendment. I am very pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and to echo some of his remarks and questions.

In doing so, I return to a Question that I put during Oral Questions, in an earlier part of our proceedings today, where I specifically asked about the number of lateral flow tests that have been produced and where they have come from. My interest in this originated during a hearing of the International Relations and Defence Select Committee, when were told by a witness that he was delighted that a package had arrived at his home containing a lateral flow test and that it had originated in China. This prompted me to ask a Written Question about how many of these tests had been produced in the People’s Republic of China. The Answer I was given was staggering: we had bought not 100,000 or 1 million, but 1 billion. I also asked, in that same Question, two other things: how much this had cost British taxpayers and which companies, both British and Chinese, were involved in these deals. I did not get an answer to the second two parts of my Question, so I tabled a further Written Question, asking again. It stands on our Order Paper today as having the greatest longevity of any unanswered Written Question. It was tabled on 12 May and it was due to be answered by 26 May; it is now 20 July. It is grossly discourteous to the House for Written Questions not to be answered in this way—it would have maybe saved the Oral Question having to be asked earlier on.

At the heart of that Question is the issue of due diligence. I echo something that the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, asked during our earlier exchanges. The duty is on the Government, not on individuals, to ascertain, as the purchaser of these lateral flow tests, what the supply chain transparency is. I should mention two things here: I am a vice-chair of the All-Party Group on Uyghurs and I have a Private Member’s Bill before your Lordships’ House on supply chain transparency. What due diligence has been done in establishing the provenance of these lateral flow tests, and why have we not had answers? Perhaps the Minister can give the answers to us now. Who are the companies that have been involved in the purchasing of these tests and what has been the cost overall?

I would also like to ask the Minister something that was put to him on 12 July by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, in Grand Committee. It is always a pleasure to find myself on the same side of arguments as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. When I took my seat in another place, over 40 years ago, it was the noble Lord, then as Jeff Rooker MP, who welcomed me; I am glad he has lost none of his bite.

The noble Lord asked the noble Lord, Lord Bethell— I read the Minister’s reply and he did not appear to answer him in that debate, so I simply reiterate the noble Lord’s question:

“why do we need to buy the NHS Test and Trace kits for the lateral flow test, the one being given out by local chemists, from one of the Chinese Communist Party-approved companies? How do we know they are not made with slave labour? What kickbacks go to that corrupt political party? What efforts are being made to get them made in the UK—dare I say Europe—or, indeed, Commonwealth countries? We now have the capacity to check the tests in laboratories. Why have we not done something about manufacturing capacity? Why are we reliant—we appear to be reliant—on the fix of the Chinese industrial structure, which is controlled by the Communist Party or it cannot operate?”—[Official Report, 12/7/21; col. GC 430.]

That is at the heart of this question and of the debate today. It is not a trivial issue. One billion of these tests have been purchased by the UK. Just think what the costs of that will be: if it is 50p a time, that is half a billion pounds; if £1 a time, that is £1 billion. We have a right to know.

This is a point that the noble Baroness made in her remarks earlier: there needs to be not just due diligence but transparency. As far as I am concerned, there has not been sufficient transparency. We are right to press on this, just as it was right earlier to raise the issue of Hikvision. These are cameras that have been put up in our town centres and high streets all over this country, in NHS hospitals and in schools, and they are manufactured in Xinjiang. They are the same cameras being used to monitor Uighur people, 1 million of whom are incarcerated in camps. That company has been banned in the US but not here, and I would be keen to hear from the Minister what the Government—because he will be speaking for the whole Government—are doing to enforce such a ban in the UK.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, we on these Benches support the principle of this SI. Of course we want to see a mandatory standard for tests. I do not think anyone who spoke in Grand Committee argued against the principle of the SI, but there are concerns about a few issues in it. The Minister replied to the issues raised in Grand Committee with soothing words rather than convincing answers, hence the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, has tabled her amendment to the Motion today.

I want to raise a few of the issues that the Minister either ignored by not answering or used soothing words about but did not give convincing answers to. The first question is: if we are to have a mandatory standard for tests, why have we got new Clause 39A, which is an exemption from the mandatory tests and standards that can be applied at the stroke of a ministerial pen? What is the point of having a mandatory standard for safety if the Secretary of State, at the stroke of his or her pen, can decide to do away with that? In what circumstances and for what reasons would the Secretary of State wish to bring in tests that would lower the mandatory standard, and how would the public know that they were purchasing a test that did not meet the statutory standard that had been set?

I want to address the issue of openness and transparency, as raised by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, regarding the validity of the standard of the test as well as human rights issues. Where is the research in public on the validity of the standard of the lateral flow tests, particularly the one from China brought in via Innova, the main intermediary for a Chinese company? This test, as raised in Grand Committee, was given a class I notice in America, and an FDA email says it is not effective and gives the instruction:

“Destroy the tests by placing them in the trash”.


That is the same lateral flow test bought for billions of pounds by the UK. Again, there were soothing words from the Minister in Grand Committee about this: he said that the Government were working with the FDA. That might be true but having two differing positions— the Government saying that the test is safe while the FDA says to throw it in the trash—is not working together. Could the Minister elucidate on why the British Government still feel these tests are safe when the FDA says they should be thrown in the trash? Which part of the FDA’s analysis do the Government disagree with?

The key issue for me is the one that the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, has already raised: this is not linked into the total public health system to deal with the virus. The key issue is not the standard of the tests themselves but that it should be linked into test and trace. To say that we are going to have a high standard without linking it into the test and trace system is like saying you want the best electric car in order to be environmentally friendly, buying it and then, once you get it home, realising that the nearest charging point is 100 miles away. This is not fit for purpose. To be so, tests must be integral and integrated into the test, trace and isolate part of the public health response to coronavirus.

I ask the Minister, as I and others did in Grand Committee: if someone carries out a private test, how does that link into test and trace? There is no mandation anywhere in UK law to say that a private test, once proved positive, has to be fed into the test and trace system. All the evidence suggests that the way to deal with the virus most effectively is to break the chains of transmission within 48 hours. If tracing is not told that you have tested positive, there is no way to have an effective public health response. So, even if you have the best standard of tests, with no tracing or isolation the chain of transmission will continue.

When I and others asked in Grand Committee, the Minister said that this is also a significant public health policy change. I am not aware of any infectious disease anywhere in the UK or in the world where a market approach to the testing of infectious diseases has become the bog-standard approach, but that seems to have been the Government’s policy after September.

The Minister mentioned Germany in Grand Committee, saying that that country had moved to a specifically private-led testing system. There are two differences in the German system. First, it is controlled by state subsidies; to do it, the companies get a state subsidy, which has now been reduced significantly so the level of private testing is levelling off. Secondly, and most importantly, there is a mandatory requirement in German law to report positive cases from those positive tests to the national Covid test and trace system in Germany.

This statutory instrument, while well intentioned, is riddled with weaknesses. It is not linked to the test and trace system and will not help keep the country safe. It will not have the desired effect, and we will end up with a system that basically has a good standard of tests but then does not do the next, vital part, which is to trace people and then support them in isolating.

That is why we on these Benches will support the amendment to the Motion tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton—unless the Minister can come up with convincing answers this time, not just soothing words.

Organ Tourism and Cadavers on Display Bill [HL]

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my role as vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary groups on Uighurs and Hong Kong and as a patron of the Coalition for Genocide Response. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, has fearlessly shone a light on a practice that, even for the Chinese Communist Party, which is responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of its own people, plumbs new depths of depravity. His admirable Bill deserves our wholehearted support, and I fully endorse and agree with all the preceding speeches in the debate today.

The China Tribunal said that it was

“certain—unanimously, and sure beyond reasonable doubt—that in China forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has been practised for a substantial period of time involving a very substantial number of victims.”

Dr Enver Tohti, a Uighur doctor, described to me how he had been required to remove organs and ordered to

“cut deep and work fast”

on a victim who was still alive. The theft of organs has been described as an almost perfect crime, because no one survives.

However, the crime does not end there: there is a further twist to this infamy. Anonymous, plastinated corpses taken from Chinese prisons have been paraded in a carnival of horrors at money-making exhibitions—a final sneering insult to these victims. In 2018, after one such exhibition, I wrote to the Times, along with Professor Jo Martin, President of the Royal College of Pathologists, and 55 others, saying:

“We believe that the legislation requires reform”.


The Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, now seeks to do precisely that, and he is to be commended warmly for bringing it before your Lordships’ House.

However, we should go further still. The plastinated cadavers indicate that many are young people. The Minister should establish whether it is possible to extract DNA from these corpses to discover something of their origins and ethnic identity. The law did not require the coroner to determine how the corpses exhibited in Birmingham had died. It should.

What of the World Health Organization? Will the Minister tell us why the Government resisted my freedom of information request to publish their correspondence with the WHO on organ harvesting? They should press it hard to lead an international campaign for legislation like this to be enacted elsewhere, combating and ending these criminal practices.

On 22 July it will be 22 years since the start of the persecution of Falun Gong. Jiang Zemin established the 610 Office to eradicate—his word—Falun Gong, practised at the time by 70 million Chinese people. In undercover phone calls recorded during investigations, Chinese doctors said that Jiang Zemin gave direct instructions to harvest organs from Falun Gong. Last week, the Chinese Communist Party said that it wanted Falun Gong outlawed in Hong Kong.

The Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, would demonstrate to the persecuted and cruelly treated—to the 1 million incarcerated Uighurs, Tibetan Buddhists, imprisoned Christians, lawyers, journalists and political dissidents, who are subjected to abductions, disappearances, torture, ethnic cleansing, execution and, as the House of Commons determined in April, genocide in Xinjiang—that we have not forgotten them and will not be intimidated or silenced into submission. The Bill deserves a Second Reading and has my full support.

Covid-19: Wuhan Institute of Virology

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Wednesday 30th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I attended the presentation by Sir Patrick Vallance at the G7 health track in Oxford in June, which was received extremely well, both by Health Ministers from the G7 countries and by the chief executives of the major pharmaceutical companies that are partners in that work. We are using our chairmanship to nudge it along, and it will cover both the pharmaceutical and the demographic elements of pandemic response. This is an example of where Britain is showing leadership in the world to carve out a clear idea of how we can respond to pandemics better in the future.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I return to the point made by the noble Viscount earlier. Who in the British Government is in direct touch with the US National Institutes of Health, and especially Professor Jesse Bloom, about the deletion of genomic sequences, which he said had no plausible scientific rationale? If it is proven that the virus came from the Wuhan laboratory and that that fact has been concealed by the Chinese Communist Party, does the Minister agree that Magnitsky-style sanctions against individual officials would be the beginnings of an appropriate response by our Government?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, specific official engagement with the investigation is done through PHE, and we have a PHE official sitting on the investigation. That is the right way of conducting a scientific dialogue. The DHSC and FCDO also have extremely active interests in this. As for the tone in which the noble Lord talked about how we should approach this challenge, I say that we have to work in partnership with other countries. There is no way in which we can demonise one country or another in this matter. Partnership is the only way ahead. What we can, I hope, bring to the party is a sense of urgency and a sense of focus.

Medicines and Medical Devices Bill

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Tuesday 12th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and to join the noble Lords, Lord Alton of Liverpool and Lord Crisp, in backing her important amendment. The introduction the noble Baroness provided was powerful and comprehensive, so I will not speak at length. I endorse the two asks she put to the Minister; it is important that we hear very clear, direct answers to them.

As the noble Baroness powerfully put it, there is a contest between public need and private profit, and we know that the reality of how our current system works is that private profit comes first. That means that human rights and public health trail behind. We know that so much of our healthcare system has been dragged in the direction of the disastrous US model, the most extreme example on the planet of a private, profit-driven healthcare system that has disastrous outcomes for massive costs. We also know that there are healthcare systems around the world that spend even less than we do but have a very fair and reasonable distribution of resources and money.

We often talk about these issues in moral terms; we must make sure that everyone has these medicines, and I endorse that moral approach, but in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, nationally and globally, we must come back to the phrase, “No one is safe until everyone is safe.” It is in everyone’s interest that everybody in the UK and around the world has access to the best possible medicines and medical devices and that the research effort and all that wonderful power of human ingenuity are put into the best possible causes and results for public health, for the good of us all.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I spoke at some length on this issue in Committee and am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, has given us the opportunity to explore it again. She has done so with her usual thoroughness and thought. I am also pleased to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, who spoke so well. The noble Lord, Lord Bethell, has exchanged letters, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, referred to; that has been extremely helpful, as she intimated, and I think will avoid the need for a Division, but it is right we explore this issue thoroughly.

I will not repeat all the detailed arguments made in Committee, but, in headline terms, Amendment 10 is being considered in the context of exclusive intellectual property rights which can in some circumstances create monopolies, leading to high prices and supply issues for medicines and medical devices. We are seeing those issues come to the fore in the Covid-19 response.

In an Oral Question that I asked on the Floor of your Lordships’ House on 30 November to the Trade Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, I argued that in the context of hundreds of millions of Covid vaccines being held in the United Kingdom and the significant sums of public money invested in developing new drugs and treatments, notwithstanding the need to generate funds to enable future research and development, when companies such as Gilead repurpose drugs such as remdesivir and charge $2,340 for a Covid treatment that Liverpool University estimates can be done for $9, the Government should invoke their powers in such circumstances to use Crown licences to prevent patent monopolies impeding access to medicine, to ensure equitable access, prevent exploitative profiteering and recognise that affordable drugs and their fair distribution are a public good that this country should be at the forefront in providing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ribeiro (Con) [V]]

My Lords, like the noble Lords who have spoken before me, I thank the Minister and the Government for accepting our amendment. I believe it sends a powerful message, not only to China but to other countries such as Pakistan and India, to which I referred in my speech of 28 October in Committee. In discussion with the Foreign Office, through the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, we were reassured that the diplomatic strategy would be to continue lobbying as many countries as possible on the issue of human rights and the immoral practice of forced organ harvesting. With the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, we undertook to raise awareness with the British Medical Association and the surgical royal colleges.

It is worth noting the World Health Organization’s Guiding Principles on Human Cell, Tissue and Organ Transplantation. Any programme such as the kidney pairing exchange, which makes it possible to utilise kidneys that are biologically incompatible between patients and their genetically or emotionally related donors, must follow and respect the WHO’s Guiding Principles of practice, particularly principles 3 and 5, which are worth quoting.

Principle 3 says:

“Live donations are acceptable when the donor’s informed and voluntary consent is obtained, when professional care of donors is ensured and follow-up is well organized, and when selection criteria for donors are scrupulously applied and monitored. Live donors should be informed of the probable risks, benefits and consequences of donation in a complete and understandable fashion; they should be legally competent and capable of weighing the information; and they should be acting willingly, free of any undue influence or coercion.”


Principle 5 states:

“Cells, tissues and organs should only be donated freely, without any monetary payment or other reward of monetary value. Purchasing, or offering to purchase, cells, tissues or organs for transplantation, or their sale by living persons or by the next of kin for deceased persons, should be banned.”


In 2017, the World Health Assembly supported a concept of financial neutrality to protect vulnerable people from being exploited. That is the essence of what this amendment achieves, and I am grateful to the Government and to the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, for endorsing it. I hope that they will maintain their pressure on the WHO to end these practices.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I start, as others have done, by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, and the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, for the way in which they have engaged with noble Lords such as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who has put so much work into this—along with the noble Baronesses, Lady Finlay and Lady Northover, and the noble Lord, Lord Ribeiro—in trying to draw our attention to the enormity of the depredations that have occurred in China through forced organ harvesting. It is very productive that, this evening, the Government have been able to come forward with an amendment that has been agreed with the sponsors of the Committee amendment, having listened to the argument. I am especially grateful, as others have been, to the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, for the way in which she has engaged.

I will come back in a few moments, if I may, to two other issues that I have raised with her but which are not included in this amendment. They concern consent and the equipment that could be used in the extraction, freezing and harvesting of organs in China, and the question of whether, if British companies were involved in the production of such equipment, there is anything that we could do to forestall that.

On consent, the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, mentioned that, thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, we have now seen the reports of the Human Tissue Authority of 2018 following its visit to the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham to examine the plastinated bodies that had been taken there. These were corpses that had been put on public display—what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, referred to as part of a sort of travelling circus. A second exhibition was held later in the year.

It was extraordinarily naïve—at best—that no more probing was done into the origins of those bodies or how consent could possibly have been given from unknown, anonymised sources. Of course, it leaves the question hanging in the air of whether these were people who had been executed—they probably had been. Sadly, we know that that is the fate of many people, whether they are Falun Gong practitioners or people from different denominational minorities or faith communities, including the Uighurs. We have heard much already this evening, as well as in the Statement from the Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, in the House of Commons this afternoon, about the plight of 1 million people who have been incarcerated because they will not conform to the diktats of the Chinese Communist Party.

It is extraordinary that such things can happen in the 21st century, but they are happening. That is why we have to be vigilant and do what we can to prevent the exploitation of people who are caught up in these circumstances. I think particularly this evening of a young woman called Zhang Zhan, who was arrested as a citizen journalist. She is a lawyer by background and had gone to Wuhan to investigate the origins of the coronavirus. She has been languishing in a jail ever since, for some of the time on hunger strike. We know that many dissidents—people who have spoken out against the regime—including lawyers, have been arrested, and some have disappeared, never to be seen again.

Therefore, it is crucial that we discover the origins of the bodies that are used in these sorts of exhibitions and displays, which I personally believe should be prohibited in their entirety. The idea that they can be paraded for macabre purposes should fill people with a sense of disgust. The anonymity of the cadavers should have made the Human Tissue Authority see that this was an issue that it should not just have turned a blind eye to. It is not good enough simply to say that we have a strong regulatory authority. We do: we have strong regulations, many of which came out following the scandal at Alder Hey in Liverpool. However, since then, we have failed to plug the loophole that I and others identified in 2018. We used that phrase—a loophole—in a letter to the Times, but it also appeared in an article in the Lancet. There was a loophole that needed to be filled when it came to organs and tissues from outside the United Kingdom.

The amendment goes some way to addressing that but I think that there also needs to be further regulation on the issue of consent. I also feel—and I would like to press the Minister on this—that we must do more about the export of equipment from the United Kingdom that could be used in forced organ harvesting. Maybe this could be done through export licence control. I noticed in the Statement to the House of Commons this afternoon and in the letter that has been circulated to Peers this evening by the right honourable Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, that he talks about there being a review of export controls as they apply to the situation in Xinjiang. He says that these measures are among the most stringent being implemented globally to help ensure that supply chains are free from forced labour.

That is welcome, but how ironic it would be if, in stopping coming into this country things that have been manufactured by slave labour in Xinjiang, we permitted the export of things to Xinjiang and elsewhere in China that were being used in the extraction, freezing and transportation of body parts in order to enable China to promote one of the biggest organ industries in the world. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, was right to say that we also need to do far more about the phenomenon of people travelling to other parts of the world to take organs from others. That kind of organ tourism is something that the British Government need to do more about.

That is all that I want to say. I look forward to hearing the reply from the noble Baroness, Lady Penn.

Personal Protective Equipment: Procurement

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

I entirely agree with my noble friend. Such lists will be published. Eighty-nine per cent of the contract award notices have already been published under the Official Journal of the EU; I would be glad to send my noble friend a link.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB) [V]]

My Lords, in a Written Answer, the Minister confirmed to me that the NHS warehouse for PPE at Daventry has masks made by Medwell Medical Products. It is estimated that a quarter of the workers at its Chinese factory are Uighurs in a facility 3,444 kilometres from Xinjiang, so it is implausible that they went there voluntarily. In his Answer, why did the Minister not name the intermediary company involved? Will he now say whether it was Meheco or another state-owned company, what the value of the deal was, whether our embassy was involved, whether the UK made the deal before or after July—when Medwell was named in reports—and what steps he is taking to ensure that the United Kingdom is not complicit in using Uighur slave labour to produce PPE for the NHS and profits for the Chinese Communist Party?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I acknowledge the extremely good work that the noble Lord does on this issue. Of course, no one wants to see Uighur slave labour used to produce PPE for the NHS. On his specific questions, I do not have the details to hand, but I am happy to revisit the Written Answer that I gave him to see whether I can provide any further details.

Covid-19: Transparency and Accuracy of Statistics

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Monday 9th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

The noble Viscount and I have corresponded on this matter. I do not accept that they suggested that the number of admissions was on the way down. Undoubtedly, the rate of increase has decelerated, but a lengthening doubling time is not the same as a halving time. The doubling time for hospital admissions was eight days at the start of September, 14 at the start of October and 20 days at the end of October. That is a slowing down of the increase, but it is not the same as a decrease.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB) [V]]

My Lords, can the Minister tell us what analysis the Government have made of the root cause and relationship to lockdowns of some 20,000 excess deaths unrelated to Covid-19 during the first wave of the pandemic, including suicide, bacterial sepsis, cardiovascular disease, cancer and other conditions? Should the Government not be publishing regular analyses of the overall harm and not just contested projections of 4,000 deaths each day or the other figures that the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, and the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, have just mentioned?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

The noble Lord makes a very good point. We do publish data on excess deaths, which is available on the PHE website, but he is entirely right: we are deeply concerned not just about the Covid deaths but the impact of Covid on others who may be seeking to access the healthcare system. That is why we made the very hard and tough decision to lock down before the NHS was put under too much pressure, and it is why we have made the commitment to keep the NHS open during this lockdown in order to manage down that excess deaths figure to which he refers.

Blood Safety and Quality (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, in thanking the Minister for introducing these statutory instruments, I am conscious of two things. First, they are procedurally necessary because of the decision to leave the European Union, but inter alia, honour a commitment not to use such transitional arrangements to dilute our commitment to uphold the highest possible standards in relation to the use of organs, tissues, blood and cells. I think that the Government have honoured that commitment. Secondly, I am conscious that it is only a few days since we had a full-blown debate on an amendment to the Medicines and Medical Devices Bill, which is currently in Committee, relating to human organs. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, referred to this earlier. Like him, I would like further clarity on the one notable change in the regulations—also touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, a moment ago. It relates to Northern Ireland, where European Union law will continue to apply while not doing so in the rest of the United Kingdom.

The opportunity for confusion and inconsistency is therefore written into the very DNA of the statutory instruments. It reminds us of what is one of the most troubling and unresolved aspects of the withdrawal agreement. I would be interested to know who within the Northern Ireland Executive has been the point man or woman in discussing the implications of the SI; who has been consulted within the Northern Ireland Assembly and what response has been received; and whether these arrangements have been signed off by the Commission in Brussels and the relevant health authorities in Dublin.

When he comes to reply, I would also be grateful to the Minister if he would return to the questions that I put to him last week concerning the trade and exhibition of body parts. Given that the Human Tissue Act does not require traceability, how is that to be resolved in the context of these statutory instruments or in the legislation being taken through the House? Will that principle now be treated differently in Northern Ireland and Great Britain?

Yesterday I sent the Minister an 87-page report, with 270 footnotes, The Economics of Organ Harvesting in China, published by the Institute to Research the Crimes of Communism. It describes forced organ harvesting as

“one of the most inhumane crimes in the entire history of humanity”.

In harrowing detail, it describes what it calls “the business offer” and details an international spider’s web of companies—including some from the United Kingdom—which have aided and abetted what it describes as primitive barbaric practices. I am grateful to the Minister, whom I had a chance to speak to just before we came into this Committee, for already having had a glance at the report. I hope that he will commit to looking at the report further and say how he intends to take forward an investigation into the companies referred to in it. Will he agree to refer it to the World Health Organization for its consideration?

In that context, and further to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, I might add that only today the information rights unit at the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office has written to me in response to the freedom of information request to which I referred during our debate last week, asking for the correspondence between it and the WHO to be made public. In its response, the unit says:

“Some of the information has been withheld using section 27(1)(b) on International Relations. Section 27 is a qualified exemption and is subject to a public interest test. The application of section 27(1)(b) requires us to consider the public interest test arguments in favour of releasing and withholding information.”


The letter also says:

“The disclosure of information could potentially damage the bilateral relationship between the UK and the World Health Organization. This would reduce the UK Government’s ability to protect and promote UK interests through its relations with the WHO, which would not be in the public interest.”


I would obviously contest that strongly, not least because of the vast amounts of public money that pour from the United Kingdom into the WHO. This sits very uncomfortably with our belief in transparency and open government. Elsewhere, the letter says:

“The disclosure of information detailing our relationship with China could potentially damage the bilateral relationship between the UK and China.”


Why should information pertaining to the forced harvesting of organs and their use in organ tourism be damaging to our relations with China?

Let me conclude. I would be grateful if the Minister could say how in further legislation, whether brought through SIs or within the current Bill, we can demonstrate our determination to stamp out organ tourism that relies on the killing of non-consenting victims, and which then trades in their remains in ways which the United Kingdom should demonstrate to the rest of the world that it will not tolerate.

Medicines and Medical Devices Bill

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 28th October 2020 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Henig) (Lab)]

I have received a request to speak after the Minister from the noble Lord, Lord Alton.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, for the response he has given to the debate, but I have two questions I want to put to him. Like the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, and others, I accept that pharmaceutical companies will always want to and are entitled to reclaim research and development costs. On Monday, I referred to the phenomenal difference in the cost of remdesivir when purchased in the US at over $2,000 for a five-day treatment and Liverpool University’s estimate of $9 as the basic production cost. I asked how much public money went into developing that drug. If the Minister is unable to answer that question today, I would really appreciate it if he could undertake to write to us to let us know how much public money went into the development of that drug.

My second question is about Crown use licences, a question posed to the Minister by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey. Are the Government considering using the Crown use licence, should the circumstances require that? It was used in the 1960s, and more recently the use of it was threatened in the case of an innovative new treatment for cystic fibrosis. The Government used the power, and that had the desired effect of bringing down the cost of that drug. Are the Government giving serious consideration to how they will use Crown use licences, should that become necessary?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for his questions. On remdesivir, I will be glad to find out whether any UK funds were used in its development and will write to him. I will also be glad to write to him about Crown use licences.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ribeiro (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I was delighted to add my name to the amendment, so ably introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. The Human Tissue Authority code of practice refers to the EU tissues and cells directive, which requires importers of donated material to have a

“detailed description of the criteria used for donor identification and evaluation, information provided to the donor or donor family, how consent is obtained … and whether the donation was voluntary and unpaid or not.”


During my career as a surgeon and a urologist, I supported transplant teams to harvest organs from patients who had requested that their organs be used in the event of their death. In every case, informed consent was obtained, and relatives were in agreement and consented to the procedure. One cannot be confident that such arrangements pertain in relation to donor parts used in transplantation in China and elsewhere, particularly where the donors are likely to be prisoners.

Advice that I have received from the Royal College of Surgeons notes that, sadly, the issue of UK patients travelling overseas for transplant surgery is not confined to China and is known to occur also in Pakistan and India. A considerable number of UK patients have undergone kidney transplantation from living donors in this way. For the report mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, Sir Geoffrey Nice met with the Royal College of Surgeons to discuss the allegations relating to China. It found the allegations alarming and the evidence concerning. We know that, in China, patients can receive organs within a matter of weeks. Heart transplant surgery can be bought in advance and, according to data collected by the China Liver Transplant Registry, the percentage of emergency, compared to non-emergency, liver transplants is far higher than one would expect. During his investigation, the BBC journalist Matthew Hill was offered a liver for $100,000 by a Chinese hospital, at very short notice. Patients in the UK would struggle to achieve this with a waiting time of several months.

According to experts, an estimated 60,000 to 90,000 organ transplants are happening in China each year, yet China’s voluntary donation system was only established in 2013. Quite recent data, from June 2020, shows that 2,127,955 people have registered as organ donors in China. That is a significant increase on the figure in 2014, which was 22,660. Is it a coincidence that the UK signed the Council of Europe Convention against Trafficking in Human Organs in 2015 and that, in the same year, the Chinese Government introduced legislation that rendered illegal the use of executed prisoners as organ donors? Contacts in the transplant society in the UK believe that this legislation was introduced in good faith and that any such practices that continue are illegal and without official sanction. I hope that that is the case, but the perception is that these practices have not ceased completely. It is the view of some UK transplant surgeons who have visited China, as I have, for transplant-related meetings, that large, prestigious hospitals practise within the law. However, illegal practices do occur and we should use this amendment to send a clear message to the Chinese Government that they must make greater efforts to stamp out the illegal practices that tarnish the reputation of their country.

We have a moral and ethical obligation to investigate UK patients who receive transplants in China, as identified by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and to clearly identify the source of the transplant organs. That is doubly important because, if complications occur, it will be the NHS that has to pick up the pieces.

Finally, it would appear that, although the UK has signed the Council of Europe convention on organ trafficking, we have yet to ratify it. Will my noble friend undertake to explain why this has not been done?

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to be able to follow the noble Lord, Lord Ribeiro, and to support the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, my noble friend Lady Finlay and other noble Lords who have spoken to the amendment. In doing so, I return to an issue that I raised at Second Reading and declare my interests as set out in the register.

On 2 August 2018, the Times published a letter signed by me, Professor Jo Martin, President of the Royal College of Pathologists, and 55 others, including Dr Adnan Sharif, a consultant nephrologist in Birmingham, who is the secretary of Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting. We began the letter by recalling the Liverpool Alder Hey Children’s Hospital scandal, which had involved the retention of human organs and tissue, without consent, and which led to the Human Tissue Act 2004.

With my antecedents as a Liverpool Member of Parliament and a one-time grateful parent, deeply appreciative of the skills of Alder Hey doctors, I was appalled that such an ill-judged breach of ethics had inflicted such damage on a wonderful hospital. Fourteen years later, and notwithstanding that scandal and that important Act of Parliament in 2004, I was incredulous that in 2018 an exhibition, entitled “Real Bodies”, of Chinese corpses and body parts preserved with silicon in a process called plastination, was being staged for commercial gain at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham—denigrating ethics, science, and human rights, and far worse than even the scandal of Alder Hey.