NHS Procurement: Palantir Contract

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 22nd June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

This was a very sensible move to ensure that the tender process we are going through at the moment allows us to transition to whoever wins the federated data platform. That is a sensible way to do it. It was done according to the Crown Office pre-tendering framework agreement, which is very transparent and well set out. It is normal in these situations that, when you need transition arrangements, you do not want hospitals left in the lurch. You need a transition so that, whoever wins the new bid, hospitals are safe in the meantime.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, it is quite easy to invent rules to get away from competitive tender and do direct awards. It goes back to the Horizon Post Office scandal, which is still there 30 years on. Why is this contract exempt from competitive tendering? What is the benefit? Given that the Procurement Bill requires it, why are the Government not doing it?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

As I said, there is a very clear benefit. We are going through the process of a very large £500 million contract for a data platform that will be key to the NHS. Everyone agrees on the importance of data in health work, but we want to make sure that we have an open process so that suppliers have a chance to win the contract. In any circumstance, you need to make sure that transition arrangements are in place; otherwise, the current supplier is the one most likely to win—if there is a concern about ongoing procedures. By having a transition arrangement in place—clearly, transition can work only with the current supplier—you are making sure that there is an open process for new bidders to come in.

NHS: Backlogs

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

Absolutely; I look forward to sharing this with the House in a lot more detail shortly. This is a real opportunity to create a world-leadership position. The idea behind it is to have a standardised approach to building hospitals—hospitals 2.0, as I like to call them—where we look as much as possible to have standard processes, procedures and components, so that we can build them quicker, cheaper and more efficiently, and get economies of scale from doing that. I believe that it will not only pioneer the way we build hospitals in this country but give us an opportunity to be a pioneer worldwide and create a major export industry.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I believe that Prime Minister Johnson promised 40 new hospitals, but the Minister has mentioned five—what has happened to the other 35?

Calorie Labelling (Out of Home Sector) (England) Regulations 2021

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to take part in this debate, and I certainly support my noble friend Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe’s amendment. Going back to the Question we had on Tuesday about the possible addition of salt and sugar tax, I thought that was a rather good idea, because there have to be as many different solutions to the obesity problem as possible. As many noble Lords have said, this is extremely serious, and I suspect the Government should be looking at a wide range of different solutions, which might include a salt and sugar tax—it is not much different to adding fluoride to water, I should say—but should also go ahead with this regulation.

It is a pity, as many noble Lords have said, that most alcohol seems to have been omitted from it. Looking at the Explanatory Memorandum and the comments about the government consultation, it is obvious that not everybody in the food and drink industry thinks this is a good idea. I think they have been fighting it hard, and we shall probably continue to have to fight if we are to get anywhere.

I have a few questions for the Minister on the document. The first relates to something that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, I think, mentioned: going to the pub and having a pint. I may go to the pub tomorrow night and have a pint and a fish and chips. As we know, beer is excluded. How do you put a label with the number of calories on it on a plate of fish and chips? You can put it on the menu, but the calories depend on the size of the fish, let alone how many chips they give you. The complexity of this regulation demonstrates just how difficult the Government have found it to put together.

I worry about the institutions that are included and excluded and what the limit of 250 employees means, because people have tried to work out franchises, where something such as McDonald’s adds up to well over 250 employees. I see plenty of arguments coming there. I wonder what the cost to each food authority will be to maintain the necessary register and monitor it, because we have heard so much about the Government not giving local authorities enough money to do that and whether they will actually do it when they get it.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, mentioned, there are some serious issues with the regulation, but on the other hand, as I said on Tuesday, this country of ours is the second most obese in the world after the US. If this calorie-count idea and these regulations follow the US, it is probably because so many of our food producers are owned by US companies. It is a start, but I do not think it is sufficient. We can see from the Explanatory Memorandum that there was no support for an independent voluntary arrangement. That says a lot about where the food industry—and the brewing industry—is coming from. I hope that the Government will come back with something a bit stronger in future.

My final question may seem a bit silly but paragraph 7.17 of the Explanatory Memorandum states that international aircraft, trains and ferries are excluded but presumably, if one wants to buy a sandwich on a train, all the relevant documentation will be needed. I am sure that the Government will come up with some more ideas—

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but his time is up.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers) (England) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2020

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 30th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, there is a pressing need for credible testing and data if the tiers being proposed today are going to work. As long ago as March, the director-general of the World Health Organization said:

“We must test every suspected case … Test, test, test”


and paragraph 7.3 of the Explanatory Memorandum includes case detection rates as part of the criteria on which the tiers are allocated.

The Government have a long history of failure on this. The system collapsed in September, there was a huge IT failure in October and, as my noble friend Lord Harris of Haringey said, the last nine months have been a long history of chaos, despite costing £22 billion. Meanwhile it seems that most of the contracts that were awarded went to friends and relations of MPs rather than to local delivery, which was the obvious answer.

There was a bad but wonderful example of a massive failure of testing that we saw a week or two ago in Kent. It was quite reasonable for the French Government to require the testing of incoming drivers, and about 5,000 drivers needed urgent testing. As well as the lack of toilets on the M20, there was chaos with that testing. In the end, the French fire brigade sent across 20 firemen with testing kits to help to clear the backlog, as did the Polish army. It took nine days over Christmas to clear a backlog of just 5,000 testing needs. I am afraid that demonstrates the total incompetence of the Government on testing. No amount of lockdown will work without a credible and efficient testing programme.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Local COVID-19 Alert Level) (Very High) (England) Regulations 2020

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 14th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the system of testing that is the basis for these three SIs has failed completely, as many noble Lords have said. It is in total disarray: the data comes late, is unreliable and does not, in my view, support any kind of three-tier lockdown. My noble friend Lady Thornton has called for local delivery, properly financed, and that is absolutely essential. It is time to get that implemented, and the two weeks that people are talking about now is much too short.

Let us take a step back. Covid-19 is going to be here for months, if not years. Many people will catch it next week or next year, until there is a vaccine that everyone can have. These restrictions are there to ensure that there are enough hospital beds, but they should also allow business and leisure to continue, on a restricted basis. We are not going to beat the virus, as such, unless or until we get a vaccine, so we have to learn to live with it.

Where is the data to support the 10 pm closure of pubs, as the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, asked? Communities will survive only if there is credible local delivery, with local finance, and it is about time that the Government responded to this and acted on it, because the essential work has to be done locally. In the meantime, it might actually reduce the costs—so far, I believe, £12 billion, which the Government have given to their friends on a national basis to take things forward, without any competitive tendering.

Covid-19 Update

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, we could not be moving more quickly to engage with the producers of tests in order to sign up the resources we need to put in mass testing. That cannot be switched on overnight, but we could not be moving more quickly. On airport testing, the CMO has been crystal clear: he is deeply concerned about day-zero testing and about any but the most thorough airport testing measures. We were caught out on this at the beginning of the epidemic and we remain extremely cautious.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to follow up on the Minister’s answer to the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, about airport testing. Apparently, we have this world-beating system and many millions of tests that we can do, but now we have limited resources. The number of people who have had to cancel their travel arrangements, lost money and not come back—for whatever reason—is enormous and it is affecting the air industry as well. If our testing system is so good, surely it can be done at airports, plus track and trace, which has worked quite well, even for one plane that came from Greece. I hope the Minister will take this away and try to move it forward a bit more quickly.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is entirely right that the impact of this on our economy is profound, affecting the tourism economy, business and the professions. It is not something that we undertake lightly. However, it is the science-based belief of the CMO that the challenge presented by global travel is so profound that this is a step we have to take. When there is a surfeit of testing—when there is a vast amount of it—we may be able to put in place much more extensive measures, but, even so, the CMO remains extremely cautious on this point. However, we are working with Heathrow, the airlines and the airports to keep the matter under review. We take into consideration pilots and are working closely with them to try to resolve the issue.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

I wish the noble Baroness good luck in those five years.

My Lords, I declare an interest as a former chairman of the HS2 review. I will talk about railways and HS2, if I may, in the short time available. I welcome the references in the Queen’s Speech to prioritising investment in infrastructure and giving

“communities more control over how investment is spent so that they can decide what is best for them.”

Ministers have supported that since then. In her opening speech, the Minister made it very clear. She said that you need investment so that people can get to work on time. That is very simple but it is absolutely the core of the whole matter.

I welcome the Government’s commitment to the regions, particularly in transport. This is the first time we have seen that for decades, and it i is pretty good. It needs doing because TransPennine Express has cancelled 40% of its services this month, or during some part of this month. Northern Rail is apparently about to be stripped of its franchises. How can you hold down a job if 40% of your trains on the days on which you want to go to work are cancelled? Who is to blame? It is easy to blame people. The rail operator blames a lack of trains but 400 electric coaches are sitting in sidings funded by the Department for Transport because electrification was cancelled. Those 400 coaches could be operating today. That does not include Crossrail, which is a separate subject for another day. We have got to get our act together. This is about Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool and the north-east. As we know, the result is not good.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Griffiths for his positive comments about my HS2 report. I will not go into great detail today as there is not enough time—I will do it another time—but we need to consider how to deal with the poor economic performance in the north and parts of the Midlands and the effect that HS2 may or may not have. Therefore, what are the most important improvements to the rail network in those areas and is HS2 the best way of achieving them? We consulted widely within the review team but we have now got to a cost of £100 billion. HS2 does good things around Crewe and Manchester and Leeds and Sheffield, but is it the right answer further south?

This goes back to the fundamentals of the businesses in those areas. From talking to a lot of people, it is my perception that it is managing directors, and us politicians, who want to get to London more quickly, but the people who work in those businesses want to commute, and they probably commute daily whereas we do it perhaps weekly, or whatever. That is where the money needs to be spent. The Government could commit £50 billion over 20 years really to improve those services. So, Ministers have to answer this question: if HS2 needs £100 billion and regional rail services need £50 billion—if they have £150 billion, then fine, do the lot—which do they prioritise?

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend referred to localism and local decision-making but the Mayor of the West Midlands, the Mayor of Greater Manchester and the leader of Leeds City Council are strongly in favour of HS2 continuing. They prioritise it very highly. Does that not weigh with my noble friend?

[Lord Berkeley]

I am aware of those prioritisations. They want both. I have talked to them. However, when I asked them, “Do you want HS2 to get to London quicker or do you want better commuter services?”, they said, after a lot of thinking, that commuter services came first.

[Lord Adonis]

I do not accept that that is correct. If my noble friend asks the Mayor of the West Midlands, he will not find him prioritising other services over HS2.

[Lord Berkeley]

I will conclude. I am grateful to the Economic Affairs Committee, under the great chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, for its excellent report. I hope that Ministers will read it, if they have not done so already, and I hope that we will have a debate on it. I hope that we will have another opportunity to debate this issue. It really is a question of money: do we have £150 billion or £75 billion? That is the decision for Ministers to make. I will be grateful if, when he winds up, the Minister can give me some idea of when that decision might be made.

Children: Obesity

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 20th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

There is, I am sure, no more elegant way of describing the issue under consideration at the moment. The noble Lord makes a very important point about heredity. I do not think that sufficient is understood about the role of our genetic make-up in the way in which we all differ in our weight and size. However, for those who are obese, there are clear, evidence-based actions that they can take to lose weight if they have a mind to do so.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that the link between cycling and the avoidance of obesity is extremely strong? Will he speak to his colleagues in the Department for Transport as his predecessor, whom I met at a conference a few years ago, said that the Department of Health would not encourage cycling because it was a transport matter?

[Earl Howe]

We are straying a little towards obesity in general rather than obesity in children. However, I concur with the noble Lord that cycling has an important place in the way in which we can take exercise, which is beneficial for our general health. I will, of course, take back the noble Lord’s message.

Health: Sugar Consumption

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, we are clear that artificial sweeteners are safe if taken as intended. That is the advice of the European Food Safety Authority and we take that advice. However, encouraging people to take low-diet fizzy drinks, for example, in preference to sugary drinks is problematic because all fizzy drinks have an adverse effect on tooth enamel. We need to be balanced in our messages but we think that artificial sweeteners have a role in a proper calorie-controlled diet.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, are the Government aware of a study by the Dutch Government which links obesity with exercise—in particular, walking or cycling—in inverse proportion? Given that the same study says that we are the most obese country in Europe, will he encourage cycling to be taken up by more children and persuade the Department for Transport to take this a bit more seriously by get moving in encouraging more children to cycle to and from school and for leisure?

[Earl Howe]

I am sure that that is a message which I should take back to my colleagues in the Department for Transport, and I will gladly do so.