Biosecurity and Infectious Diseases

Lord Bethell Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Trees, for his mobilisation of this excellent debate and congratulate the Minister on hitting the ground running with his splendid response to OPQ on Tuesday. It is a great honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord de Clifford, whose remarks were very apposite.

We are still recovering from Covid, the massive global pandemic. As the Minister during that time, I am only just recovering myself. There is a psychological tendency to try to avoid thinking about something that was so uncomfortable, so unpleasant and so damaging for so many people. I want to focus my comments on the gap that I see between the very good and well-intended biosecurity strategy published in November last year and what is actually happening on the ground, particularly—but not only—in the medical sphere.

The biosecurity strategy has a very clear vision that, by 2030, the UK will be resilient to a spectrum of biological threats and a world leader in responsible innovation. The timing of that is quite a long way out—six years. The very slow pace of the Covid inquiry shows us how difficult we are finding it to come to terms with the lessons from our response to the Covid pandemic. That is hitting us hard in trying to put in place the necessary measures we need to be ready for the next big hit.

Readiness, response to a pandemic and resilience are three areas where I think there is severe deficiency. On our pandemic readiness, and on vaccines, there are some encouraging signals that there is focus, including the deal with Moderna, the future manufacturing hub and the UK Vaccine Network. However, a lot of it is subscale and is taking a lot of time. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Rees, that the 100-day ambition is something that we have not heard a lot about. I echo his request for an update from the Minister.

A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, mentioned how slowly both international and domestic surveillance systems are moving. The WHO and the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board are struggling for funds and political momentum. It would be good to see Britain leaning in on that. On our investment in high-throughput biosurveillance, the noble Lord, Lord Trees, quite rightly pointed out that a lot of that capacity has been stood down. On wastewater analysis, the good functionality that we had put in place during the pandemic has now been taken apart. Our efforts on international data sharing and the standardisation of reporting—quite a dull-sounding subject but very exciting to those of us, like me, who take these things seriously—have, I am afraid to say, stalled since we were pushing it under our G7 chairmanship.

On response capacity, I will spotlight two areas, one of which is health. As the noble Lord, Lord Rees, pointed out, the integrated national public health function in the UK has fallen back rather than being invested in. UKHSA funding has been reduced; the public health grant to local authorities has been reduced; OHID has been embedded into the Department for Health and Social Care, rather than being empowered; capacity on the ground for DPHs has been reduced; tracing capacity has been wound up; and the integration of the national and local response is extremely unclear, to put it mildly.

On vaccinations, many of the habits that were in place have fallen back. Many noble Lords will have read about the measles outbreaks in the Midlands, and now, it seems, in London. When it comes to the strain on the NHS, we have fallen back a long way.

On government leadership, we have not got a Taiwan-style pandemic Act in place. The management of our borders—and here I mean for people—in order to use our island status to protect ourselves has also fallen back.

On resilience, the health of the nation is deteriorating rather than improving. Part of that is because the drivers of poor health are still in place: mouldy homes, junk food, the internet and dirty air. They are resulting in an increase in obesity, diabetes and so on.

We can rebuild and make Britain a healthier country. We can put in place the infrastructure necessary to respond to a pandemic. However, this will take government leadership. What does the Minister think the Government can do to empower the biosecurity strategy and make it move faster, and to deliver the kind of infrastructure we need, so that we are truly ready for the next pandemic?

Traffic-related Air Pollution

Lord Bethell Excerpts

Wednesday 21st December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Baroness will be pleased to know that our ambitious targets under the Environment Act will be set out under the environmental improvement plan, which will include really stretching targets on the most damaging pollutants. There has been a good news story in the last decade about how we have reduced them, but that is not enough, and she is right to say that this still affects the health and life chances of many people, particularly some in deprived areas. This is about making sure that local authorities have the funds necessary to introduce schemes, and about having stretching national targets that will be respected around the world.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, many of the measures to combat dirty air require international collaboration to make them effective on supply chains and measures in areas such as energy and transport. What are the Government doing to encourage international collaboration?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend is absolutely right that pollutants blow in from abroad, and we have to work with our neighbours to ensure that an outcome to that issue is achieved. I have just come back from Montreal, where we have negotiated a landmark international agreement which will, if properly implemented, have effects on people right across the world and improve the ability of nature to protect us and our health.

Bird Control Licences

Lord Bethell Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am enjoying the image of the noble Baroness and my noble friend enjoying a walk in the countryside. There are three legs to the stool of nature conservation: providing habitat, providing good feed sources and legal predator control. When those three are put in place, extraordinary things happen. It helps us hit our 2030 target of no net loss of biodiversity.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, shoot owners contribute £250 million and volunteers contribute 3.9 million volunteering days every year. What assessment has the department made of the value of this contribution to our country’s environment?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

There are various data sources about the value of shooting to the wider rural economy. There are, of course, other measures that have shown the wider conservation benefits of properly managed countryside. In order for lapwing numbers to thrive, you need to be fledging 0.7 chicks per pair. It is very interesting to see where, in the country, that is being achieved and where it is not.

National Food Strategy Report

Lord Bethell Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, the UK Government have made a clear commitment that, in all our trade negotiations, we will not compromise on our high environmental protection, animal welfare and food standards. All agricultural products imported into the UK, including under free trade agreements, must continue to comply with our existing import requirements.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, the recent pandemic has demonstrated the severe urgency of cracking down on obesity in this country. There are thousands of people in ICUs with infectious diseases such as Covid, simply because they are too overweight. We must do something to address this national characteristic. What will the Minister do to assure us that he will take the steps necessary to crack down on things such as highly processed food? That would be an important first step on this road.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My noble friend has done much work in this field. The publication Tackling Obesity: Empowering Adults and Children to Live Healthier Lives takes forward a wide range of measures that all contribute towards reducing excess calorie consumption. These include, for example, measures to restrict the advertising of high fat, sugar and salt products. It is estimated that these measures could remove up to 7.2 billion calories from children’s diets in the United Kingdom over the coming years.