(7 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, shall we hear from my noble friend Lady Lampard, followed by the noble Lord, Lord Browne?
(1 year, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, it was actually the turn of the Cross Benches, although I do not know what the Lord Speaker will decide, because we are now out of time.
(1 year, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, I think that noble Lords need to decide between them which one of them will speak.
(1 year, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, for securing this debate and congratulate her on her powerful and persuasive opening speech. She speaks truth to power very well.
It is a particular honour to follow my noble friend Lord Soley, who has sadly delivered his valedictory speech after over 43 years in Parliament—26 years in the other place and 17 years in this House. I say sadly because the whole House will miss his warmth, wisdom and judgment, so I invite the whole House to join me in thanking him for his service.
A probation officer, he was first elected for Hammersmith in 1979. He quickly became a significant figure in the parliamentary party, particularly on Northern Irish affairs, and consequently someone I came to admire well before I even met him. In 1997, the year I was first elected, beyond being re-elected, he was elected by his fellow Labour colleagues as chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party—an indication of the esteem in which he was held. Since then, it has been a real pleasure and an education to get to know him during our times together in both the other place and, subsequently, your Lordships’ House, which he joined in 2005 and I joined five years later.
I thank him for an informed and entertaining but characteristically modest speech. He has much to be proud of. I know he must be looking forward to his retirement, but he still has much to offer. He is still a crusader for more and better housing and education, civil liberties—although we now call them human rights—prison reform, Northern Ireland solutions, a responsible press and almost any other deserving cause. He is also an author, photographer and supporter of charity. Born in England, as he told us, he has chosen in his later life to live in Scotland, the wise man. There is a phrase in the Scottish cultural lexicon that perfectly fits Clive Soley and his experience of life: “a lad o’ pairts”, meaning
“a youth, particularly one from a humble background, who is considered talented or promising”.
Scotland prides itself on giving the lad o’ pairts opportunities for advancement. I am sure that he will seize them in his retirement.
In the time I have remaining, I turn to the subject of the debate. A UK-India FTA is currently under negotiation. We should remember that, in 2013, negotiations for the EU-India FTA collapsed due to concerns about the impact on India’s generic supply of and access to affordable medicines. The current negotiations appear to be in danger of foundering on the same rock. A recent leak from them revealed that the UK’s strategic position is to strengthen the position of multinational pharmaceutical corporations—many of which are based in the UK—at the expense of India’s public health safeguards, thus enabling companies to prolong their monopolies on medical products and charge higher prices for longer periods.
Presently, the UK, along with other countries around the world and providers such as Médecins Sans Frontières, relies heavily on access to affordable, quality-assured generic medicines, a large proportion of which are supplied by companies in India. Some 25% of the quality, affordable, generic medicines available on the NHS and a large proportion of medical products used by many low and middle-income countries are from Indian generics, including no less than 90% of generic medicines for HIV.
It seems rather counterintuitive that someone from these Benches needs to remind a Conservative Government of the basic principle of free trade: that having multiple independent generic suppliers for each medical product is important because the competition among them, and with the originator company, can bring prices down, enabling us better to serve public health needs and save more lives. However, this can happen only if generic companies are able to produce and supply more affordable medical products once the IP protection, including patents, on these products has expired or been removed.
The consequences of undermining India’s generic industry on supply and prices could be devastating for many countries with already stretched health budgets. This is of particular concern to LMICs, but it could also impact all countries that procure medicines from India, including the UK’s NHS. While the proposals in the leaked IP chapter of the UK-India FTA do not amount to a final negotiated chapter, they none the less point to the UK’s negotiating strategy—
I remind the noble Lord that this is a time-limited debate. The only person we set that aside for was Lord Soley, because we had adjourned the House.
I have insufficient time to go into the detail of this issue, though I would love to, but I am fully briefed on it. I will happily meet and discuss this with other noble Lords, Ministers and officials if that is on offer.
(1 year, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberI was just about to confirm that it is the turn of the noble Lord, Lord Browne.
My Lords, I am sure that the Minister is aware that it took repeated FoI requests from an NHS doctor to get the Government in 2021 to reveal that they had carried out Exercise Alice in 2016, which was designed to recognise the challenges should a coronavirus hit our shores. The report, redacted when published, revealed shortages of PPE, no plans for pandemic-related travel restrictions, and a failure to have a working contact-tracing system—all of which we had to improvise when it actually happened. Is the department carrying out similar exercises? Is it producing solutions, not just identifying problems? Will the Government publish these reports, so that the public can see what needs to be done to prepare this country?
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy noble friend is absolutely right: local circumstances will dictate different needs in different places. He is absolutely correct to say that cyber and other types of crime—county lines, for example—may necessitate different solutions in different areas.
My Lords, following that specific question and the implication that somehow this money was being spent on cybercrime, the principal cybercrime in this country is fraud. Some 42% of reported crime is fraud—despite the fact that the Government regularly drop off this figure when they talk about crime. Some 1% of police resources are used in policing fraud—so it clearly cannot be the case that these resources are being used for other policing purposes; they must be being used for something else.
I return to the point made by my noble friend: it is down to local elected PCCs to decide. Also, cyber is not just about fraud; it can be about all sorts of things, such as disruption et cetera. There are other bodies that deal with fraud as well, but, frankly, we deal with fraud and other types of crime across several agencies.
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberI think I answered the noble Lord’s question. I was not there; I was not witness to any events that may or may not have happened. As the noble Lord will know—and yes, I do speak for the Government—Sue Gray is doing her review, and the outcome of that will be known in due course.
My Lords, on this very point, the question did not require the Minister to have been present to be able to answer it. The question that troubles some people is that the Metropolitan Police has already publicly said that it will not investigate anything but will wait to hear what Sue Gray says and that it is in contact with Sue Gray. The Metropolitan Police has police officers in Downing Street, both inside the building and outside. Surely it is legitimate to ask: are statements being taken from those officers by Sue Gray, and is the Metropolitan Police offering them to Sue Gray’s investigation, seeing as it is not investigating this itself?
The noble Lord asks a perfectly legitimate question. To that I would say that the police are operationally independent of government, but the review and the investigation will take their course.
(2 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, I understand that all direct awards are listed in the contracts finder area of GOV.UK. On skills, as I said, this was a particularly novel incident and that is why the STA, which is very restricted in its use, was used in this case.
My Lords, my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti is right. The shocking daily revelations of the number of accusations of social misconduct against police officers, including rape, and the finding of the Met’s institutional obstruction of investigations into Daniel Morgan’s murder demand that any inquiry into the Sarah Everard murder should be a statutory inquiry.
On the original question, what was the complexity? The Home Office has 40,000 civil servants—half the size of the Army. What was it that compelled it to engage the services of a crisis management firm to deliver “debriefing exercises” for staff following incidents? Why did it have to call in the military to collect data on Afghan refugees living in hotels when it lost control of their numbers?
I fully support my right honourable friend the Home Secretary in announcing that the inquiry would take place. The details of that will be announced in due course. Among the complexities was the number of agencies involved. Of course, things such as the potential for danger to life are critical in these situations—as, indeed, is learning the lessons of such novel incidents.