National Security and Investment Bill

Debate between Lord Lexden and Lord Lansley

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

Noble Lords will be pleased to know that this is the last time they will hear from me in this Committee. My amendment is terribly simple. In so far as the annual report lists the number of final orders made, Clause 27 provides the power for the Secretary of State to vary orders or revoke them. One of the things that one might want an annual report to do is to enable one to understand the stock of orders as well as their flow. Therefore, I have suggested in Amendment 81 that the number of orders varied or revoked should be added to the list of subjects in the annual report.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

I call the guns of the noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead.

Medicines and Medical Devices Bill

Debate between Lord Lexden and Lord Lansley

Committee stage & Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 19th November 2020 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

The next speaker on the list, the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Lansley.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am in the position that my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy was in earlier, as much of what needs to be said has been said, but I want to add a few remarks on the two amendments.

I echo what my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy said. In the light of the First Do No Harm report, we have to be careful to address ourselves to the issues before us and put in place schemes of redress on the three causes. I am not an expert on those, but when I was Secretary of State for Health I was only too aware, when dealing with the Thalidomide Trust or infected blood payments, for example, that when we reviewed and made payments that were more generous, we were working in what was, in effect, an administrative structure that did not necessarily have coherence or consistency. We were making what we thought were the right decisions at the time, but those who had been harmed all suffered, from their point of view, from two problems. The first was the relative lack of generosity of the payments, which were made to reflect specific needs but were not representative of the overall harm that had been done. Secondly, there was no admission of liability, which is always an issue. Liability matters. Those who are harmed want to see liability determined and accepted.

I am sympathetic to the view that not only should redress schemes be considered for the three causes in the report, but the Government should take the opportunity to think about what a redress scheme might look like more generally. My noble friend Lady Cumberlege and her colleagues looked carefully at a number or international examples. They might well have thought, with some justification, that the French scheme—I will not attempt its title in French, but it is a national office for indemnity in relation to medical accidents—is an interesting basis on which to examine the issue. We might include not only the redress schemes from previous years but the present schemes that need to be established. This is something that Ministers might want to say in relation to the continuing review into infected blood accidents.

Again, like my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy, I do not want to confuse what are related but distinct issues. The schemes relate to what are, in effect, systemic failures. Recommendation 3 of my noble friend Lady Cumberlege’s report appropriately says that the schemes are to provide redress in relation to avoidable harm resulting from systemic failures. There is a question, which is not entirely resolved in the report, about which test should be applied. The Government should look carefully at where liability genuinely lies. Where there is harm as a result of systemic failings, the Government have a responsibility. That is fairly straight- forward. However, that is not the same as assuming that such a scheme should encompass all the many other cases that give rise to most of the clinical negligence claims against the NHS, which result not from systemic failings but from the failings of medical practice in particular circumstances. Those are different and separate. This debate is not the right place to go on about that at length.

I was interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, talk about the NHS Redress Act 2006. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, will recall that in 2009 she was not able to bring that Act into force. I was the shadow Secretary of State during the passage of that Act and Secretary of State after 2010. One reason for not bringing it into force, to which my noble friend referred, was the Government’s intention to undertake tort law reform in general and this was a tort-based liability scheme.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

My Lords, I have received no request to speak after the Minister, so I call Lord Sharkey—

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I sent an email.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

With apologies to the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, who does wish to speak after the Minister, I now ask him to do so.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I thank the Deputy Chairman. I sent the email only about 30 seconds ago so I suppose, strictly speaking, that apologies on his part are not required. I should have anticipated the need to ask a question, but I am afraid I was prompted by listening to the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, and the Minister’s reply. I want to ask one question: how can what will become Section 1 be brought into force without Section 2? I do not understand. If a power is to be used under Section 1, it must surely make provision about some of the long list of relevant areas in what will be Section 2. In the absence of Section 2 being in force, I cannot see how Section 1 works.

Medicines and Medical Devices Bill

Debate between Lord Lexden and Lord Lansley

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 26th October 2020 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

My Lords, I have received no request to speak after the Minister, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, to conclude the debate on this group.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am most grateful to all noble Lords who participated in this debate, which I thought was very good, with a lot of points well made, including points by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. There were good points throughout, with hardly any that I would take issue with.

Both the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy will have anticipated some of the arguments that we can perhaps develop a little further when we come to Amendment 28. It may enable us to cut to the chase, as it were.

I was prompted, in listening to my noble friend and the noble Lord, to wonder what the collective noun is for former Health Ministers. I had always imagined that the appropriate collective noun for those who leave the job was a “release” of Health Ministers. I was struck, after today’s further discussions, by the thought that maybe we should be called a “frustration” of ex-Health Ministers. In every case, we know that we have become enmeshed in and, generally, absolutely fascinated by and engaged with all the issues that we get involved in in the Department of Health, but we never stay long enough to see them through in the directions that we wanted them to go or the conclusions that we wanted them to reach. Perhaps when we come to Amendment 28, I shall have a chance to talk about value-based pricing, which was something that I started but which did not happen after I left. I am thinking in this particular instance of the December 2011 report on innovation in the NHS. Many of the things that we have been talking about today were there nine years ago and continue to be there today, and we need to keep pushing forward with them.

In that context, what my noble friend the Minister said by way of reply about the consideration that the medicines regulator should give to the availability of medicines will certainly cover the ground. If, for example, the NHS makes it clear that it wants earlier access or what we might think of as breakthrough designation for medicines, that will definitely get into the “availability of medicines” consideration, so I take that point entirely. I am grateful for her explanation about the requirements laid on Ministers where they engage in consultation—that satisfies that factor.

I am particularly grateful that we have a date for the medtech funding mandate. I am glad that we are making progress. I know that that will mean that it is not subject to the vagaries of the Covid-19 crisis, which has delayed so many of the objectives that we were hoping to progress during this year and next. For NHS England, it is important. It will enable it to look after patients more effectively and potentially save costs. I am grateful to my noble friend for that. With that positive response, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 17 withdrawn.

Trade Bill

Debate between Lord Lexden and Lord Lansley

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 29th September 2020 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

My Lords, I have received two requests to speak after the Minister, from the noble Lords, Lord Lansley and Lord Purvis of Tweed. I call the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, first.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for the assurances, although I note his powder is as yet dry in relation to some of the subjects we will discuss later.

If I may make a point about what I am looking for from my noble friend, it is very clear that if future trade agreements—not continuity agreements—give rise to a requirement for changes in domestic legislation that are of significance, that must be achieved by bespoke primary legislation. I am sure that is what he intended by what he said. That is why, I am afraid, the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, said about Amendments 10 and 103 is wrong, because they would, in effect, create a super-affirmative procedure for the implementation into domestic legislation of future trade agreements. We do not want that. We want it to be done by primary legislation because then it is capable of being amended.

We have to keep in mind, as we go through this, that there is a clear difference: ratification of a trade agreement is not the same as changing our domestic law, as my noble friend just said. Therefore, the CRaG process does not change UK law; what it does is enable the Government to ratify, or not to ratify, a trade agreement or an agreement into which it has entered. That is the distinction that we have to continuously keep in mind: the CRaG process is not changing UK law; it is determining on what basis we have agreed with another country. If we then need to change our law, we must do it ourselves, and Parliament will have the ability to decide in what terms we do so.

Brexit: Road, Rail and Maritime Transport (EUC Report)

Debate between Lord Lexden and Lord Lansley

Monday 21st September 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, who asked a lot of interesting questions. I look forward to my noble friend the Minister’s response to some of them.

On her latter point about the impact of the internal market Bill, I am not an expert on this but it seems that we are all trying to reconcile the fact that there must not be a hard border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland or between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. We could try to reconcile that in the way that the European Union might do, in a legalistic way—that is, by saying that, if there is an absence of border checks between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, there must be border checks between the Province of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. That is a legalistic but misplaced view. But, equally, it is a misplaced view on our Government’s part to think that they can simply dispense with the requirement to know, and have some evidence of, whether goods that are leaving Great Britain for Northern Ireland are genuinely at risk of entering the single market elsewhere beyond Northern Ireland. We will have to deal with that issue and, no doubt, we will have many hours of debate on the internal market Bill to try to resolve it—but it has not been resolved in over a year, which is why the former Prime Minister, Theresa May, resorted to the backstop. Perhaps I am in the minority, but I thought that she did a rather good job of putting the backstop together. But there we are—it is too late now.

On the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, I note that the Irish Times published an article today reporting that the Irish Road Haulage Association is looking for a daily direct ferry link from the Republic of Ireland to Le Havre because it is so anxious about depending on access for its hauliers through Great Britain and across the channel links. I am sorry that it thinks that, and I am sorry that confidence in hauliers’ ability to come and go between Great Britain and the continent of Europe is so lacking. That is what we need to deliver.

Noble Lords talked about road issues; I will do so too. I am confident that I can focus on that issue knowing that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is to come next. He will say far more about rail transport issues and will do so far better than I possibly could.

As a former member of the EU Internal Market Sub-Committee, I want to say how much I appreciated the excellent chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. He did a fantastic job, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, as his successor before the committee was wound up and redistributed. The report we are debating was extremely useful at the time. I do not imagine that we would have thought a year ago that it would be as useful now—but I think that it probably is. Many of the questions derived from the report are exactly as relevant now as they were a year ago; it is just that there is now so little time now to deal with this matter. It must be dealt with rapidly.

I will not reiterate all the questions, but I want to add one or two points of my own. First, important as hauliers’ permits are, the number one issue is hauliers being able to move through borders speedily and with minimising the delay. We knew, and discovered during the course of our evidence-taking, that the cumulative impact of additional delays on the part of hauliers through the port of Dover, for example, would accumulate exponentially. Unfortunately, we are all beginning to discover what exponential trends look like, and they are potentially extremely damaging. The issue is not simply about permits or customs—it is about the smart freight system. That clearly was at the heart of the reason why the Road Haulage Association only very recently, after a meeting with the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, said that the Whitehall meeting was “a washout”. I think that it was about a lack of clarity about the delivery of a smart freight system.

May I make a further suggestion? It is difficult now to put in place systems that rely on information technologies at very short notice. But for a long time we should have been preparing a trusted trader scheme that would allow the people taking goods across to the continent to do so with much-simplified customs requirements. In particular, it would allow for those border requirements to be made before the hauliers arrive at the port, minimising the checks that need to be made at the port itself. That is what happens with the authorised economic operator scheme but, important as it is, that scheme is far too complex and costly for most small businesses to deal with. It is clear that a simplified version of the scheme should be put in place. The legislation is available: the relevant section on authorised economic operators in the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act allows different classes of authorised economic operator to be specified by Her Majesty’s Commissioners for Revenue. So, even now, such regulations could be put together and put in place before the end of the year.

Many noble Lords talked about the availability of permits, in the absence of the community licence scheme, following the completion of the implementation period. We know from evidence given to us that what was available under the European Conference of Ministers of Transport represented only 5% at best of transport needs. So far, there is nothing in what the Commission has published, including its notification to member states on 9 July this year, to indicate that it will make any substantial number of additional permits available. We must therefore be aware that this is not dependent on a Canada-style free trade agreement between us and the European Union since, by definition, Canada does not have any such agreement. It is a separate agreement. A suite of agreements will need to be reached between ourselves and the EU. We should not take the view that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed; we should be getting on and agreeing some things. In this context, although the mandates of the two sides clearly differed, compromise is of the essence. In this area, compromise in making additional permits available for UK hauliers, and for UK hauliers to understand the scale of the permits available to them, would make an enormous difference. The sooner that is done, the better.

I have one final point, on private motoring, in which I suppose I have an interest as, I guess, we all do in one form or another. We understood that international driving permits may, or may not, enable us to drive freely across Europe, depending on the relationship with member states. As others have done, can I ask my noble friend to tell us much more about what the department has done to arrive at bilateral agreements with member states? The Commission’s notification in July said that driving licences

“will no longer benefit from mutual recognition under Union law”

but

“will be regulated at Member State level.”

However, it referred only to member states that are contracting parties to the 1949 Geneva Convention on Road Traffic, whereas we heard evidence that we also need to be aware of the 1968 Vienna Convention on road traffic. In any case, I suspect that what is required is a set of bilateral agreements, so the question is to what extent are those bilateral agreements in place.

Finally, I reiterate the point made by my noble friends who were members of the committee. It is clear that many EU hauliers derive substantial economic benefit from bringing goods to this country and engaging in cabotage in this country. On the face of it, it seems to me perfectly clear that EU member states would want there to be a mutual agreement that would allow many EU hauliers to continue to provide haulage services to and in this country; the permits required for UK hauliers on the continent of Europe are, by comparison, relatively modest in scale. Therefore, it seems to me that there ought to be an agreement available. If the arrangements break down and we are in a position where our hauliers cannot go to the continent and continental hauliers—in particular, eastern European hauliers—cannot act in this country, everybody will lose out, including many of our businesses that rely on eastern European hauliers.

Last Thursday morning, I was on the A14 heading west. Every other large truck that I passed or that passed me was from Poland, principally, or Slovenia, Romania or Bulgaria. Eastern European hauliers are here in their thousands, and we want them to be here because we do not have the haulage capacity to replace them. Therefore, we need this part of our suite of agreements with the EU to be put in place as fast as we can.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

I call the next speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. Lord Berkeley?

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

His train is late!

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

Can the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, unmute?