UK Biobank Data

Lord Patel Excerpts

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

This is somewhat off topic. In terms of China, I think it is very clear that there are three possibilities for where Covid came from. One is that it was a natural infection that spilled over from bats, with billions of chances for that to happen. The second is that an infection was taken into a lab and there was a lab leak at some point. The third is that it was designed in some way. I think that the last of those is very unlikely indeed, and that is what most people think. We cannot really distinguish between the first two by any other way than biosecurity services.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply on the Statement, and I commend the Government for taking immediate action when this data breach was known. Last Tuesday, the Science and Technology Committee took evidence from the chief executive of UK Biobank, and some of the issues brought out today about data security were brought out then. Two days later, we got the news about the Chinese data breach. The lessons here are about public confidence in other research. The Minister referred to the Health Data Research Service that will soon be established and the Genomics England data. Can he assure us that the public can have confidence that those two organisations sharing their data will be secure and that the Government will issue new guidance to every organisation that will use health data for research purposes?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I can absolutely assure the noble Lord that the Government will issue guidance. That guidance was in development anyway, and I expect it to come out within the next few weeks. I can also assure him that other platforms use secure data platforms where the downloading of data is not possible. There was a rather unusual situation with UK Biobank where the data was downloadable, which is not true for many others. We absolutely need to use this to build confidence that these data are properly looked after and used for the purposes for which they were given.

Quantum Technology

Lord Patel Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The short answer is yes, and noble Lords will hear more about that shortly. All those things are critical. We have a good skills programme. There was a good report in July last year to deal with that. We are looking at options, including the use of procurement to make sure that this technology is pulled through.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, with the leading position that the UK has in quantum computing, what plans do the Government have for translational research, particularly in the areas of drug discovery, pharmaco- kinetics, next generation imaging and compute power, which will be needed to deliver on artificial general intelligence?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The noble Lord asks an important question. Quantum computers will be best for quantum problems. Drug discovery is a quantum problem, so it is exactly the sort of area for which this will be useful. We have five hubs specifically looking at both basic science and translation: a biomedical sensing hub dealing with imaging and other areas, including blood testing; a sensing, imaging and timing hub in Birmingham; an integrated network hub in Edinburgh; a quantum computing hub in Oxford; and a hub on position, navigation and timing. These are all about pulling the technology through in due course.

UK Research and Innovation: Ethnic Minorities

Lord Patel Excerpts

Monday 15th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

UKRI is clear that, when it allocates grants, particularly for the studentships into doctoral training centres, those organisations should consider increased participation and any disadvantages on the grounds of ethnicity, disability, socioeconomic status or caring responsibilities. There are a number of schemes specifically designed to do that—and a number more were laid out in the White Paper—and the analysis of previous schemes has shown that they do have an effect. I referred to one from 1995, which had a very dramatic effect.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, as someone who cannot claim to have had his career held back, can I also say that the evidence is what is important here? It was evidence that scientists from ethnic minorities were adversely judged, despite their talent and the quality of their application, that led to this necessary positive action. The data clearly shows that. This is based on data, not on any ideological measure.

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for that comment, and I agree with it.

Internet Activity: Energy Use

Lord Patel Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I certainly accept the challenge from the noble Lord: as we wish to see the encouragement of data centres and the use and development of AI in the UK, clearly we want it to be sustainable. I make the point that, in the first place, newer cryptocurrencies use less energy than the original ones, and, secondly, that data centres are increasingly looking to energy efficiency methods. AI can be used as one way in which to improve our management of energy efficiency.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister said that current data centres use about 2% of total electricity generation. Can he quantify that in respect of how many terawatt hours are currently being used by data centres? With the Government’s ambition for AI and the development of more data centres, what will be the requirement in terawatt hours by 2030?

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, my understanding is that NESO has estimated that 7 terawatt hours will be used by data centres in 2025, rising to 22 terawatt hours in 2030 and to 62 terawatt hours in 2050. As a comparison, it expects annual electricity demand in 2050 to be between 533 and 700 terawatt hours.

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Lord Patel Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 9th March 2023 Lords Chamber

While the Bill sets out to promote a minimum service level, which will be delivered by named individuals, the consequences of the service level that we see in the NHS and what should be delivered as a minimum service level, or of what we see in fire and rescue services—we can equally spread that into signalling services in transport—mean that the Bill is effectively banning the right to strike. This Government usually have a workable majority in the Commons; they are fully entitled to bring forward a Bill that bans the right to strike. We in this House would then be in place to review that. The shame here, however, is that the Bill creates powers that would, in effect, ban the right to strike and it is dressed up as something completely different. The issue of minimum service levels conflated with that of current service levels is the crux of determining how many people, if any at all, would actually be allowed to strike under this legislation. I beg to move.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 18. Much of what I have to say will resonate with what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady of Upper Holloway, had to say. I am also grateful to my noble friend Lord Kakkar for adding his name to it. My amendment seeks to explore the logic of defining minimum staff service levels in healthcare, without first having a benchmark of what is an appropriate level of staffing that fulfils the needs of patient care and patient safety.

While this Bill is not about rights and wrongs of strike action, I will express my personal view that, as a doctor, I would never have withheld my service, no matter the circumstances. This Bill grants the Secretary of State powers to make minimum service regulations during a strike across several sectors, including health services. I will speak only regarding health services, as “health services” are not defined in the Bill, which makes the legislation very broad in scope. “Minimum service levels” are also not defined in the Bill but will be defined by the Business Secretary after consultation.

The focus of my amendment is patient safety. Legislation that imposes minimum service levels inevitably means a reduced number of staff expected to provide the same level of care. How can that not compromise patient safety? We seem to have forgotten the lessons from the Francis report, the Kirkup report and the Ockenden review—to mention some—all of which commented on patient harm caused by lack of staff. We are all aware that the health and care service is currently under immense pressure, as has been mentioned several times. There are unprecedented levels of workforce shortfall—around 10% of the total workforce—leading to 130,000 vacancies with over 50,000 vacancies in nursing alone. Staff are exhausted, morale is low and employers are having to pay out huge sums of money in agency fees.

My amendment prevents the Government introducing minimum service levels for health, unless they have, via primary legislation, first set out the appropriate legally enforceable staffing levels for health services on non-strike days. Without this, how can the service or, importantly, the patients know that care with reduced services at a minimum level is safe and will not result in patient harm? Daily, patient safety is compromised as a result of staffing problems. The NHS should be safely staffed every day of the week, as has been mentioned.

Is it even possible that minimum levels of service prescribed at national level could be universally applied? There are huge variations in the intensity and complexity of healthcare provided from one health region to another. Both Scotland and Wales have a legal requirement for services to be safely staffed. Why are the Government reluctant to legislate in a similar way in England? Health professional organisations, including the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Nursing and the Royal College of Midwives, have repeatedly called for this. We have debated this several times in this Chamber. Imposing minimum service levels, defined by the Secretary of State for Business, may end up having an effect that the Government do not want—being forced to legislate by courts for appropriate levels of staffing in healthcare.

While minimum service levels can be defined in some areas of healthcare, it is impractical to do it in clinical areas such as maternity, intensive care, A&E, acute surgical and medical care, to name but a few. In the debate on the group beginning with Amendment 3, the noble Lord, Lord Markham, suggested that health services in this Bill will be interpreted as life and limb services. If that is the case, it needs to be redefined in the Bill by a government amendment. In my 40 years of practice, life and limb situations meant all hands on deck; there was no such thing as a minimum level of service.

What assessment have the Government made of the effect that work notices will have on employer-staff relationships? Who would be blamed if there is a patient safety issue? There are no details in the Bill on what would happen if minimum service levels were not met on non-strike days. I have no doubt that the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, will speak in greater details about the unintended consequences of this. I hope the Minister will comment on what assessment the Government have made of possible legal consequences if services are staffed below the minimum prescribed level.

I fear that, in a rush to get the legislation through, there has been no thought given to how minimum service levels can be defined in clinical risk areas in the absence of first legislating on what is an appropriate staffing level and the risks to patient safety. As I mentioned, the Minister on the previous group, the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, already referred to the minimum service levels as “life and limb”. I hope the Government give further thought to appropriate safe staffing levels on non-strike days before bringing in any minimum service levels in clinical areas. I look forward to the Minister’s comments on the issues I have raised.