Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Patel and Lord Lexden

Committee stage
Tuesday 6th July 2021 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, I must inform the Committee that if Amendment 5 is agreed to, I will not be able to call Amendment 6 by reason of pre-emption.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 35 under my name. The amendment is designed to have a body that will be representative of employers in a specified area. The Secretary of State must consult local education, business and enterprise groups, with the aim of ensuring that local employers are represented on the body. So it is a wide-ranging, all-inclusive probing amendment to ensure that there is a range of employers of different sizes, as well as local education groups. In that respect, I support Amendment 5 from the noble Lord, Lord Storey, which includes educational organisations. They should all be represented on employer representative bodies, which will be tasked with pulling together the local skills improvement plans. There are a number of amendments, already tabled, highlighting the need to expand the types of groups feeding into these plans to ensure that they truly represent the local situation and will be able to address any local skills challenges that there might be.

The concern that I believe all of these amendments share is that the Bill, as it stands, potentially gives too much power to a small group of employers in a local area that are not necessarily representative of the wider business community. The Bill currently also risks limiting the choices of young people as well as adults who want or need to retrain in terms of courses and training opportunities. There may be skills that we need nationally—to achieve, for instance, net-zero—which will not currently be required in the particular locality. As a result, no training opportunities may be available for young people who are keen to move into such careers.

I believe that the Bill should enable a truly collaborative approach to local skills planning, with a range of stakeholders to co-create local skills improvement plans. Taking that approach and making sure that the local policy ambitions link up with the national strategies and vice versa might be the right approach and put us in a good position to ensure that we have the workforce, the scientists and the engineers of the future to make the UK an economic success. With 6 million SMEs, some of them quite small and with very niche skills requirements, it might be appropriate that even their voices are heard.

Professional Qualifications Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Patel and Lord Lexden

Committee stage
Wednesday 9th June 2021 Lords Chamber

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

The noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, whose name is next on the list, has withdrawn from the debate, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Patel.

[Lord Patel (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I will try to be very brief; I know that the hour is getting late. I will speak only to Amendments 20 and 28, both of which were brilliantly introduced by the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town and Lady Noakes.

I will address what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, raised about the report of the House of Lords inquiry that I chaired on the long-term sustainability of the NHS. He is right: the key threats to this were the strategy for long-term workforce planning and social care. Neither has been addressed yet.

On Amendment 20, the regulator has no role in terms of workforce planning. As the Minister said, the Government also do not have any role in imposing any regulations on the regulator when it comes to recognising overseas qualifications. The regulator also does not have a role in terms of recruiting professionals from overseas; that is the business of the service. However, as we all agree, the regulations that the regulator makes for assessing qualifications, experience and any other measures of competence cannot be diluted.

I support Amendment 28, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes. If the Government were to take powers in relation to any regulations through any treaty, including trade treaties, that might dilute the regulator’s role in assessing overseas qualifications, experience and tests of competence, that would be unacceptable. That is the only time that regulators will have a role, in terms of being consulted in relation to workforce shortages.

Medicines and Medical Devices Bill

Debate between Lord Patel and Lord Lexden

Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 28th October 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Patel (CB) [V]]

My Lords, it is always very difficult to follow the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, because his speeches are always so powerful, convincing and well researched, so I do so with some hesitation. I absolutely agree with him that it is abhorrent that the plastinated bodies of human beings are used for commercial purposes in exhibitions. It is certainly not science, and I do not think it is art either. It should be banned, and I was surprised that the exhibition took place.

Tissue and organs were taken from children at the Alder Hey Hospital. I was involved in the subsequent inquiry and heard the harrowing stories of parents whose children’s organs—there were thousands of them—were taken and stored without their consent.

I was touched by and support the powerful speeches of all the preceding speakers. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, raised an important issue and I agree that his amendment is a modest provision asking the Government to look at the issue and to amend the Human Tissue Act if necessary. In the past, I chaired for four years the Medical Research Council’s ethics committee, and for more than four years I have chaired the UK Stem Cell Bank. I am also familiar with the research ethics committee—at one time I was its chairman—of the National Patient Safety Agency, which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, chaired before me, when it introduced a nationwide regime for examining consent through that ethics committee, which is now a statutory committee. Noble Lords have rightly said that the regulation of consent in the use of tissue and organs is strict in the United Kingdom. There is strict monitoring in the use of tissues for any purpose. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, alluded to the fact that the law on the importation of tissues is lax. If that is true, it needs to be examined. I have looked into the current law and at various websites covering human tissue importation and, in particular, the issue of consent. The noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, asked how we can be certain of the validity of the consent that was given. I agree it is an important point, and the Government should seriously consider Amendment 24.

On the issue of research, I will tell a story about HeLa cells. I do so not to immortalise HeLa cells, although they are immortal, but to immortalise the person from whom the tissue sample was taken on 8 February 1951: Henrietta Lacks—which is why they are called HeLa cells. She was a black American mother of five who developed extremely aggressive cervical cancer. She attended Johns Hopkins Hospital, in Baltimore, and a tissue for diagnostic purposes was taken from her cancer. The tissue was then passed on to a laboratory that was trying to culture cell lines. Ever since then, HeLa cells have been used all over the world to develop treatments in all kinds of therapies. For instance, Salk used them to develop the Salk polio vaccine. They were used to develop treatments for cancers, such as breast cancers. They were used for xenografts, again to develop cancer treatments. They are also being used to study aging processes. As our cells age they eventually become senescent and inflamed, which produces some of the chronic diseases that humans suffer from. That does not seem to happen with HeLa cells as regards telomerase, which controls the size of telomeres, which is part of the aging process. HeLa cells have been used for all kinds of purposes.

I have another concern about the commercialisation of tissue use. In advertisements on the internet—noble Lords can see them there if they wish—many commercial companies say: “We will supply tissues to industry for the testing of drugs”. What consent was given for the use of that tissue? Does the HTA have to give permission to import this tissue or ask where it came from? When the Government examine this issue I would only ask them to distinguish between tissues, organs and cell lines and ask why they should be treated differently. I do not say that regulation is not required; I am simply saying that, when it comes to importation, we need to have a clear understanding of why cell lines should be treated differently from tissues and organs. I support the amendment.

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

The noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, who is next on the list, has withdrawn so I call the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh.