Queen’s Speech

Lord Willis of Knaresborough Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough (LD)]

My Lords, I warmly welcome this year’s Queen’s Speech, not particularly for its contents—though I accept that the more innovative proposals on pensions, small business, enterprise and employment are welcome—but for its brevity. If anything, I wish that there was even less of it, so that we could somehow burst the myth put about by successive Governments that quantity of legislation equals quality of government. It does not. Indeed, if volume were the route to success, the previous Labour Government would have transformed society. Under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s leadership, no fewer than 558 Bills were introduced, with a record 58 in one Session in 2005-06. No wonder they missed the signs of the recession when Ministers and civil servants were so busy preparing the next set of Bills. Despite record levels of legislation, our economy went into meltdown, our schoolchildren continued to be outpaced by those of our competitors, our health and social care system was at breaking point and crime increased. The legacy, according to former Health Secretary Alan Milburn in his report today, is that some 3.5 million children are heading for living in families with poverty by 2020.

Legislation was hardly a raging success, yet, sadly, my Government felt the need to follow suit, with 47 Bills in the first Session—though that was over two years. As before, education and health took priority, with a near obsession to create new and ever more complex structures of governance and delivery, accompanied by ever more draconian threats and punishments for failure. For our schools it is not structures, ownership, targets, threats or punishment that improve the life chances of the young; it is inspirational teachers, motivated parents, enlightened and appropriate curricula and trust, not denigration, from politicians. Exactly the same applies to the NHS, where overcomplex structures, created by often confusing legislation, often act as a barrier to innovation, not an incentive.

So much of what Ministers wanted to achieve over the past four years did not require legislation at all. It is somewhat ironic that arguably the most significant successes were not even central to the original Bills. Research and education barely featured as key priorities in the Health and Social Care Act, yet, to the credit of my noble friend Lord Howe, and due to the tenacity of Peers such as the noble Lords, Lord Patel and Lord Turnberg, and the noble Baroness, Lady Emerton, the establishment of a research-led NHS, the only publicly funded health service in the world to be research led, is now a reality. That is a huge achievement.

We have already seen the Health Research Authority drive purposefully through a sea of red tape and petty obfuscation to create a single point of entry for clinical trials. The HRA has simplified ethical approvals and, importantly, begun to eliminate the need for multisite approval for patient recruitment on clinical trials. The academic health science networks and the 13 new NIHR collaborations for leadership in applied health research are undertaking high-quality applied health research focused on the needs of patients across England, translating research directly into practice.

Similar progress is being seen in the development of the health and care workforce. With over 1.3 million staff performing over 300 different roles for more than 1,000 different employers, even beginning to think about how you plan and then train a workforce is daunting. Health Education England, within months of its establishment, is doing just that. Later this month it will produce its first workforce tool to allow organisations, whatever their size, and individuals, no matter how important or less important they feel they are, to seek out their training needs. That will include healthcare support workers, who will now be entitled to training and to have that training certificated, and will no longer be expected to deliver high-quality safe care without appropriate competencies.

Many of these initiatives have come not from legislation but from inspirational leaders who have been given the freedom to challenge, find solutions and simply get on with the job. I am delighted that the Government have learnt their lesson: fewer Bills and no new legislation on health and education. I trust that in a year’s time there will not be any either—but I suspect that I will not bet on it.

Immigration Bill

Lord Willis of Knaresborough Excerpts

Wednesday 12th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

There are two different categories of charge currently: that for students and that for everyone else. I just wanted to make that clear. The wording is general, but those are the two categories that the Bill is intended to introduce. On the question of whether paying the surcharge is mandatory, yes, it is for overseas applicants.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough (LD)]

Will the Minister confirm that the real purpose of the clause and those words is to open the gates so that at some time in future, UK residents could be charged for services?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

No, that is not the case, but they may be, as they currently are, charged for particular treatments. There are some medical treatments available in this country which are not available under the National Health Service. That would remain the case. That is not the purpose of that particular phraseology. As I have explained, it is to provide for the charging of different categories of migrants—students and others. That is the purpose of the wording. The National Health Service has always said that it will provide health treatment free at the point of use. The purpose of the charge is to put applicants on the same basis as every other resident of this country, so the anxiety that my noble friend expresses is ill founded. This is not the vehicle for introducing mass charging for treatment under the National Health Service. That is not the purpose of the clause and it will not be possible to achieve it through this legislation.

Scrap Metal Dealers Bill

Lord Willis of Knaresborough Excerpts

Friday 30th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I start by reminding the House of my interest as a district councillor for Pendle in Lancashire. I think that I should have declared the same interest in a previous Second Reading debate this morning, on the Prevention of Social Housing Fraud Bill. I apologise for not doing so at that time and do so belatedly now.

I, too, support all the past—and probably all the future—speakers in this debate in welcoming this Bill and supporting it. My noble friend Lady Hamwee said that we would hear lots of anecdotes from people about the situation in different areas and I am always reluctant to disappoint my noble friend. One of the main problems in my part of the world in east Lancashire is the theft of metal gully grates. That obviously causes great danger to people and expense to Lancashire County Council, which has to replace them. However, in many cases the county council refuses to replace them because they are in unadopted streets, and so potentially there could be, literally all over the place, very dangerous large square holes, particularly in back streets, which at this time of the year will be full of leaves and litter. In the event, it comes down to the borough council of Pendle and town and parish councils to put their hands in their pockets and provide the money for replacing the gully grates because relying on house owners and landlords to do so is an impossible situation.

There are also real problems with back yards in closely packed terraced streets, where people will simply take away anything that is left in a back yard, or they will go in and take pieces of the downspouts and the troughings—anything that they can come round and check out and then return at two o’clock in the morning to remove. I received an ironic telephone call fairly recently. Pendle council has a service for taking away washing machines, dishwashers, fridges and anything like that. You leave it out in the back yard, tell the council you want it removed and it comes and takes it away. Somebody rang me up and asked why the council was employing people to remove their washing machine at two o’clock in the morning. Of course, it was not the council but somebody who was taking it away and doing the council’s job for it. We hear accounts from the local police, who are obviously involved in all this, that raiding parties from over the border in Yorkshire often come and take away all this stuff. This seems to be their excuse, although it appears that people do come over the border from Yorkshire and steal our stuff. It is not just metal either. Metal theft is just part and parcel of a wider problem. This Bill is clearly restricted to metal theft.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

May I say that I object very strongly to these appalling assertions about the people of Yorkshire?

Health: Animal Testing

Lord Willis of Knaresborough Excerpts

Tuesday 4th October 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to enable the appropriate use of animals in health-related research.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, the coalition Government are committed to work to reduce the use of animals in scientific research through a science-led programme led by the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research. Stringent safeguards are in place to ensure that animals are used only where there is no other way of achieving the desired results.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

I thank the Minister for that helpful reply and in so doing declare an interest as the chairman of the Association of Medical Research Charities, whose members contribute over £1 billion a year to UK medical research. I wonder whether my noble friend agrees that if the UK wishes to remain a world leader in health and medical research, it requires its scientists to have access to good animal models that are well regulated and well cared for. If he agrees, what steps will he or the Government take on campaigns such as those led by Animal Aid, which tend to persuade the public that you can go straight to human trials rather than trial new devices and products through using animals? That is quite wrong and could be incredibly dangerous to the health of our research base.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for his underlining of the fact that there have been some misleading claims put out by organisations such as those he referred to. We obviously want to avoid using animals wherever possible but I think we all accept that if we want the National Health Service and modern medicine as a whole to function effectively, it is essential that we can test on animals and that we make sure that the availability of medicines and treatments has been developed or validated through research, with the appropriate use of animals where it is right to do so. Again, I am grateful to my noble friend for what he has had to say.

Drugs: Classification

Lord Willis of Knaresborough Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, the Government have confidence in the independent advice given by their own statutory commission and we trust that advice. I am inclined to agree with the comments just made by my noble friend.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the proposal that Professor Nutt and Professor Blakemore put forward in the Lancet and in the recent report is based not only on their own evidence but on peer-reviewed evidence? What evidence does the Minister have to say that the misuse of alcohol and tobacco, which appear in the top quartile of the list in that report, is less harmful and creates fewer deaths than the rest of the drugs in the classifications A, B and C?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, I suggest that there is a real difference between alcohol and tobacco, which taken in moderation are not harmful to society, and the drugs on the classified list. I am afraid that there is no consensus between the conclusions reached by Professor Nutt and the evidence that he took.