Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Lord Winston and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 9th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I add my wholehearted support to these amendments. Further education is all too often the Cinderella of the education world, yet further education colleges do an absolutely phenomenal job across a very wide range of students and subjects, so having them represented on this body is absolutely essential. I also support the adult and part-time education students, who form a critical and very important part of the student body. They have different sorts of views and needs from those who are the typical 18 year-olds going to university.

There is also the point that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, made about vocational and professional education, which often links very closely with higher education institutions but has a different sort of ethos and different cohorts of people. All these amendments to add to the membership of the OfS board are critical, and I hope that the Minister will look favourably on these amendments.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, I strongly support what the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, said about part-time students. We will come back to that subject in more detail during these debates. Of all days, today we should think about that really seriously. London has been brought to a standstill by a transport strike, and it is only a matter of time before the drivers of those trains, not merely the people and guards and the other people on the platforms, will no longer be working, because science and technology is advancing rapidly. That is a model for our society, and people will have to retrain.

In my 15 years’ involvement with Sheffield Hallam University, one thing that I have learned above all is that people taking part-time courses have transformed their lives in gaining skills, coming from relatively manual jobs, or jobs with a low level of skill. It is vital that we find every possibility of supporting those students. I urge the Government to consider that during the passage of this Bill. I also briefly defer to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and congratulate him on his interest in school students, which has been long-standing and of great importance.

From my experience, I cannot emphasise enough the lack of aspiration that so many school students have because they do not really believe that they can go to university. That is why it is so important that we have the bridge between school and university which this minor amendment would help to promote. There are all sorts of reasons why that is important. We may have the best school teachers in the world, but so many children go home to a desert where there is no aspiration. Their parents ask them: “Why aren’t you going out to work; why aren’t you earning money; why aren’t you supporting the household?”. It is extremely important to find ways of encouraging people from those sorts of backgrounds to understand that they should be considering further or higher education. Having people on this new body who can help universities interface with schools and teachers to give better career guidance would be a blessing and it should be incorporated in the Bill.

Medical Innovation Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Winston and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Friday 12th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Winston]

Before the noble Baroness sits down, I wanted, for clarity, to speak to two amendments at a time. I will speak to Amendment 13 in due course and say exactly what I meant. If the noble Baroness wishes me to speak to those amendments now I will do so.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

To clarify for the noble Lord, the amendments are grouped together, so he is required to speak to them in the group. He will, of course, have the right to come back at the end of the group and he may wish to include them at the end.

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[Lord Winston]

I am very happy to speak to those amendments now. They are very simple. The question of the dental practitioner is simply that dental practitioners also are involved in maxillofacial surgery and other treatments that may require innovation. With regard to other practitioners who are not medically registered, we are going to require more and more nurses and other workers with university qualifications who will be conducting treatments, and it is therefore important that we clarify whether they will be able to innovate.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I must point out to the noble Lord that it is not in order for him to speak twice to a group of amendments at Report stage.

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[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I notice that the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, has spoken to the amendments which the noble Lord, Lord Winston, did not speak to. I will seek advice from the Clerk as to whether the noble Lord may wish to degroup the amendments to which he did not speak. I think that that would be up to the noble Lord. For the convenience of the House it might be clearer if he degrouped the amendments to which he did not speak. Does the noble Lord, Lord Winston, wish to do that?

[Lord Winston]

It is very kind of the Front Bench to offer that possibility. If I were to degroup an amendment, I would degroup the stem cell one and put it with Amendment 5, as it would fit better with patient safety. One of my difficulties is that the groupings are slightly odd in terms of the relevance of the different aspects of my amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Winston]

In another place on Tuesday evening, there was an Adjournment debate moved by the honourable Member for Totnes, who is a qualified medical practitioner. In her outstanding speech, she raised serious concerns about the issue of patient safety. In particular, she cited her concern that patients, particularly those with cancer, may be at serious risk from quack practitioners who are offering a quick-fix solution for money rather than a course of authentic treatment, and possibly entering a clinical trial. The effect of this on cancer treatment could be disastrous. First, not only might we end up endangering patients by their entering a treatment that is not valid or appropriate. Secondly, research may be inhibited because we cannot fill the clinical trials needed to prove that cancer drugs are effective.

We are now in the age of genomic medicine. Genomic medicine means, more and more, that each cancer is different. Essentially, we are understanding that there are more and more mutations. As each of us in this Chamber gets older, we develop more and more mutations, so we are more liable to get different cancers in different cells. Of course, there are the common ones, but it is worth bearing in mind that more than 50% of cancers are actually quite rare. It is important to understand that each individual rare cancer makes a massive difference to life expectancy and health in Britain. Indeed, about one-third of us in this Chamber will suffer with a cancer and, on the figure I just quoted, roughly half of those will be rare cancers.

We are beginning to understand that each of these cancers can be targeted with a specific genomic medicine which may apply only to that cancer. A classic example was the case of vemurafenib, which was used for a rather unusual form of skin cancer and resulted in metastases massively drying up—but it would not work for other cancers, because the mutations were different.

It is imperative, as Cancer Research UK clearly says, that we get patients who are able to go into trials. Apart from the fact that it would be disastrous for the safety of the patients who are being treated irrationally by illogical treatments, there is also a question of patient safety generically for our entire British population. That is the purpose of the amendment.

I have focused on one area in my Amendment 13, which is the use of cells and tissues that are biologically derived. The reason I included that is because stem cells will clearly be an important use in future. Already, we are seeing practitioners setting up quack medicine which is not proven, where they are injecting cells into patients without proper validation. That is clearly dangerous. It is being used for dementia, some forms of motor neurone disorders and other neurological disorders, such as disseminated sclerosis. A number of cancer patients have also had these horrendous treatments. That is likely to burgeon, so it must be taken very seriously by the House.

We have to be absolutely clear that whatever we do, we do not endanger patient safety. There are some interesting examples in the history of medicine. The noble Lord, Lord Walton, who comes from Newcastle, told me yesterday that he is hugely against the Bill. He is very concerned that it will damage patient safety, but for health reasons—as your Lordships know, he is now 92—he felt unable to come down from Newcastle today. He reminded me of a case which I knew of way back in the 1950s. In Oxford, where he came from at that time, there was a Dr Honor Smith. Dr Smith thought that the injection of tuberculin into the spinal cord of patients with neurological disorders—in particular, with disseminated sclerosis—might alleviate their condition. In fact, it did not.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I apologise for intervening, but is the noble Lord now speaking to Amendment 13 as well? Is he speaking to Amendment 13 in this group?

[Lord Winston]

I am speaking to both.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

No, no. We are in the second group. The noble Lord is moving Amendment 2 in the second group, but he seems to be speaking also to Amendment 13 in this group. Is that correct? If it is, then other noble Lords will want to respond to Amendment 13 as well. Perhaps the noble Lord could clarify which amendments he intends to speak to in this group.

Media: Ownership

Debate between Lord Winston and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Wednesday 15th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Winston]

My Lords, given my noble friend’s justified concern about this issue, does the Minister not agree that BSkyB has performed a very important function in British broadcasting, increasingly in cultural as well as in sporting and news events, and that it does an important job in challenging the hegemony of the BBC?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. It is perhaps all too easy to overlook the fact that BSkyB performs a great service in the country and, indeed, that News Corporation has played a great part in media plurality over the years. It is to the credit of News Corporation that it is co-operating fully in the current investigation.