Coronavirus Act 2020
Viscount Ridley Excerpts(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Viscount Ridley (Con)
My Lords, whether we approve of these restrictions or not, and despite the relaxations of last summer, we should be honest with ourselves and admit that, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said, this remains one of the most illiberal pieces of legislation the House has had to consider since the days of Oliver Cromwell. Actually, Oliver Cromwell abolished this House, so that might not be true.
That it will extend into 2022, two years after the rules first came into force, is alarming. It surely reminds us that the Government made a mistake when they declared an emergency under health legislation rather than the Civil Contingencies Act. Under that Act, we would be able to revisit these regulations much more frequently—monthly rather than six-monthly. When he winds up, will my noble friend express the strongest possible commitment—and hopefully promise—that this is the last time we will extend these regulations?
I am the first to admit that we are not out of the woods. Infections, hospitalisations and deaths remain higher than we would like, although far lower than even the most optimistic of SPI-M-O’s models published in early September—yet another failure of modelling, I am afraid. Already, the recent mini-wave, which is mainly happening among children, seems to have peaked. I urge the Government to resist the increasingly noisy calls for another mandatory lockdown, vaccine passports and mandatory mask-wearing. We can get through this winter with faster vaccinations, especially boosters, and sensible voluntary measures. Remember that, thanks to vaccines, the overall mortality rate for people who get Covid-19 is now down to about 0.1%, as low as flu.
Of all the measures taken, by far the most effective has been vaccination. Lockdowns have undoubtedly also helped but at a brutally painful cost. All other interventions have, as far as I can read from the evidence, proved either surprisingly ineffective, such as handwashing, or ambiguous at best, such as face masks. I want to focus on face masks and the argument for making them mandatory.
I am completely open-minded as to whether face masks help; they might or they might not. I have been willing to wear them. I favour them on precautionary grounds and if anybody can present me with a decent study on their effectiveness, I will read it and shout it from the rooftops. However, in preparing for today’s debate, I read a lot of scientific papers and I came up empty. The papers that purport to vindicate masks tend to be flimsy or flawed: they ignore the effect of other measures; they confuse correlation with causation; they compare apples with oranges; they rely on modelling rather than data.
For example, a meta-analysis commissioned by the WHO claimed that masks could lead to a reduction in the risk of infection, but the studies considered mainly N95 respirators in a hospital setting and not cloth masks in a community setting. Another study in the PNAS claimed that the correlation between declining infections and mask mandates was due to causation, ignoring similar declines elsewhere, and 40 scientists recommended that the study be withdrawn. Early in the pandemic, the advocacy group, #Masks4All, argued that Czechia had fewer infections thanks to the early use of masks. In reality, the pandemic simply had not reached eastern Europe by that stage. A few months later, Czechia had one of the highest infection rates in the world despite an early and strong mask mandate. A study in the US and another in Bangladesh were eventually withdrawn; a German study claiming to vindicate masks actually found no net change overall; a Canadian study claimed that countries with mandated masks had fewer deaths, but it compared very different countries and only the first few weeks of the pandemic. A review by Oxford University claimed that face masks are effective, but it looked at healthcare settings and not community settings—and so on and so on.
Meanwhile, the studies that are well designed and carefully executed have all reached the opposite conclusion: that they cannot find evidence that masks help. An April 2020 review by the University of Illinois, a May 2020 article in the New England Journal of Medicine, a May 2020 US CDC meta-study on pandemic influenza, a July 2020 review by the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, an October 2020 randomised control trial with close to 8,000 participants, a November 2020 Danish randomised control trial with 6,000 participants, a November 2020 gold standard Cochrane review—sorry about this; I am nearly at the end—
Viscount Ridley (Con)
A February 2021 review by the European CDC, a July 2021 experimental study published by the American Institute of Physics and an August 2021 study published by the International Research Journal of Public Health all failed to find causation. It might be there; they are not saying it is impossible, but they have not found it. If somebody can produce a study showing a strong and significant effect of masks on transmission then I will change my mind, but it has to be a decent bit of work.
Talking of experts, Gary Lineker said of mask wearing on Twitter that
“the evidence is clear that it reduces your chances of catching Covid”.
Well, which studies is he referring to? He did not cite a particular study.
Yet surely it is common sense that covering your face must help. To some extent, I am convinced myself that it probably does. It certainly stops large droplets. However, one thing that we have learned in this pandemic is that decades of advice about how such a virus is spread has turned out to be wrong. We now know that the way that this kind of virus spreads is generally not through droplets, which masks stop, but through much smaller aerosols, which are essentially evaporated droplets. They go straight through or out the side of most masks. Catching aerosols with masks is like catching midges with a tennis net.
Masks can give false reassurance. Like my noble friend Lord Robathan, I went to a memorial service yesterday, albeit a different one. There were hundreds of people in the church. The organisers suggested taking a lateral flow test before coming, which was a good idea, and I did. They also said that mask wearing was a condition of coming and I did that too. So did anybody else. But did that give me and the others there just slightly too much reassurance? Risk compensation behaviour is a real phenomenon: motorcyclists drive faster with helmets on. Do people take slightly more social risks when wearing masks? I fear it is possible that they do, so it is not necessarily the right policy.
Masks signal that you care and that you are being careful. That is worth something, I admit, but is it enough to justify making them compulsory? I do not think it is. Again, I say this not because I want masks to be ineffective—I would much rather they were useful; I do not find them particularly enjoyable to wear, but I do not particularly mind wearing them—but I try to think with my head and not my gut. It is data that should guide us, not feelings.
I have one final point. I declare an interest in that I am about to publish a book about the origin of Covid—I might have mentioned it before. The fact we still do not know and that we most certainly cannot rule out that it was a lab accident, as my noble friend Lady Foster said, at the Wuhan Institute of Virology means that another such pandemic is possible and could happen any day. That fact alone will have encouraged rogue states and terrorist organisations to investigate the possibility of deliberately causing a pandemic. The UK Government have shown surprisingly little interest in this issue so far, leaving it to the American Government, the Chinese Government and the WHO, but as one of the leaders in scientific research in the world the UK Government should give it their attention. I ask my noble friend to put it in his no doubt very thick in-tray.
Ageing: Science, Technology and Healthy Living (Science and Technology Committee Report)
Viscount Ridley Excerpts(3 years, 2 months ago)
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Viscount Ridley (Con)
My Lords, it is an honour to follow that eloquent speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, and her strictures are well made. I begin by commending the noble Lord, Lord Patel, not only on securing this debate but on steering the committee through a vital and largely virtual piece of work. He did so with charm, wisdom and not a little fierceness when necessary.
The main issue that our report grapples with, as others have said, is the gap between health span and lifespan. We are spending longer living, but even longer dying. We would all like to live lives of perfect health until, one day, we drop dead, but it does not happen that way and the gap is not closing. I am horrified to hear the statistics from the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and that, as a 63 year-old, my health span is coming to an end. By largely or partly exterminating the quick killers, such as smallpox and heart attacks, we have left ourselves with slower killers, such as cancer and Alzheimer’s.
The first thing to say is that this is a problem born of success. The defeat of premature mortality is a spectacular triumph of modern medicine and we should not forget that. In my lifetime, global life expectancy has increased by about five hours per day; it has gone from 49 to 71. Let us not be so keen to complain about the failure to defeat the morbidities of old age that we forget to celebrate these unprecedented achievements. I am not wholly convinced that better leadership and accountability by government on the grand challenge would necessarily have made a big difference in the last few years.
As the noble Lord, Lord Patel, said, the central issue with which we grappled was how to close the gaps between health span and lifespan and between rich and poor. There are four possible ways to do it: we can teach young people not to get into unhealthy habits, such as obesity and lack of exercise, which will make them unwell in old age; we can learn to treat people’s illnesses better when they get ill in old age; we can diagnose illnesses better and earlier, as the noble Baroness said; or we can do research into the underlying mechanisms of ageing in the hope of finding preventive therapies. Today, I argue that, from what I heard in the inquiry, the first and second suggestions are unlikely to work very well; the third and fourth may be much more important.
I am a little cynical about public health advice to the young as a cure for old age. In the report, we say that
“a life-course approach to healthy ageing is to be commended”
and that
“There are advantages to adopting healthy lifestyles earlier in life.”
But we lament that
“We heard differing views on whether young people tend to engage with the issue of healthy ageing”,
which is a bit of a euphemism, yet we recommended
“regulatory and fiscal measures, actively to encourage people to adopt lifestyles that support healthy ageing”.
That would all be great, but do we really think that we can tell the young that they must drink in moderation now to prepare for a sedate old age, free of illness, or that they will believe that we can deliver that promise? After all, lots of us adhere to Hunter S Thompson’s advice, even in middle and old age:
“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ‘Wow! What a Ride!’”
We sort of admit in this report that solving the problem of the gap between health span and lifespan through public health advice is not working but say that we should do more of it.
On treating people’s illnesses better, we rightly focused on multimorbidity. One doctor treats one symptom, another treats another and the fact that the patient has five things wrong with him at the same time either is ignored or, worse, leads to multiple medications that interfere with each other. “Polypharmacy” was a word that I learned during this inquiry.
I like to think that we can reform healthcare in such a way as to do better at this, but it will be a Sisyphean task, because the rise of multimorbidity is, to some extent, an inevitable consequence of defeating premature mortality. Someone with multiple organs failing at once is simply expressing their biological sell-by date. It is an interesting fact that when supercentenarians—people older than 110—die, they generally just fade away with no particular cause. The machine just stops. Even cancer cells struggle to keep going in their elderly bodies.
By the way, an even more interesting fact is that, while the number of people reaching 100 goes up and up all the time, the number reaching 115 remains extremely small and has hardly changed in decades. There really is a sell-by date on human life. Jeanne Calment, who is the only person to get past 119 and supposedly died at the age of 122 in the 1990s, had probably swapped her birth certificate with her mother’s, we now think. There is currently one 117 year-old and one 118 year-old woman alive in the world and no man older than 113, I think. For those worried about pensions, it is a good thing that we just ain’t going to live to 150—not without genetic engineering, at least.
That leaves diagnosis and research. I genuinely think that the best thing we can do for the elderly and the best way to help to close the gap of social inequality is to diagnose people’s ailments sooner. It disappoints me that this country does not seem as keen on early diagnosis as other countries sometimes are. As for research, like the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, I am convinced that Britain, with its terrific bioscience expertise, has a great opportunity to make a huge contribution to the underlying science of ageing. Therein we might find a way to treat people either with senolytic drugs or with telomerase to give them the bodies of 40 year-olds in their 80s, followed by a sudden death at 110. That seems a noble goal, which the Government should heartily embrace. In his reply, will the Minister tell us what the Government are doing to support ambitious research into both the mechanisms of ageing and the value of early diagnosis?
Covid-19: Wuhan Institute of Virology
Viscount Ridley Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Viscount Ridley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the possibility that the COVID-19 virus escaped from a laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Bethell) (Con)
My Lords, with the increasing threat of zoonotic diseases crossing the animal-human divide, learning how Covid was transmitted to humans and is spread is absolutely crucial to preventing future pandemics. The much-delayed WHO-convened Covid origin study reported on phase 1 of its investigation in March. The report made recommendations for further studies. The Government’s belief is that it is vital that phase 2 of the investigation does not face the same delays and that it is given full access to the data necessary for the next part of its work.
Viscount Ridley (Con)
I thank my noble friend for that Answer. Viruses like this have not been found near Wuhan in bats or any other animals. The closest relative to this virus was brought to Wuhan by scientists from 1,000 miles away to a laboratory that had been manipulating SARS-like viruses for 15 years. There it was sequenced in 2017 and 2018 in a biosecurity level 2 laboratory. Most of that information was found out by independent investigators, not volunteered by the Chinese authorities. Will my noble friend unequivocally condemn that lack of transparency and join other nations in calling for a full and independent investigation? Will he clarify who is in charge in the British Government of answering that question?
World Health Organization: Pandemics
Viscount Ridley Excerpts(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her tribute to the Hygiene and Behaviour Change Coalition. I cannot offer guarantees from the Dispatch Box on its future funding, but I will inquire about the matter. As the noble Baroness suggests, it sounds like a fascinating and important project.
Viscount Ridley (Con) [V]
My Lords, after last month’s embarrassing Potemkin investigation of Wuhan, will my noble friend the Minister ask the WHO to insist that the Chinese Government release the genome sequences of eight bat viruses of the so-called 7896 clade held in the Wuhan Institute of Virology database that are known to be very closely related to SARS-CoV-2 and may hold critical clues, but which they refuse to release?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, we are extremely hopeful for the IPPPR process, and we have supported the team in its desire to get to the bottom of its investigations. I do not know the specifics of the bat viruses to which my noble friend refers, but I reassure him that the British Government are leaning on the WHO as hard as we possibly can to make the most of this important investigation.
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers) (England) Regulations 2020
Viscount Ridley Excerpts(4 years ago)
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Viscount Ridley (Con) [V]
My Lords, this is not an argument between tackling the virus and ignoring it, as my noble friend the Minister put it in his opening remarks. It is about whether, if one wants to change people’s behaviour, one chooses persuasion or compulsion. In this country, the theme behind our long migration from royal dictatorship to parliamentary democracy is that we think it possible to persuade people to do socially responsible things—not just because we recognise the rights and liberties of individuals but because it works better. Compulsion is often inefficient and counterproductive as well as cruel.
Why have we suddenly abandoned this for a purely authoritarian approach? Command and control, whether in the Ming Empire or in modern North Korea, always lead to misery, not because the commissars were not clever enough or not paid enough but because it is an impossible task to encompass in detail the complexities of deciding how society should be organised from the top down.
I fear that the current approach is taking away people’s agency, undermining their sense of responsibility and preventing them facing up to the challenge of stopping the epidemic through their own actions. As my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe said, all the hard work that firms did to make their workplaces safe has effectively been snubbed. We have Ministers and officials trying to devise minutely prescriptive rules about whether a scotch egg is a meal, whether Monopoly is safe to play, how long one can linger over a pint or whether one should take one’s own serving spoons to Christmas lunch with one’s relatives. I quote paragraph 14 of the legislation published yesterday:
“For the purposes of this paragraph, a ‘table meal’ is a meal eaten by a person seated at a table, or at a counter or other structure which serves the purposes of a table and is not used for the service of refreshments for consumption by persons not seated at a table or structure serving the purposes of a table.”
That is reminiscent of the sumptuary laws of the Middle Ages on who was allowed to wear what.
Konstantin Kisin, a comedian, said yesterday,
“I followed the rules during Lockdown 1.0 to the letter. I followed rules that made sense to me during Lockdown 2.0. I will openly disobey any further attempt at lockdown”.
Command and control stirs bloody minded recalcitrance, alienates people from the police and officials, foments conspiracy theories, fuels quack beliefs and boosts anti-vax nonsense. We need evidence that this authoritarian approach does more good than harm. SAGE published a document on 22 October to justify the closure of most pubs and restaurants. Christopher Snowdon of the Institute of Economic Affairs went through the eight footnotes in the section on epidemiology and found that each referred to a study that gave little or no support, directly or indirectly, to the argument that pubs are a problem. One of them is about traditional markets, religious gatherings and wedding parties in Indonesia, for example—it is not about pubs at all. The new legislation for tiers ends with this line on page 75:
“No impact assessment has been prepared for these Regulations.”
As my noble friend Lady Noakes said, the impact statement rushed out this weekend erects a ridiculous straw man that the only alternative is chaos: an exponential increase in infection and the overwhelming of the health service. Yet the increase has not been exponential since early October at the latest. Just four hospitals are currently busier than they were this week last year. That is partly because many of the Covid cases in hospitals are being caught in hospitals. It need not be this way. There are lots of places in the world that are controlling this virus with moderate, pragmatic and flexible initiatives that focus on what matters and do not try to define scotch eggs. To quote this week’s Spectator:
“Sweden believes that people, if treated like adults, tend to heed advice—so compulsion and lockdowns are not needed to control a virus in a mature democracy.”
Sweden has had no more death than Britain per head of population, and a far less severe economic shock, a far smaller increase in debt, and a far less brutal impact on the physical and mental health of people. Other Scandinavian countries have been almost as flexible. The Danish people have rejected a dictatorial law. A new study in Frontiers in Public Health has concluded that neither lockdowns, nor lockdown stringency, achieve lower death rates. It analysed data from 160 countries over the first eight months of the epidemic.
The pattern of excess deaths this autumn, occurring in precisely those areas that largely escaped the virus in the spring, points to an obvious explanation: that the virus naturally depletes the more susceptible population and then fades with very little help from lockdown. I have great respect for my noble friend the Minister, and for this Government’s brilliant work on securing vaccines, but I think he and his colleagues have been badly let down by their advisers who, as my noble friend Lord Lilley said, bounced them into this second lockdown with the most misleading and outdated set of charts ever used to influence policy. Unless the Minister shows us clear evidence that these new tier restrictions will do more good than harm, I will be voting for a regret amendment tonight because I think there is a better way. As the young journalist Tom Harwood put it yesterday,
“We mustn’t forget all that makes life worth living. After this the govt must repay a debt of liberty—with interest.”
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)
The noble Lord, Lord Farmer, has withdrawn so I now call the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley.
Covid-19: Transparency and Accuracy of Statistics
Viscount Ridley Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Bethell (Con)
The noble Baroness is right to pinpoint the sharing of data as being very important, and we have been as open and transparent as we can be. We publish an enormous amount of data. Just before this debate, I tweeted three of the main portals to the data, which there is not only an unprecedented quantity of but which is more up to date than could reasonably have been expected a few months ago, when such data was not available. Some of these decisions are made extremely quickly because the data changes so quickly. Sometimes, one believes that we are on track for one thing, and then the virus changes course and we have to change our policies accordingly. That is simply a fact of the challenge of fighting this virus: speed is of the essence, and sometimes it has been extremely difficult to do the kinds of consultation that the noble Baroness quite reasonably describes.
Viscount Ridley (Con) [V]
My Lords, my noble friend the Minister just said that the data changes quickly. Does he accept that all three datasets published towards the end of last week on reliable information on the number of positive cases, which is to say those of the Office for National Statistics, the government dashboard and King's College London’s COVID symptom study, all point to the second wave having already peaked and being on the way down, unlike the faulty models used to justify lockdown last weekend? Does he accept that this gives the Government every reason to pause the decision to impose a national lockdown and reconsider it?
Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions) (England) (No. 4) Regulations 2020
Viscount Ridley Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Viscount Ridley (Con) [V]
My Lords, I had wanted to spend my three minutes spelling out the potential alternative to lockdown, namely focused protection, because the Government have not taken it seriously enough. A staggering 45% of the UK’s Covid deaths have come among the 0.6% of people who live in care homes. That is where our efforts should be focused.
However, like others, I was so disturbed by what I have learned about the numbers used last Saturday to bounce us into lockdown that I must devote my few minutes to that issue. We were told that the virus is spreading faster than in the reasonable worst-case scenario. Like my noble friend Lord Lilley, I had to find out from Ed Conway of Sky News that the scenario was drawn up a long time ago in July and had absurd assumptions about the timing of the second wave. We were told that we could expect 4,000 deaths a day on a chart that did not even disclose where the projection came from. That is more deaths than have occurred on any day in any country, even those with vastly larger populations than ours.
The fatality rate of the virus is about 0.2%, as the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, said, and falling. Therefore, as my noble friend Lady Noakes said, 4,000 deaths a day implies 2 million infections per day, with the entire population infected within a month. That does not pass the common-sense test. What we were not told, and had to drag out of the secretive conclave of oracles known as SAGE, was that that was a nearly three-week-old projection that subsequently had been updated twice, producing much lower numbers which were ignored. The death toll was undershooting not just that model but all three projections shown on that graph. I echo the despair of the noble Lord, Lord Desai, at the performance of the models. They mostly still do not take into account matters such as the heterogeneity of infectiousness, whereby in each wave the superspreaders are depleted and the wave therefore crests, which is why Sweden now has almost no daily deaths, as my noble friend Lord Balfe said, after no lockdown.
It is not true, as my noble friend the Minister said twice in his speech, that the numbers are rising exponentially; they have not been for several weeks. Even by last weekend, and certainly today, it is clear that the second wave is peaking. Cases peaked in Liverpool, Nottingham, Newcastle and Manchester well over a week ago. As we have heard this evening, the King’s College data show that cases are now starting to nudge downwards nationally.
I have huge sympathy for the Government but, in the light of the failure to produce proper evidence for this measure, as my noble friend Lady Altmann said, the Government have every justification to pause this lockdown, with its inevitable products of further deaths from suicide, untreated cancer and heart disease and its miserable consequences of mental ill health, unemployment, bankruptcy and poverty, and go back and demand proper evidence-based graphs from SAGE.
Wuhan Novel Coronavirus: Threat to UK Citizens
Viscount Ridley Excerpts(4 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
I have a list of the current confirmed cases, which I am happy to place in the Library—it is probably not constructive to read it out—although the numbers are changing regularly. We are keeping travel advice and the monitoring of flights in and out of other Chinese cities under constant review. The advice at the moment is against all but essential travel to Wuhan. We will keep travel to other Chinese cities under close consideration.
Viscount Ridley (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend agree with one of the precepts of Darwinian medicine that there is generally a trade-off between virulence and contagiousness and that, in the world of viruses, if you want to spread by casual contact, it tends to help to keep the patient healthy and standing on their feet—as indeed I am with a cold at the moment? If this virus does spread from man to man—sorry, person to person—there is a chance that it may reduce in virulence and it is, therefore, important to keep in perspective the warnings that we give people. While we must not underreact to this, it is also important that we do not overreact and cause major disruption to the economy, as has occasionally happened with responses to previous incidences of influenza.
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
That was well put. Our view is that this is a proportionate and sensible response that is scalable and appropriate according to the evidence available. We will obviously be reviewing what is a new and emerging infection. Scientific understanding of the disease is evolving rapidly—essentially on a daily basis. We will obviously review the measures set out regularly.
It is important to set out what the symptoms are, in case anybody listening needs to understand. This is essentially a bad respiratory tract infection that could turn into pneumonia. At this stage around 2% of known cases have died. To compare mortality rates, SARS had one of 10% and Ebola 70%. That gives a level of perspective, but the picture is evolving and we will keep this under close review as the situation develops. Unsurprisingly, of course, within that context those at greatest risk are the vulnerable, the elderly or those with underlying health conditions, so the advice is to come forward if such symptoms occur.
Health: Vaping
Viscount Ridley Excerpts(4 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
The noble Baroness is an avid campaigner on this, and I commend her on the work she does on it. I would be delighted to meet her to discuss this, of course, but I am also pleased with the progress we have made in bringing forward clinical trials to improve the evidence base around medicinal cannabis.
Viscount Ridley (Con)
My Lords, my noble friend will be aware that this week sees the centenary of the prohibition amendment in the United States, a policy that resulted in disastrous health outcomes and a huge increase in criminality and was repealed within 10 years. Does she feel that history is being repeated with America’s policy of prohibiting vaping but not regulating it for product safety, resulting in a number of deaths caused by the illegal use of substances in vaping—contrasted with this country, where product safety regulation has enabled us to do safe vaping?
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
My noble friend has asked a comprehensive and pointed question. It is notable that e-cigarette use among young people in the United States has increased dramatically— 78% in high-school students and 48% in middle-school students. We have not seen that in the UK because of the very effective and tightly regulated methods we have brought in around advertising and access for under-18s, which have borne fruit. I am proud of the way in which we have managed that in the United Kingdom.
NHS: Automation
Viscount Ridley Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
The noble Baroness is correct to say that patients and clinicians have a right to expect their data to be held securely. Since the WannaCry attack in May 2017, we have taken steps to ensure that NHS security measures are of the highest standard. This includes £60 million to improve cyber resilience in local infrastructure, support for NHS organisations to update their Windows operating systems, procuring a new cybersecurity operations centre, and boosting the national capability to prevent, detect and respond to cyberattacks. We are also committed to achieving much greater operational visibility across all NHS digital systems. This is one of the ways in which we can respond to attacks. Lastly, we expect the highest ethical standards from all data-driven systems and that is why we have introduced the code of conduct for data-driven health and care technology. That is how we will ensure that we have some of the best AI and data-driven technologies.
Viscount Ridley (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend agree with one of the key points made by Professor Topol that one of the benefits of artificial intelligence is the “gift of time”, as he has put it? In other words, patients can spend more time with their doctor if certain more routine things are automated. Will my noble friend make sure that that is one of the key aims of bringing automation into healthcare?
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
My noble friend is right. One of the key recommendations is that by automating routine analyses such as radiology, diagnoses and pathology and routinely bringing in AI to sequence bed management, we will reduce the burden on clinicians so that they are able to see more patients. The review makes specific recommendations to help the workforce become more digital ready, which means increasing capacity and capability, and building the right environment. That is exactly what we have embedded into the NHS people plan and all that we are working on through NHSX.