Alistair Carmichael
Main Page: Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat - Orkney and Shetland)Department Debates - View all Alistair Carmichael's debates with the Cabinet Office
(1 year, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberThe hon. Lady will not find me criticising civil servants who are hard-working, who do their job, who are committed and who continue to provide tremendous expertise to our country, but I take issue with her earlier points. We take any allegations of bullying seriously, and we need to ensure that they are all followed up. I do not know if the same can be said of the Labour party—people in glass houses should not throw stones. I think there were more allegations even today about activity inside the Labour party. There was five years of antisemitism that was not addressed, and I do think the Labour party should sort out its own issues before trying to sort out the Government’s.
The UK’s genomics databases are not designated as critical national infrastructure. However, through our recently published resilience frame- work, we have set out how we will work in partnership across all sectors to ensure that they are individually resilient while also fully contributing to national resilience.
I recommend that the Minister reads the speech that Secretary of State Blinken made on Tuesday, in which he outlined the threat that the abuse of genomics databases poses not just to security, but to democracy as a whole. Contrast that with the situation in this country, where we now have a Chinese genomics giant opening a new lab. When are the Government going to wake up to the threat here?
I assure the right hon. Gentleman that we take these threats seriously. The point about critical national infrastructure is that we designate it in relation to things that are important to the safe and secure day-to-day running of the United Kingdom—literally keeping the lights on. That does not mean that we do not take very seriously the threats he outlines. It is something that I am raising with the Department of Health and Social Care, which is the lead Department for genomics.