Biosecurity and Infectious Diseases

Baroness Fairhead Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fairhead (CB)]

My Lords, I warmly welcome the Minister and join the House in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Trees, on securing this debate. I draw the attention of the House to my role at the Oracle Corporation. I also apologise in advance to the medical profession if I mispronounce any medical terms—sadly, I am not a qualified doctor, much to my father’s disappointment.

It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, and I will cover some of the same ground. The threat of infectious diseases is both demonstrable and significant. The threat is growing, as today’s debate and the forecast from the integrated review of security and the UK Health Security Agency confirm. I therefore welcome and support the Government’s response, with the updated UK Biological Security Strategy. The key, as in all such strategies, will be in its effective implementation.

For the purpose of this debate, I will focus on human health in two areas: data, including data security, and international co-operation. During the pandemic, multiple data sources were used creatively: medical, social and environment. The CDC used Google searches on symptoms, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, mentioned, we used nascent waste monitoring capability. Sometimes the data lagged events and was manually derived, such as claims data in the US, but had that real digital data been available, it could have enabled Governments and health authorities to pinpoint and target more effective ways of resolution. What is being done to improve our continued access to timely, digital, broad-ranging data sources? The security of that data, particularly personal medical data, and the public faith in its usage, is critical. What is being done to clarify the security ground rules and standards for such use? The Government have committed to building a national biosurveillance network. Now is an ideal time to start developing the rules of engagement.

As I said, access to personal health records will be key and the Government have correctly committed to using anonymised data, with only very limited exceptions. Encouragingly, recent poll evidence suggests that 81% of the public support health data sharing to develop new treatments, while 74% believe that they should be involved in how that data is used. As the issue is both technical and cultural, perhaps the Government could consider engaging now in a study to see which aspects the Government can support ex ante and begin constructive dialogue on those ground rules.

Beyond personal data, the Government must also identify and protect data at risk from hostile actors. By necessity, that must include dual-use technology and research. By their very nature, many of our extraordinary biotech advances have the capacity to do ill as well as good, as the noble Lord, Lord Rees, highlighted. If you can build a therapeutic protein that binds to a human receptor, you can also create a virus that does the same. The Government will not only need to establish clear standards but must require a very clear accountability at department level to enable timely responses. The aim must be for those responses to create the “biosurveillance door” referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Trees, while not crushing innovation from our brilliant life sciences and biotech sectors. I look forward to hearing from the Minister on those issues.

For data and data security, the presumption should be that we work with our international partners, because, as many of your Lordships have said, diseases recognise neither political nor geographical boundaries. Our international partners need to work with us to share their own data. Importantly, as the approach to data security differs around the world, they each must have the autonomy to decide what they share. In the end, we need to see whether we can have a ground rule for what data can be shared. In this area, perhaps modelling offers some opportunity, as it typically brings lower security risks. But to maximise the benefits of sharing, consistency in terms and approaches will be critical.

That brings me to the broader point of international co-operation. Our goal must be a global biosurveillance capability. During the Covid-19 pandemic, international data sharing increased dramatically. The UK played, and continues to play, a leading role in multinational organisations such as the World Health Organization and the OECD to help other countries. This is a vital area, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, highlighted. The origins of many infectious diseases are inevitably outside our shores, but a global biosurveillance network surely offers us the best chance to detect and understand outbreaks early, to minimise the effects of future outbreaks and to protect us today and for generations to come. I look forward to any update on the implementation of our biosurveillance strategy that the Minister can give.