Queen’s Speech

Lord Crisp Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak principally about the trade opportunities for the UK in health and health science, but I will also recognise the important work in health done by DfID and touch on the Government’s desire to be

“a force for good in the world.”

The UK is a world leader in health and health science and can strengthen that position still further in the coming months. Five years ago, the APPG on Global Health, which I co-chair, published a comprehensive report which mapped out the UK’s contribution to health globally. It showed that we are a leader in the four big sectors of: academia—by which I mean research and professional education; commercial activity, which is life sciences; government action through DfID and the NHS; and our great NGO sector. Overall, if we map out the UK’s entire contribution to health and health improvement globally, we see that we come second only to the US and beat it in some areas of research on some measures.

We will publish a follow-up, post-Brexit report at the end of this month. It shows that the UK’s position has strengthened in the past five years in many areas with, for example, a new life sciences strategy—a sector that is expanding very quickly, with a turnover of £74 billion; massively increased investment in research; importantly, new regional groupings outside the golden triangle of Oxford, Cambridge and London, in the north, Scotland, Wales and the south-west, which are linking NHS institutions and the great universities in those areas to develop more products and more research for the world; and recent ratings which show that we have the two top universities in the world and other ratings showing that we have three of the five best universities for medicine in the world, the best science journal in Nature and two of the four top medical journals in the Lancet and the BMJ. We also have enormous influence globally on health; for example, through tackling antimicrobial resistance and through international development. This is an impressive story.

These improvements are due in part to the very positive action taken by the Government as well as by health and science leaders in all parts of the UK. Of course, the one negative area is the risks associated with Brexit, of severing ties with European institutions and losing out on those research funds, and the difficulties in recruiting and retaining scientists and health workers. These are real risks, but if they can be managed successfully—I am being very positive about this in this speech—the scope for trade and exports from this sector, as well as increased influence and soft power, is truly enormous.

Our forthcoming report will call for the Government to work with health and science leaders to develop the UK as a truly global centre for health and health sciences—if you like, a go-to place for all aspects of health globally. I believe the timing for this is perfect. Health is the fastest-growing sector globally; science and technology promise new breakthroughs and the UK is very well placed, with its research base, to take advantage of them. However, this will require vision, leadership, investment and greater co-ordination to capture some of the synergies between these different sectors, as well as dealing with the risks I talked about and a whole host of issues, including the difficulty of getting visas for foreign scientists and others coming in to this country, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Risby.

If we get this right, the gains will be both financial and—vital in today’s dangerous world—in terms of greater UK influence as well as our commitment to achieving health for all and our work in international development. It is not always apparent that this is also about sustaining high standards globally in science and business which the UK upholds very forcefully; in other words, this is a demonstration of what the Minister talked about earlier—the UK being a force for good in the world.

The report makes a number of recommendations, but I will pull out just one: to realise the untapped potential of all those areas outside the golden triangle of Oxford, Cambridge and London, all of which now have bodies trying to bring together research from the institutions, the NHS and the universities, to get this underdeveloped and underutilised resource into play.

Finally, the UK is already known as a world finance centre, and I see no reason that it should not become equally well known as a global centre for health and health science. In fact, this is within our grasp and it would be to the benefit of the world and the UK. I ask the Minister, first, if the Government will support this approach and build up the UK as a global centre for health and health science, alongside their existing commitments to developing and strengthening the NHS and international trade. Secondly, will they ensure that the UK’s enormous strengths in health and health science will be at the heart of their preparations and subsequent negotiations for new trade deals?