Lord Lucas
Main Page: Lord Lucas (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)Department Debates - View all Lord Lucas's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(4 years ago)
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Lord Bethell
The noble Lord, Lord Patel, will be interested to read the details of our ONS serology tests that have begun earlier this week, which will be published in mid-May. These are surveillance tests and will provide us with the information that we need to understand how the epidemic is developing. At the right time we will also bring in mass serology testing. However, as the noble Lord will be aware, when prevalence rates are around 3%, 4% or 5%, as they seem likely to be, serology tests for managing the epidemic are not relevant yet.
Lord Lucas (Con)
I am delighted that the Government are taking resilience seriously. Will my noble friend confirm that the Government will have a permanent stake in the facilities and the intellectual property that they are creating, to ensure that it stays here and is well maintained? Will he also extend the interest in resilience to pharmaceutical intermediates and generics, where we are also seeing problems developing which were also problems when we were contemplating no deal? There seems to be a strong argument for having a better set of arrangements in place in this country to ensure supply in difficult times.
Lord Bethell
My noble friend Lord Lucas is quite right about IP, although I bear testimony to the private companies and major corporations which have reacted incredibly generously and enthusiastically by supporting the Government during this crisis. Our supply chains absolutely need to be reviewed. Resilience is clearly more important now than it has ever been. When we look at the way in which our medical, pharmaceutical and device supply chains are put together, they will look quite different in years to come.