Covid-19 Inquiry

Lord Sentamu Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I am sure that all those who are asked will co-operate fully with the Covid corruption commissioner. I do not entirely share my noble friend’s view. I felt that the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, did acknowledge that there had been issues that led to some of the problems the UK faced during the Covid pandemic. My view is that all political parties have a role to work together to ensure that our resilience is as strong as it can be for the future. I hope that we continue to work on a cross-party basis to improve this country’s resilience, and that all noble Lords feed into the wider review on the UK’s resilience, which the Government are undertaking at the moment.

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, I hope the noble Baroness will forgive me if I did not hear properly, but I did not hear the answer to the question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Winston, about research. We have the best people doing research—some of them Nobel Prize winners—and their budget has been cut, and if this is not addressed pretty quickly they may leave and do it somewhere else. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, is here and that he deals with budgets. What are we going to do about the possibility of some of our best researchers deciding to go somewhere else where there is money that will allow them to do their research?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

Clearly, we want to keep the best researchers in the country here. With the best will in the world, and with the great forbearance of the team that has been preparing my brief, I have gone back on an almost minute-by-minute basis over the last two days to get points added to it. I committed to my noble friend that I would write to him about the specific points he raised in his question. I will be honest: I do not have the answer to that specific question here today.