"My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Markham and Lord Clement-Jones, for those responses and questions. The Government agree that this is unacceptable; it is an abuse of UK Biobank’s data and something that we take extremely seriously, and it needs robust, technical solutions.
"I thank the noble Lord for his questions, and I echo his points about the Front-Bench spokesmen on the other side. It is very clear that everyone has the same intent here, which is to try to sort this out, and I welcome those inputs.
"UK Biobank, for all the reasons stated, is expensive to run, and it is run with a mix of funding from government, charities and industry, with the major funders being the UK Government and the Wellcome Trust over many years. The principle of it has been to give access to …..." Lord Vallance of Balham - View Speech
"This is somewhat off topic. In terms of China, I think it is very clear that there are three possibilities for where Covid came from. One is that it was a natural infection that spilled over from bats, with billions of chances for that to happen. The second is that …..." Lord Vallance of Balham - View Speech
"I can absolutely assure the noble Lord that the Government will issue guidance. That guidance was in development anyway, and I expect it to come out within the next few weeks. I can also assure him that other platforms use secure data platforms where the downloading of data is not …..." Lord Vallance of Balham - View Speech
"Yes, we are very aware of the possibility that there are things on GitHub. There has been a GitHub issue related to this, which was identified earlier this year, and that will be part of what UK Biobank looks at. Going forward, that will not be possible because of the …..." Lord Vallance of Balham - View Speech
"That last point is fundamental: we must have trust. If we do not get trust, we lose the ability to use what is an extraordinary resource, so that has to be part of what is looked at here. It is absolutely part of what the board of UK Biobank is …..." Lord Vallance of Balham - View Speech
"Again, let me thank another participant at UK Biobank. One of the features I have found whenever I have met UK Biobank participants or visitors is how incredibly altruistic everybody is: they want to do it for the common good. That is a very common theme, and I am sure …..." Lord Vallance of Balham - View Speech
"Let me thank the noble Lord, Lord Tarassenko, and his wife for participating in UK Biobank, because the whole thing depends on that. He is quite right that, before 2024, the data was downloaded and people did their research on downloaded data. I have had this discussion with the chair …..." Lord Vallance of Balham - View Speech
"I thank my noble friend for the question. UK Biobank has identified the sites that were responsible for the leak. There were three institutions: the Second Xiangya Hospital, China-Japan Union Hospital, and Beijing Chaoyang Hospital. Those institutions have been contacted, to be dealt with as discussed. Sorry, I have forgotten …..." Lord Vallance of Balham - View Speech