UK Diagnostics Industry and Covid-19 Recovery

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (George Freeman)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Neale Hanvey) on securing this important debate and thank him for putting on record some serious points, which I have listened to and will read with great interest. I also pay tribute to his own personal experience as a respected professional clinician in the fields of oncology and adolescent cancer in particular. His bringing this different expertise to the House is hugely valuable and I welcome his input. I am grateful for this opportunity to respond on behalf of the Government.

The points the hon. Gentleman has made are probably better answered by someone from the Department of Health and Social Care, and I will raise them with the Department, particularly his points on infection control in the new post-pandemic landscape and on the importance of learning the lessons from the pandemic procurement emergency and the lessons for a sustainable and vibrant diagnostics sector. I also note the concerns he raised on behalf of his constituent, Craig Inglis, about investments, and the issues around Omega, the reliability of the lateral flow tests and the new pathogens. The point made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) was also well made: Belfast University in Northern Ireland is a diagnostics powerhouse. I am very well sighted on that in the heart of our science superpower and innovation plans, and I am looking forward to revisiting Belfast to see that work.

In the three minutes that I have, I cannot deal with all the points that have been made, but I will pick up the specific questions that the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath has raised and write to him with an answer. It is worth saying that the covid pandemic was the most extraordinary unprecedented emergency that we faced, and the first pandemic that we faced as a generation—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

You have until half-past.

[George Freeman]

I have until half-past? I will not detain the House unnecessarily, but that means that I do not need to rush quite so much.

If we cast our minds back to January and February 2020, the truth is that we were confronting completely unprecedented national decisions and emergencies. There was no playbook for this. Sadly, I was unable to bring my expertise in this sector to the Government at the time because I was liberated from the burden of office on 13 February, in the Valentine’s day reshuffle. In fact, my last Government role was to attend the first Cobra meeting on what was then called the virus emergency.