Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Grant Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

I recognise the challenges in the hon. Gentleman’s area, although nationally vacancies in social care have fallen by over 20,000. We are reforming adult social care careers to make care a career for the UK workforce. We are putting extra funding into social care—up to £8.6 billion over two years—and introducing CQC assurance to make sure local authorities are doing their best on social care. I would encourage the hon. Gentleman to talk to his local authority and make sure it is paying a fair rate for the care it commissions.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

4. What steps she is taking to help increase recruitment and retention in the adult social care sector.

[Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)]

10. What steps she is taking to help increase recruitment and retention in the adult social care sector.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Grant]

I know the Minister will want to join me in thanking every single person who dedicates themselves to working in the social care sector, including perhaps particularly those who have come to the UK from overseas to do so, but it is not sustainable to rely on incoming workers forever. The Migration Advisory Committee has found that Scotland is now less reliant on migrant workers in the social care sector than England, through the simple expedient of paying a decent wage. That might, by the way, also be a good way to stop doctors in England going on strike; the Minister might want to look at that. Has the Minister asked the Chancellor to provide funding in the Budget so that social care workers in England can enjoy the same pay and conditions as their colleagues in Scotland, and if not, why not?

[Helen Whately]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we are grateful to all who work in social care, including those who have come here from other countries to care for our loved ones. We also agree that international migration is not a long-term answer to our care workforce needs. That is why we are reforming social care to work as a career, and we are backing that with extra funding—up to £8.6 billion extra for social care over two years.

Government PPE Contracts

Peter Grant Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Brendan O’Hara]

I shall from now on, Madam Deputy Speaker; thank you.

This whole process stinks, and we all know it does. That is why we have to see what this Government know. They deliberately created the conditions in which such behaviour could flourish, and they have to release what they know.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

May I take my hon. Friend back to his comments earlier about due diligence? We all heard the Minister a few minutes ago claiming that due diligence was carried out in every single case. Is it possible for even the top civil servants in the United Kingdom to do any sort of due diligence on a company that did not exist two or three weeks before?

[Brendan O’Hara]

That is an excellent question, and perhaps it is a question that, had my hon. Friend managed to intervene on him, the Minister would have been far better placed than I to answer. I find it remarkable that due diligence can be carried out on a company that did not exist.

The Government know that the release of the PPE Medpro papers will not make this magically disappear, and they are right to fear that, in releasing those files, they are likely to blow the lid off this Pandora’s box and reveal that their VIP lane for politically connected pals was simply a green light for unfettered crony capitalism, rampant profiteering and widespread abuse of public funds.

In his answer to the question on 24 November, the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien), told this House:

“There was a global scramble for PPE…It was an extraordinary situation in which we had to act in a different way.”—[Official Report, 24 November 2022; Vol. 723, c. 441.]

It is a defence that the Minister today, the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince), also tried to hide behind a moment ago. It may be true that things had to be done slightly differently, but what is undeniable is that the UK Government made an active choice to act in the way that they did. It was a political choice to make this an all-in, free market jamboree. They did not need to do so. [Interruption.]

In response to the chuntering from the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan), the Scottish Government acted in an entirely different way. Many items of PPE for Scotland had to be sourced from overseas, but the big difference and—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member will stop talking and listen, I will explain. The big difference was that our Government sent staff from Scottish Enterprise over to China to source the items we needed and to ensure they were made to an acceptable standard and delivered at a cost we could afford. At the same time, the Scottish Government were increasingly working with Scottish manufacturers, so that by April 2021, 88% of our PPE was being produced in Scotland.

That Government involvement had a huge impact on the price. Unit costs show that disposable facemasks cost the NHS in Scotland 31p each, while the Department of Health and Social Care in England paid 40p. That is an increase of 29%.

[Peter Grant]

I can personally vouch for what my hon. Friend has said about the development of the manufacturing industry in Scotland, because there is an outstanding manufacturer in my constituency that did exactly that—its staff came in and worked unpaid over the weekend to reset its production lines to make what was needed, instead of the high-quality stuff it had been producing before. Does he think it is sad that I cannot name that company and sing its praises today, because I do not know whether it would thank me for connecting it, even tangentially, to the subject of this debate? Is it not sad that even outstanding Scottish firms are in danger of being tarred by the same brush that has been applied elsewhere?

[Brendan O’Hara]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. All the good that we could and should be talking about is being lost by this tarnished reputation. He could just as easily have pointed to the Scotch Whisky Association, which pivoted very quickly to turn its alcohol into millions of gallons of hand gel.

I go back to the point that the Scottish Government’s involvement was absolutely crucial in controlling the prices. As I said, disposable face masks were 29% cheaper because they were bought by the Scottish Government directly. The Scottish Government bought FFP3 face masks for £2.08 a unit. The Department of Health and Social Care bought them for £2.51—a fifth higher. Disposable gloves cost the Scottish NHS 9p each. In England, it was 33% higher at 12p. Even non-sterile gloves were bought 10% cheaper by the Scottish Government. One would have thought that a country with one twelfth the population of England would have a real job in pushing unit costs down below those of a country 12 times its size. It goes back to the fact that the approach the Scottish Government took meant they were in control of every part of the process, and they secured the deals they required.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I certainly support the motion, and I commend the Opposition for devoting part of their Opposition day to it. It is perhaps unfortunate that they did not realise that another very interesting piece of contract lobbying had been carried out. Apparently the contract was not awarded, and the person who did the lobbying was later described by a senior civil servant as “incandescent with rage” that her chosen supplier had not been successful. I do not know whether that incident relates to the same company that we are talking about today, but it is clear that there has been more than one instance of lobbying for very lucrative contracts for well-connected companies.

The Minister referred several times to the fact that the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee have looked at the issue. Well, that’s okay—everything must be fine! I wonder why he did not choose to enlighten hon. Members who have not read the reports about some of the things they say. The NAO report of 26 November 2020 states that

“some procurements were carried out before all key controls were put in place”

and that the Government

“awarded contracts to 71 suppliers, with a total value of £1.5 billion, before the financial and company due diligence process was standardised.”

As for the claim that 97% to 98% of all items were usable, another NAO report records the Department’s estimate that 3.6 billion items—11% of the total, at a cost of £2.9 billion—were

“not currently suitable for front-line services”.

In other words, when we talk about 97% of items being usable, we mean that we might have paid for high-grade, clinical, sterile equipment that someone cutting up wood could use as a face mask to keep the dust out of their lungs. That is not frontline clinical use.

In July this year, the Public Accounts Committee said:

“The Department still”

—two years after the contracts were signed—

“lacks a stock management system that enables it to fully understand what PPE it has and where it is.”

So the Department does not know what it has or where it is. The Committee also said that there were

“insufficient due diligence checks at the outset of the pandemic to prevent potential profiteering and to identify conflicts of interest.”

The exact concerns that Members were raising from day one have been confirmed by the PAC, which concluded:

“We are…unsurprised to see the reports of excessive profits and conflicts of interest on PPE contracts.”

We can only speculate on why the Minister did not find time to refer to any of the content of those reports when he addressed us earlier.

The Minister boasted that 97% to 98% of items were usable, but we should note that he referred to “items” without referring to their value. If you order clinical gloves and get gloves that are not suitable for clinical use, you can still use them to keep the oil off your hands if you are servicing your car, but each of those costs pennies. As we have heard, millions of pounds-worth of “sterile” gowns could not be used because they were not in fact sterile. Why did the Minister choose to give us part of the truth, but not the whole truth?

Failings by the Government have meant that there is, at best, a huge question mark over this whole process, and a question mark over legitimate firms and hard-working professional civil servants, but in some cases—a minority, but some of them significant—those question marks are not in fact question marks, but exclamation marks. It is clear that things have happened that should not have been allowed to happen, and that require further investigation. The Government may have their reasons for wanting to keep this information from—not necessarily only from the public, but from the Public Accounts Committee. That information must be released, and the decision on what is made public and what is kept secret must be left to the judgment of that impartial Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O’Brien]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am keen to reply to them. The hon. Gentleman said that only 3%—

[Peter Grant]

rose—

[Neil O’Brien]

I am literally responding to the hon. Gentleman. He talked about only 3% not being reusable and implied that some of the other things were only fit for servicing a car. To be clear, some of these things have a different clinical use. For example, the NHS tends to use and wants to use aprons on a roll when there is the choice, where we have a normal PPE market. What we do therefore is use the flat-pack ones that we had and donate them to care homes. Self-assembly visors are not preferred in the NHS because they take a bit of time to assemble, so we give them to dentists and the like.

We have heard two different uses of the words “writing off” in this debate, and it is important to be clear about the difference between these two things. Some people talk about “writing off” for things that are not usable, and only 3% of what was purchased is in that category. Then there is a different accounting use of “writing off”, which is something we have to do; we bought a load of PPE because we needed it in the middle of the pandemic and it was more expensive at that time—it was worth more then than it is now. That is the accounting meaning of “writing off”. Let us be clear about those two different uses.

Covid-19: PPE Procurement

Peter Grant Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Neil O'Brien]

Inevitably, a huge amount of the PPE that is produced in the world is produced by private companies. There is no world in which we could avoid the use of private companies to supply PPE.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

My colleagues on the Public Accounts Committee are at an important evidence session this morning, otherwise I have no doubt that many more of them would be here. The report on PPE contracts, which was unanimously agreed by the Committee earlier this year, stated:

“At no point was consideration given to the extent of the profit margin that potential suppliers would be taking on payments for PPE. Neither was consideration of any potential conflicts between individuals making referrals through the VIP lane and the companies they were referring. We”—

the Public Accounts Committee, unanimously—

“are therefore unsurprised to see the reports of excessive profits and conflicts of interest on PPE contracts.”

Yet if today’s Guardian reports are correct, the extent of lobbying of Cabinet Ministers, one of whom is back in the Cabinet, by a senior Conservative politician went significantly further than the Public Accounts Committee was aware of at the time. Can the Minister confirm that the reports of additional lobbying in today’s Guardian are accurate and, if they are not accurate, can he come back with a statement to confirm that?

[Neil O’Brien]

I read the same article as the hon. Gentleman. I notice that it did not lead to a contract—the case that was mentioned in The Guardian—but more generally, absolutely, there are many lessons to learn about this process. However, we were having to pay, in some cases upfront, for PPE because, as part of the global scramble for PPE that I have described, if we were not prepared to go that extra mile, we would simply not have had the PPE and we would have had more nurses without the vital protective equipment that we all needed.

Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Grant Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

The reason this report exists is that the Government want to see this kind of work being done by an independent organisation so that we can address these types of disparities and issues. There have been ethnic disparities in our health service for decades, sadly, under successive Governments, and it is this Government who are doing something about it. I have already referred to the medical devices review. Earlier this week, the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), set out the maternity disparities taskforce, and we will have a lot more to say on this when we publish our forthcoming White Paper.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

4. What recent discussions he has had with the devolved Administrations on ending free-of-charge covid-19 lateral flow tests.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

8. What recent discussions he has had with the devolved Administrations on ending free-of-charge covid-19 lateral flow tests.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maggie Throup)]

In advance of the living with covid announcement on 21 February, ministerial colleagues discussed our living with covid strategy with the devolved Administrations. Officials were also in regular touch to understand the approach being taken by each Administration and any implementation issues.

[Peter Grant]

Happy St David’s day to the people of Wales. The views of the Welsh Government—and of three of the four Governments of these islands—on this question are very clear. The Government in here appear to be in a minority of one, yet again. When someone takes a lateral flow test and reports a result, it does not do them any good at all, but it can have significant benefits for their friends, family and close contacts. When the results are reported in sufficiently large numbers, that can have significant wider public health benefits. With that in mind, what assessment has the Minister made of the likely reduction in the number of daily tests being taken if people have to pay for them, and how does that compare with the advice from all the UK’s chief medical officers on the level of background asymptomatic testing that is advisable to give us the quickest possible warning of the next wave of a new variant of covid?

[Maggie Throup]

As the Prime Minister announced last week, free tests will continue until April. He also stated that if the SNP in Scotland wished to continue to offer free tests after that date, it is certainly at liberty to do so. I am proud that, because of the amazing success of the vaccination programme, covid rates are coming down, hospitalisations are coming down and deaths are coming down. It is because of that that we can now live with covid and reduce the ongoing expense of testing and bring it to a proportionate and manageable scenario.

Covid-19: Government Response

Peter Grant Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Maggie Throup]

I reassure my hon. Friend that there is a lot of communication through schools and directly to parents and children to ensure that they understand the importance of 12 to 15-year-olds receiving their jabs, which will protect not only them but their loved ones.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

As we approach the second year of covid, it is astonishing that so many Members on the Conservative Benches still try to make out that to be vaccinated and to wear a mask are alternative protections. That is a bit like saying, “If you have brakes on your car, why should you bother with a steering wheel and a seatbelt?” I was pleased that yesterday the Secretary of State repeatedly emphasised the need for everyone to wear face masks unless they had a genuine reason for exemption. Is it not very noticeable that more masks are visible on the Conservative Benches today than were visible yesterday, when those Benches were full for Prime Minister’s questions? Is that an indication that Conservative MPs have been told that they have to practise what the Secretary of State preaches and wear their masks in all circumstances in which the advice says they are needed?

[Maggie Throup]

I reassure the hon. Gentleman that I am wearing my face covering today out of choice and because I believe it is the right thing to do.

A Plan for the NHS and Social Care

Peter Grant Excerpts

Wednesday 19th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP) [V]]

May I associate myself with the remarks of Members who have once again reminded us just how much we all owe, even in normal times, the health and social care workers across these islands, and how much more we are in their debt for their work over the past 14 months? May I also take this opportunity to congratulate my good friend and colleague Humza Yousaf on his appointment today as Scotland’s Health Secretary, and indeed to congratulate all those who have been appointed to the re-elected Scottish National party Government? May I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Anum Qaisar-Javed) on an outstanding maiden speech? Although I am now an adopted Fifer, I was brought up less than 200 yards from her constituency boundary and she now represents a significant number of my relatives, although not nearly enough to account entirely for her magnificent majority last Thursday.

There should be no argument over the fundamental principle that care services need to be much better integrated and co-ordinated. There may be arguments about how we achieve that—there have certainly been arguments in Scotland, where we are quite a bit further forward in the process—but if it is done properly, it can have a huge and positive impact on the lives of millions of people. I understand the concerns that have been raised in a number of quarters about the changes that the Government are proposing, and it has to be said that nearly all of those concerns boil down to one simple problem: people do not trust this Government. They do not think the NHS and the social care sector are safe in this Government’s hands, and I do not blame them. A Government who still refuse to legislate to prevent the back-door privatisation of services as the price of a trade deal with the USA, who refuse to pay health and social care workers anywhere near what they are worth, and who insist on treating immigrant workers as if they were a necessary evil, rather than a valued and welcome part of our society, are always going to struggle to make anyone believe that they really care about our care services.

If the Government think that is an unfair description and want to change that perception, may I suggest a few things they could do? They could outlaw extortionate parking charges at NHS hospitals. They could abolish prescription charges. They could commit to abolishing all charges for non-residential personal care. They could commit to abolishing charges for NHS dentistry. They could commit to a proper living wage of at least £9.30 per hour for all social care staff. They could commit to providing 76 GPs per 100,000 of population, rather than the 60 they currently provide. All of that and much more is already being delivered or has been committed to by the SNP Government in Scotland. All of it is deliverable and affordable in England right now. The only thing that Scotland has that England does not is a Government who care.

On 6 May, the SNP Scottish Government were re-elected for an unprecedented fourth consecutive term of office, receiving more votes than any party has ever received in a Scottish parliamentary election, and a higher share of the vote than the Conservative party has achieved in any UK general election during the 60-plus years that I have been alive. The people of Scotland have insisted at the ballot box that decisions about our NHS and care services are taken by a Parliament of our choosing. They have also made it abundantly clear that now is the time to give the people of Scotland the right to choose whether that Parliament of ours is once again given the full powers of a sovereign, independent nation.

Covid-19 Update

Peter Grant Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I am glad to say that we will get to my hon. Friend before the end of July, no matter how young he is. I am pretty sure he is an adult in both actuality and attitude—crikey, I am getting myself into more trouble than I anticipated.

I understand my hon. Friend’s broader point, which is a call against local lockdowns, and we have had differences of view on that in the past. It is not where we want to go, though of course we do not rule it out. We have seen our approach work—it worked in south London —and we have this huge testing capacity, which we did not have in the autumn, of hundreds of thousands of tests a day. That capacity is expanding, as the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) articulated. We also have millions of lateral flow tests, which are simple and easy to use, and people get the result fast. With surge testing plus the vaccine, we have many more tools in our armoury than we did before.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP) [V]]

I am very grateful in advance to the NHS Fife staff who will give me my second dose of the vaccine exactly 10 weeks to the day after my first one.

The Secretary of State indicated that probably a significant factor in the spread of the highly transmissible new variant is that people who could have been vaccinated by now chose, for whatever reason, not to accept the vaccine. In a number of cases, people have genuine concerns, but a major issue must be that people are declining the vaccine because they believe the lies deliberately and maliciously spread by anti-vax campaigners on social media. What further action do the Government wish to take against those who deliberately spread those lies for no other purpose than to put the lives of others at risk?

[Matt Hancock]

The anti-vaxxers have not had a very good time of it recently, and I am absolutely delighted that take-up is as high as it is. One of the reasons we have been able to take on the anti-vaxxers so effectively is that we have not danced to their tune. Instead, Members right across the House—I am looking around now and I see people in all parts of the House who have played their part in this—have put across the positive, science-based, objective, enlightenment values, if you like, of why the vaccine is the right thing. We as a House, as leaders of our national debate, have done that with one voice, based on the scientific advice. We have done it across the four nations of the United Kingdom with one voice. We have done it with scientists, with clinicians, with religious leaders—with all those who have a strong voice in this debate. Telling the positive story is the vital thing that we can do. Of course there may be those who do otherwise, but that is not for us—it is for us to tell the positive story.

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for playing his part in that by celebrating having his second jab. I am thrilled that he will have, in just a couple of weeks’ time, the maximum protection that one can get. He is helping not only himself and his loved ones, but all of us together to get through this.

Covid-19: Government’s Publication of Contracts

Peter Grant Excerpts

Tuesday 9th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

My hon. Friend makes an important point in his usual very forthright and clear way. The priority for this Government and for those working for them was to get the PPE needed in the quantities needed to be able to get it to the frontline to save lives. Transparency is important, of course it is. I recognise that and that is why we have worked since that time to get everything up to date in terms of transparency. But I make no apologies for the amazing effort that the Government and, most importantly, those working for them—the civil servants who did this work—put in to get the PPE in the quantities we needed.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP) [V]]

Despite the Minister’s protestations and despite the huge amount of money that was spent, the fact is that for those working in the social care part of health and social care, the equipment did not get anywhere near the frontline anywhere like on time. I think the Minister is maybe glossing over the fact that, although supplies to the health service seemed to have been okay, supplies to the social care sector were desperately inadequate. A Public Accounts Committee report, endorsed by its members, a majority of whom are Government supporters, found that the Department had wasted hundreds of millions of pounds on equipment that was of poor quality and could not be used. We were also told by the Cabinet Office that it did not know how many contracts had essentially been approved after the work had started and how many contractors were only checked out for suitability after they had been given their contracts. Does the Minister not understand that all of that taken together creates a bad smell? Does he agree that the best way to get rid of that bad smell is to have everything published, including assessments of conflicts of interest and information that in normal circumstances might be termed or deemed to be commercially confidential? Does he not understand that confidence in public procurement by the British Government—

[Mr Speaker]

Order.

Covid-19 Update

Peter Grant Excerpts

Monday 14th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I totally agree: do your bit and get a test.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP) [V]]

The Secretary of State is keen to remind us that we all have an individual responsibility to look after not only our own health but that of one another. Every single unnecessary journey into and out of London and the south-east increases the risk of the virus being transmitted from one part of the United Kingdom to another. The House of Commons Commission set an example today by asking all House of Commons staff not to attend Parliament unless they absolutely have to. What discussions has the Secretary of State had with his colleague the Leader of the House with a view to ensuring that all Members of Parliament can take part in all proceedings by video call, so that none of us has to make unnecessary journeys into London, with the attendant increased risk of either catching the virus or spreading it among other people?

[Matt Hancock]

I am afraid the answer to that question is a matter for the House rather than me as Health Secretary.

National Security and Investment Bill (Eleventh sitting)

Peter Grant Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 11th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 10th December 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Nadhim Zahawi]

With your permission, Mr Twigg, I will speak initially to clause 54 stand part and then address amendment 30, relating to clause 54. I will then turn to clause 55 stand part.

On clause 54, for this regime to function effectively, the Secretary of State needs access to the right information at the right time to make decisions with the fullest range of evidence available. All relevant information required by the Secretary of State to make a decision might not be obtainable from the parties to the acquisition, but rather might be stored by other public authorities, both in the UK and overseas. The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central referred to the speed at which deals have changed; she mentioned Facebook and others. I agree that modern deals are structured in an increasingly complex manner and often across borders and continents. There is a need to work with allies at home and abroad to ensure that we are making well-aligned, timely and correct decisions.

Therefore, the clause provides that public authorities may disclose information to the Secretary of State for the purpose of facilitating the exercise of his functions under the Bill. Equally, it permits the Secretary of State to disclose information to UK and overseas public authorities for the purpose of facilitating his functions under the Bill, but also for a limited number of other purposes, including crime prevention and the protection of national security. I absolutely agree with those who say that businesses do not want slow decisions made by multiple public authorities working in silos. We all want to see an efficient regime in place. Businesses want public authorities that can talk to each other and give a quick and efficient answer that is right first time. Being able to share information is the first step in Government making fast and informed decisions without having to burden businesses unduly, which I know the hon. Lady cares about.

I of course recognise, though, that some hon. Members will feel uneasy about the Government being able to share potentially very sensitive information both within the UK and overseas. The clause includes a number of safeguards relating to the disclosure of information by the Secretary of State. First, the clause prohibits onward disclosure of information shared by the Secretary of State or use for an alternative purpose without his consent. Secondly, when disclosing information, the Secretary of State must consider whether the disclosure would prejudice, to an unreasonable degree, the commercial interests of any person concerned.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I fully support the principle that we should share this kind of information with friendly overseas authorities—subject to appropriate precautions to prevent it from being used for the wrong purposes. However, somebody in the UK who breaks this law will get prosecuted, but an overseas public authority cannot be prosecuted in the UK courts, so can the Minister explain why, under clause 54(7), which lists the factors that the Secretary of State has to consider before deciding whether to release information to an overseas public authority, there is no requirement to assess the rule of law in that other place and to consider whether it has equivalent legislation to prohibit the misuse of information? There is no requirement for the Secretary of State to consider whether they have been given guarantees or assurances by a Government whose word we would expect to be able to take. There is not even a requirement to consider whether the request for information itself might be an attempt to undermine national security.

If the Secretary of State is looking at a potential Chinese takeover of a sensitive undertaking in the UK and a public authority in China says, “We need this information for an inquiry that we are doing,” there is no requirement for the Secretary of State to take that into account. Can the Minister explain why none of those things is built into this clause now, and are the Government willing to consider amending the clause at a later stage to give the further protection that we may need?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful to the hon. Member. I hope that in my further remarks, if I can make some headway, I will be able to reassure him on those points.

Thirdly, when disclosing information to an overseas public authority, the Secretary of State must have particular regard to whether the law of the country or territory to whose authority the information is being disclosed provides protection against self-incrimination in criminal proceedings corresponding to the protection provided in the UK, and whether the matter is sufficiently serious to justify disclosure. I hope that addresses the hon. Member’s point.

[Peter Grant]

rose—

[The Chair]

Order. Mr Grant, please keep your intervention short. If you want to speak, you are allowed to later.

[Peter Grant]

I am sorry to intervene again so quickly, but the precautions in subsection (7) do not address any of the matters that I raised. Subsection (7)(a) in particular is vital and necessary, but it is nowhere near sufficient and does not address any of the points that I raised.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful. If the drive of the hon. Member’s probing is to ensure that the Secretary of State, when he considers disclosing information to a foreign country, takes into account protecting people being caught in the regime who come from that country, I think I have just made it clear that the clause provides protection against self-incrimination in criminal proceedings corresponding to the protection provided in the United Kingdom. I hope that the hon. Member will be satisfied with that.

Finally, the disclosure is subject to data protection legislation, which provides additional safeguards in relation to the disclosure of personal data. I hope that the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central will feel reassured that the Secretary of State may request only the information that he requires in order to exercise his function under the Bill, and that such information will be treated securely.

Amendment 30 aims to increase the scrutiny that the Secretary of State undertakes in deciding whether a person constitutes an overseas public authority for the purposes of disclosing information under clause 54. It is of course important to ensure that any person believed to be a public authority for the purposes of seeking information from, or disclosing information to, is a public authority. I am therefore pleased to reassure the hon. Lady that the Bill does that as it stands. The approach that we have taken mirrors that—I know that she does not like this—in section 243(11) of the Enterprise Act 2002, which includes a similar definition of an overseas public authority for the purposes of disclosure of specified information to overseas public authorities under the Act.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Grant]

Does the hon. Lady share my understanding that the definitive statement on what the Bill is about is the long title of the Bill, not the explanatory notes? Does she agree that the long title makes no mention whatsoever of helping the CMA in the general exercise of its purpose?

[Chi Onwurah]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, because he is absolutely right that, rather than having a debate on the contents of the explanatory notes, line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill should focus on what the Bill says, and it does not mention general improvements to our competition and mergers regime, much as we feel that improvements could be made. Although we will not oppose the clause, I register our disappointment that we were not better informed of the Bill’s additional scope.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sam Tarry]

Before turning to the amendment, it occurs to me that the Minister, in his new role as vaccinations tsar, could consider this Committee Room as somewhere to store some of the vaccine.

Amendment 31 would simply require the Secretary of State to report on the time taken to process notices, on the resource allocated to the new unit, and on the extent to which small and medium-sized enterprises are called in under the new regime. It is about requiring greater accountability from BEIS in the investment security unit’s service standards. That sounds anodyne, but it does something very important.

Throughout our discussions, there has been one point of agreement across the Committee: hon. Members, across party lines, have raised concerns about the capacity and capability that a new investment security unit will have to deliver on the Bill’s ambition. A number of the expert witnesses added to that concern, describing the shift as “seismic”—totally transformational—and said that changes will need to be thoroughly resourced in that unit, which should be especially prepared to work closely and efficiently with our innovative start-ups.

Indeed, some of the experts were pretty clear on that point. David Petrie of the ICAEW said:

“The first point I make about that is that this new investment security unit will need to be very well resourced. A thousand notifications a year is four a day; I am just testing it for reasonableness, as accountants are inclined to do. That is quite a lot of inquiries.”––[Official Report, National Security and Investment Public Bill Committee, 24 November 2020; c. 53, Q60.]

[Peter Grant]

I certainly sympathise with the hon. Gentleman’s desire for that information to be published. Can he explain why the Bill should require that it be published, rather than leaving it to ongoing scrutiny by the relevant Select Committee? Does he think that the wording of paragraph (o) of the amendment needs to be more precise to be part of an Act of Parliament? If scrutiny were left to the discretion of a Select Committee, it would not need to be quite so clear about what “average” means, for example, because five or six different words mean “average” to statisticians.

[Sam Tarry]

The hon. Gentleman raises a good point. I think that the wording is precise enough. The accompanying guidance to the Bill could perhaps clarify some of those points. The key reason that we want that in the Bill, rather than for it to be overseen in the way that he has suggested, is that—