Foetal Sentience Committee Bill [HL]

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 22nd March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I believe I am the next speaker; thank you.

There was an occasion in the last Session when a speech was made—it may well have been by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws—and it was so impassioned that the late Lord Cormack looked at me as the next speaker and said, “Follow that!”, and I said, “I shall try”. Sadly, I failed to follow it very effectively.

Today’s debate is clearly very heated. Yet, as the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, said in his opening remarks, it is a very small Bill and is setting the framework for a committee. It is supposed to be an evidence-based committee building on scientific expertise and changes in scientific and medical knowledge. From sedentary positions from the Opposition Front Benches, I have heard that the Bill has everything to do with abortion. Yes, it may have something to do with abortion, but not only abortion. It has nothing on the face of it, or in terms of intent, that is about rolling back women’s rights. What is discussed in the excellent briefing from the Library is that the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the British Medical Association have different guidance.

The British Medical Association has suggested that

“even if there is no incontrovertible evidence that the fetus feels pain, the use of fetal analgesia when carrying out any procedure (whether an abortion or a therapeutic intervention) on the fetus in utero may go some way in relieving the anxiety of the woman and health professionals”.

Surely, if a foetus of 24, 25 or 26 weeks’ gestation is sentient—whether the proposal is for a medical intervention or for abortion—no one would want the foetus to suffer, including the woman carrying the foetus, whether they intend to carry it to term or they do not wish it to live. Surely nobody wants to inflict pain. If we understand at what point foetal sentience really comes into play, appropriate decisions and recommendations can be made. At the moment, arrangements for medical interventions are in place only for spina bifida, but there are other cases of in utero interventions that should be explored.

There are differences of opinion and there may be different medical judgments in terms of analgesia and anaesthesia, precisely because the questions of the impact on the unborn child will be different. It may be necessary to use analgesia or anaesthesia, or it may not be appropriate, but we need to understand the situation. The proposed committee would be looking at scientific evidence. It would help clinicians to form views and be able better to advise parents and clinicians about the most appropriate way forward.

The suggestion that this is simply about rolling back rights to abortion is disingenuous. I know that from the Front Benches, there is considerable disagreement. I am used to being a lone voice from these Liberal Democrat Benches. Nevertheless, given that my party—and, I believe, other parties—spends a lot of time saying how important it is to have evidence-based policy-making, surely, setting up a committee to look at the evidence and give appropriate information to parents would actually be of benefit to all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, I wish to put on record that although my noble friend and I have very different views, as a matter of principle I defend her right to make her views known, and I hope she will understand why I respectfully disagree with her. I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws: she is spot on. This Bill is part of a far wider anti-gender, anti-LGBT attack on human rights, a campaign which is international and largely but not exclusively put forward by national Conservatives and Christian nationalists.

The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, in his introduction said two things, both of which I think have subsequently been shown to be not true. This Bill is neither modest, nor not about abortion. It is far from that. It is unprecedented government interference in the ethics and practices of abortion care. It seeks to circumvent expert clinical guidelines, not because of another body of clinical evidence but because of an ideological disagreement with the conclusions of the work of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. I should say to noble Lords opposite that the RCOG is duty-bound to provide evidence-based clinical guidelines, and to think that it would do so without talking to anaesthetists and other relevant professionals is to do that college a great disservice.

This Bill is focused solely on the foetus and says nothing about the rights of women. It is from the same stable that has brought similar legislation about in American states such as Arizona, Kansas and North Carolina, and it absolutely is a precursor to further legislation which will limit and outlaw abortion in full. Setting up a committee in this way, which has no remit to consider the rights of women or their experiences and healthcare, speaks volumes about the real motivation behind this legislation. I have to say to noble Lords opposite, and on the Cross Benches, who have repeatedly drawn parallels with the use of analgesia in animal scientific experimentation that they have ignored the fact that in this Bill we are talking about foetuses that are carried in the bodies of women—who are sentient beings capable of expressing not only their own healthcare needs but those of others.

This has been presented as being a method by which we can get to objective evidence. It is nothing of the sort. This is about setting up a committee to consider selective evidence—evidence that, I put it to the noble Lord, will inevitably lead towards a diminution of women’s rights. Far from being humane, the Bill has considerable scope for unintended consequences. The threats to women, not just during pregnancy but during childbirth, were this to go ahead, are considerable. We have already seen that throughout the United States, in states where these sorts of measures have been introduced.

I put it to you that this Bill does pretty well the opposite of what has been claimed for it. It is actually about picking and choosing selective evidence in order to lead down a path, as has happened in Alabama, towards the complete abolition of abortion. It is a Trojan horse. I really hope that we will not be fooled, and that we will put this in the context of that wider campaign against women’s rights and human rights.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

How does my noble friend account for the disparity between the views of the BMA and of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists?

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

It is not uncommon for health professionals to have different views and for their views to develop over time. However, I would much rather listen to either of those than to a hand-picked political committee making political decisions on what should really be a health matter.

This is a Trojan horse, and I really hope we will see through it. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for unveiling, yet again, a little bit more of this wider campaign against women’s rights and human rights. He has done us a service.

Cost of Living: Public Well-being

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, this is a very serious debate. I am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, brought this vital question to the Floor of this Chamber.

It is perhaps disappointing to see the vast swathes of Conservative red Benches without any Members on them. At the moment, for the record, we have the Minister, we have the Whip, and we have the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, who I am delighted to see in her place. Other than that, there have been perhaps six Conservative Peers in the Chamber at certain points. I realise that we are speaking on a day of considerable turbulence for the Government and the country, but we have been in a state of considerable turbulence for some weeks. Indeed, we have been in some turbulence since Liz Truss became Prime Minister at the start of September.

This is the first opportunity I have had to welcome the Minister and the Whip to their places. The noble Lord, Lord Markham, I believe, was gazetted on 7 October and took his seat in your Lordships’ House a mere 10 days ago. They have been a very interesting 10 days. I suspect that the two people on the Government Front Bench are here not necessarily because they put their names down voluntarily, in the way that most of us who had signed up to speak today did, but rather because it was felt that they needed to come out to speak on behalf of the Government to respond to one of the most urgent questions in this country: the impact of the cost of living on public welfare.

This is surely what the Government should be about. There are two things that really matter: one is the security of the nation—defence—but the other is ensuring that every man, woman and child living in this country has enough to eat, has a roof over their head, and can heat that home. We cannot guarantee that in 2022. What sort of country do the Government think we are living in? This is a country where the Prime Minister and others were so keen in pledging to get Brexit done that they said we had this fabulous economy—we were the fifth-largest economy in the world. If that is true, why are 69% of people worried about heating and eating? Why is the Royal College of Physicians saying that vast numbers of people are more concerned this year than last year about whether they can heat their homes and eat?

There are major problems in this country, and it is not acceptable for the Government to claim that it is all to do with Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine. Yes, that is part of it. Yes, there is inflation, and there are grain problems elsewhere in the world. Yes, there is an energy crisis. But other countries are not facing the difficulties that the United Kingdom is facing, because we have added a degree of chaos and instability, as the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, pointed out. Instability is a major problem. The Government’s mini-Budget spooked the markets, and however many U-turns there are, that spooking of the markets and the increase in interest and mortgage rates will not be overturned overnight. Changing the Chancellor, changing the Prime Minister, even—dare I say it—changing the Government will not change those difficulties, which are now baked into the system. However good the next Prime Minister is—of whichever political persuasion—some of the difficulties brought about in the last three weeks by this Government are going to be the legacy that we all have to pay for, including those who are still at school, because the national debt is going to be paid back, not in weeks and months, but over generations. I would like the Government to apologise for that, and I am sorry that there are not more Conservatives here to apologise as well.

It is not normal, I realise, in your Lordships’ House to be perhaps quite so partisan, but some of the difficulties we are facing can be put only at the door of the outgoing Prime Minister and the recently departed Chancellor of the Exchequer. There is very little that can be done to overcome some of those difficulties. Those difficulties are substantial: we have already heard about the difficulties for those on benefits, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, spoke about so movingly. However, there is something that the Government can do: make a commitment—and stick to it—about uprating benefits in line with inflation, while at the same time sticking with the pensions triple lock. It will be difficult but they should at least try to persuade people that when they finally make a commitment on one of these vital issues, they will stick to it.

At the moment, we are seeing children going hungry—the danger of malnutrition even in this leading first-world country in the 21st century. That is not acceptable. Will the Government commit to ensuring that every child that needs them gets free school meals? They should not be excluded from free school meals because somehow they do not quite meet the metric that the Government have assumed. Those children who are hungry, who have arrived at school without breakfast and who cannot afford school meals are not going to be able to study effectively. That means they are not just being damaged now, at this time of a cost of living crisis; it will damage their prospects for the whole of their lives unless we do something to protect them right now.

In 2020 it took a footballer, Marcus Rashford, to change the Government’s mind. In those days the Prime Minister was Boris Johnson, and he made U-turns twice on providing free meals to children during school holidays. On 12 November 2020 the then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions—currently the Deputy Prime Minister—Thérèse Coffey issued a statement following the U-turn regarding Christmas 2020. She stated:

“We want to make sure vulnerable people feel cared for throughout this difficult time and, above all, no one should go hungry or be unable to pay their bills this winter.”


Can the Minister confirm that it is still the Government’s view, two years later, that no one should go hungry and everyone should have a warm home?

Health and Care Bill

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Report stage
Wednesday 16th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)]

My Lords, I appreciate the lateness of the hour and, therefore, I want to make just a very few comments.

Without apology, I believe in the sanctity of human life. I believe that it is important to preserve the life of a mother. It is also right to preserve the life of the unborn child. When this measure was originally presented, it was clearly stated that it was an emergency policy introduced because of the unprecedented circumstances of the coronavirus pandemic. The policy was said to be time-limited but many, like me, feared that this was another way of extending abortion on demand. However, many noble Lords accepted that the at-home abortion powers would be exercised only temporarily and be used only for the purpose for which they were granted and in a manner proportionate to the situation. I commend the Government for the actions they took to turn the coronavirus crisis around to the situation we have today. Therefore, continuing the policy is not proportionate, although I did not think it ever was.

At-home abortion endangers the health of the woman and the girl. Consultation revealed that among a number of concerns raised about safety the most common was the risk of women being coerced. I do not think that is an unimportant issue for this House to consider. Therefore, I shall oppose Amendment 183.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I want to intervene briefly, partly because I believe I set a hare running which I perhaps need to explain. I want also to ask the Minister replying to the debate a few questions.

I am told that I am not whipped to vote for this amendment, even though the Liberal Democrat Whip is to support the amendment—those of us who have a conscience reason not to support the amendment do not have to do so. I take that as being not a free vote, which is why I was of the view that, nevertheless, we were being whipped. Make of that what you will. I shall be voting against the amendment, unless the Minister can clarify certain points.

We heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, in introducing her amendment, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that essentially this amendment changes nothing about the law on abortion. But we have also heard that if that were the case, we would not need this amendment at all. If it changes nothing, why is this amendment here? So it must be changing something. What I am not at all clear about is what protections are actually in place. The 1967 legislation was very tightly drawn. The nature of abortion in 2022 is much more widespread. The provisions are not perhaps quite as Lord Steel would have anticipated.

This is a very detailed amendment. We have heard that it is very simple but it is also very detailed. It explains who women need to see. They are supposed to be seeing people either via video or via telephone. I do not know whether any of your Lordships experienced telemedicine during lockdown, but it is not always very effective. If virtual medicine means a telephone call not on a smartphone, your doctor cannot see you. They have no idea how you are presenting or whether you are vulnerable. There is a real question about what certainty there is. Can the Minister say what security there is about telemedicine?

We also heard that women would still have to go through normal medical tests and so on. Where is this happening? In the amendment, all we hear about is things being virtual. At what point do we know that a woman is nine weeks and six days pregnant when she takes the first tablet? How do we know that she is not actually 22 weeks pregnant and not seen by anybody? How do we know what certainty there is? If this is, for many people, a conscience vote, do noble Lords, in good conscience, believe that telemedicine actually means that women are understood and their needs really recognised? Do they get the care that they would get if they were having consultations in a surgery?

[Baroness Brown of Cambridge (CB)]

My Lords, at this very late hour, I just rise to say that I hope your Lordships will not confuse individual anecdotes, however moving, with the very extensive scientific evidence base quoted by the noble Baronesses, Lady Sugg and Lady Watkins.

Health and Care Bill

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Report stage
Thursday 3rd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group, and I shall speak specifically and briefly to Amendments 162 and 173.

These amendments are updates to the Human Tissue Act, which was born out of public outrage following the Alder Hey scandal, when over 100,000 organs, body parts and entire bodies of foetuses and stillborn babies were stored in NHS facilities. The body parts of dead patients, including children, were removed without consent. Today, the Human Tissue Authority’s guiding principles, as set out in its code of practice, are consent, dignity, quality, honesty and openness. These principles should not only reflect how human tissue sourced from within our own nation is treated, we must treat human tissue and organs with the same principles when sourced overseas.

In China, as has been said, there is substantial evidence of Falun Gong practitioners and Uighurs—as well as some evidence of Tibetans and house Christians—being killed on demand for their organs. Blood is taken off them for tissue-typing at the time when they were taken into custody, often with no idea why they were taken into custody at all, other than that they belong to one of those groups. There is no consent, no dignity and no transparency.

On 7 December last year, the British Medical Association released a statement on the abuse of Uighurs in China, expressing

“grave concern regarding the situation in China and the continuing abuse of the Uyghur population of the country as well as other minorities.”

It went on to state:

“We are particularly alarmed by the reports of organ harvesting, forced birth prevention, and the use of genomics data for racial profiling.”


It urged

“the UK government and international actors to exert pressure on the Chinese government to cease its inhumane actions towards the Uyghurs”.

If we do not pass amendments as laid before the House today, we will be complicit with these practices, because we will be looking at them with Nelson’s eye, with all the evidence that we have that they are going on.

On Amendment 173, on the exhibition of whole bodies using a plastinated technique, I suggest that there is no transparency whatever. Any attempt to claim that there has been consent is extremely suspect, because consent is very easily falsified. I went to one of these exhibitions because I thought you ought to go and see what you are criticising. This was not an anatomical, educational experience but a visual display of plastinated bodies in all kinds of different poses. But the one that horrified me the most was a pregnant woman, quite advanced in her pregnancy and with the foetus in her womb, which had been plastinated. I do not believe that that woman would have given consent for plastination. That raised real questions as to why such an advanced foetus was in the womb of a dead woman without something there explaining the nature of her death, the cause of death and the circumstances in which she had decided to consent to such a procedure.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 108, while supporting the other two amendments introduced so powerfully by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and my noble friend Lady Northover, and to which the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, spoke so eloquently.

I am completely in support of those amendments, but I wish to speak briefly to the genocide amendment today. On various occasions during the Covid pandemic questions were asked of the then Health Minister about the procurement of PPE. He was not able to give me a straight answer to say, “We can guarantee that no PPE procured could have had anything to do with slave labour or could have come from Xinjiang.”

The NHS seeks to be world leading. We all support it and want it to be able to deliver for every citizen in this country. But that should not be at the expense of the lives of those in other parts of the world. It is not good enough to say that we have the Modern Slavery Act if that will not lead to a change in practices. It is absolutely essential that our supply chains do not include anything that comes from forced labour.

If one looks at what is going on in Xinjiang, it is possible to barter to get numbers of people, just as it was 200 years ago during the slave trade. That is not acceptable. It may be the case that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, pointed out, we will be told, “This is not the right piece of legislation.” If it is not, what will the Government bring forward that will mean that every point of our supply chain—every part of government procurement—ensures that we are not procuring things that have been made using slave labour?

We must not be complicit. This House should support the amendments, and if the Minister is not able to support the amendment, perhaps he could come back with a revised and better version of the amendment that will do what we all seek to achieve.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly only to Amendment 108, which I understand the Government are likely to resist when my noble friend the Minister comes to speak. I say simply, very briefly, that to be persuasive, my noble friend has to explain how through administrative measures the National Health Service will achieve the effects of this amendment. He has to explain that in a credible way and that the effects will be rapid and comprehensive. Any idea that this will be kicked into a long review that ambles on and may or may not produce the effects required by at least the first two proposed new subsections of the amendment will lack credibility; I am less concerned about the chairman of the Select Committee part that comes in the third one. I would like my noble friend to know before he speaks that that is what I think we all want to hear.

Health and Care Bill

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Wednesday 9th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Cumberlege (Con)]

I understand that I have overrun so I will say to my noble friends on the Front Bench that we should value general practice. We should build with the best. We should learn from the best. I know that there are hundreds of general practices; it is up to us to applaud them and cherish them and ensure that we see another era of general practice which is different but which values patients and relationship care.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 297A in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, to which I have added my name. I shall speak briefly, given that that I am only an irregular participant on this Bill. This amendment is particularly important. I come to an understanding of general practice from a very different perspective from the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, as somebody who has only either received the care of a doctor or seen my parents receive or not receive that care.

When I was a young baby, I was extremely ill. I realise in these days where people talk about conspiracy theories about vaccines that this might be something that should not go into Hansard, but I had a reaction to the smallpox vaccine and my mother went to the public telephone box and called the doctor. The family doctor who came was equally concerned and brought a consultant from the local children’s hospital to our home to see me. That would be the sort of gold standard that we could only dream of now. However, it is the sort of care that we need to be looking to in terms of having a family doctor or a doctor in the community who actually knows individuals. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, said, this is particularly so for the over-65s, when a range of issues might be beginning to affect them.

The situation today is so very different. The Minister in answer to an Oral Question a few weeks ago repeatedly said that everyone has the right to see a doctor in person and the doctor must give a clinical reason for refusing to have an in-person consultation. I assure him that this very rarely happens, because ordinary patients cannot simply ring up and speak to the doctor and say, “I need to see you”. They will get to a receptionist who will triage them and decide whether they feel that it is appropriate for this person to see the doctor, or to have a telephone conversation or maybe some other virtual consultation.

There is a real need, particularly for older people, to have the opportunity to know that there is a doctor who understands their medical situation and can join up the dots. Somebody who seems now to have low blood pressure might have that because of the previous set of medication that another doctor has prescribed for them. If somebody rings up and gets a telephone consultation or is sent a prescription without proper assessment, the danger is that the whole picture is lost and individuals’ lives can be blighted because they are not getting the medical care they need.

This is not the fault of any individual practice or of any individual general practitioner. However, we have ended up with a system where that traditional idea of a family doctor who knows their patients has disappeared, and somehow we need to get an element of that back. The other three amendments in this group in many ways fit as part of a suite because, if your GP knows that maybe you have early onset dementia or another sort of dementia and you need different types of therapies, they will know what to recommend.

Furthermore, if your GP knows that you have gone into a care home, visits you and thinks, “That person has lost a stone and a half in weight in the last six weeks”, a GP who knows the individual will be able to respond. Somebody who randomly sees a patient will not. I strongly support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, and the other amendments in this group.

Finally, I note that the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, comes immediately after the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean. If anyone were minded to support assisted dying, they should certainly support the following Amendment 297A, because how on earth could any doctor reasonably say that we can sign somebody off when they have no idea who that individual is?

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, I would like to use one example to illustrate the importance of Amendment 291 in the name of my noble friend Lady Greengross, and her call for a dementia care plan. It relates to the second point: that the plan must recognise the different types of dementia and their specific care. It is also true that it needs to recognise the different groups of patients affected by dementia and their needs.

I am thinking from personal experience of people with Down’s syndrome. Noble Lords may know that something like 50% of people with Down’s syndrome who reach the age of 60 also have Alzheimer’s; there is some genetic connection between the two. However, the field of dementia has not really caught up with this yet. This is a developing field. The real importance of the plan that my noble friend advocates is that it constantly develops as knowledge develops about particular groups of patients and how they are affected.

The truth today is that patients such as the person I am thinking of are too often let down by the system, because too few clinicians understand the links between the two diseases and the particular needs of people with Down’s syndrome who also have Alzheimer’s.

Health and Care Bill

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 3 & Committee stage
Wednesday 26th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

The noble Lord is trespassing on the old Social Democratic Party by using words like disingenuous. I will give him an example: some years ago, I chaired a Joint Select Committee of both Houses of Parliament dealing with the draft Mental Health Bill. That particular Bill was never enacted after our year of meetings and the report that we produced, but there was not a single person or NGO—including some that have been mentioned today—that did not believe that it was a parliamentary Bill. A Bill is a Bill is a Bill. In this Parliament we have draft Bills but not half Bills. That is my answer to the noble Lord.

I do not want to take up more time. I finish by saying that I think this is a completely misconceived proposal, both procedurally and, were we to come to it, on the merits.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak to both amendments but I shall speak first to Amendment 203, which, on the face of it, I am minded to support.

My reason for that—I hope this is not seen as a Second Reading speech—is that two years ago, just before Christmas, my mother contacted me and said she thought she had terminal cancer. She was taken to hospital two weeks before Christmas and died on Boxing Day, not of terminal cancer but of end-of-life COPD. I had no idea that she had end-of-life COPD, although I knew she had COPD. On Christmas morning, I was summoned to the hospital, and a junior doctor asked me what I wanted to do: “Your mother’s been a bit unconscious. What do you want us to do? Do you want us to wake her up? Do you want us to do anything?” That is not really the best conversation to have. The next morning, Boxing Day, I had almost exactly the same telephone call: “Please come to the hospital, your mother is very ill.” I said that I had had the same conversation yesterday. However, on this occasion I was summoned in and met a doctor who spoke to me with compassion. My father and I agreed that my mother should not be resuscitated. I had never had that conversation with her, but, when I went through her things, I discovered that she had completed a form that said: “End-of-life COPD. When in doubt, do not resuscitate.”

So, in many ways the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, is very attractive because it is surely right that, towards the end of their lives, people talk about what is appropriate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

It might help the Committee if I make clear that, as I understand it, all our Fridays are taken up, because people are talking so long on all these Bills that we are having to use Fridays for government business, and also there are lots of Private Members’ Bills with Second Readings to come. So my understanding is that we have done what we can do with my Bill.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, perhaps the Minister, in replying, can tell the Committee whether he will talk to the usual channels, especially since I note that the Chief Whip and the Deputy Leader are both in their places, about whether time could be made available for further discussion of the Bill that is extant. Because whatever the merits or demerits of assisted dying, this is not the Bill for such an amendment.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, has been trying to get in for a while.

Covid-19: UK Arrivals

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I welcome questions from noble Lords, particularly on getting the booster on the app, because when I am talking to officials in the department and the NHS it shows how important it is that we do this as quickly as possible. One of the tasks is to be accountable and to push the NHS and others to make sure that we are doing this. Sadly, when I ask what the problem is on test and trace, I am told that it is unable to validate the vaccination status of people whose vaccines are not recorded on a national immunisation management system. I have asked about passenger locator forms and whether we could use a similar technology. At the moment that is done on trust, but you face a very high fine if you are misleading; maybe that could be a solution. I assure noble Lords that I really am pushing.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I refer to my registered interests. I have printed off the advice given by my university, Cambridge, to international students and what it means to be fully vaccinated. To come into the country, if they are fully vaccinated, they do not have to isolate when they arrive, as the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, pointed out. If the system can understand when they arrive in the country that they are fully vaccinated, why can the NHS app not understand that they are fully vaccinated when they get pinged by test and trace?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I share the frustration of the noble Baroness and others. This is not great for our international, global outlook, or for the fact that we want to attract the best students from around the world, not just Europe. We are a global country and we have to address this. I am pushing the NHS on this because it is really important. The problem is the national immunisation management system, to use the technical term, and the inability to validate the data of overseas visitors.

GPs: In-person Appointments

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his warm welcome to me in my new role. As other noble Lords have expressed, it is really important to make sure that the relationship between patient and doctor or GP is respected. That will not always mean being seen face to face, but when a patient asks for this there has to be a good medical reason if the appointment is not. Speaking from personal experience, I have found online consultations as good as, if not sometimes better than, face-to-face appointments.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest. Last November, my father turned yellow. He rang to get a doctor’s appointment and was given a telephone consultation. He does not have a smartphone. The GP said, “It’s jaundice, but it might be pancreatic cancer.” No other suggestion was made and there was no suggestion that he could go in to see the GP. He did not know that he had a choice. He is still with us 11 months later; it clearly was not pancreatic cancer. The idea that people have choice does not work if they are not strong and vocal enough to be able to tell the GP practice, “I need a face-to-face appointment.” What will the Minister do to make patients aware that this is possible?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I sympathise with the case that the noble Baroness communicated. It is important that GPs and patients work that relationship out between themselves. If a patient asks for a face-to-face appointment and the GP refuses to give one, the GP has to have a good medical reason.

Covid-19: Conflicts of Interest

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, the very large number of advisers, both paid and unpaid, were all processed by the department and their paperwork was then handed on to the Cabinet Office for approval. George Pascoe-Watson, as others, was sent both a declaration of interest form, which he filled in and is on record, and a volunteer agreement, which has the Official Secrets Act built into it. His work was covered by that.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD) [V]]

My Lords, could the Minister tell the House whether the Government’s anti-corruption champion, John Penrose MP, has been involved in looking at any conflicts of interest or whether he is in danger of having a conflict of interest himself?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

I am not aware of him being involved in the work to which the noble Baroness refers.

Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions) (England) (No. 4) Regulations 2020

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I, like many noble Lords who have spoken this evening, find that it is with a very heavy heart that I support the regulations for a further period of lockdown. I very much regret that. I have a series of questions for the Minister because I have concerns about the Government’s approach to scrutiny, parliamentary democracy and the use of evidence. I am not a scientist and will not try to second-guess any of the scientific evidence, unlike some noble Lords who have put down amendments or moved a fatal Motion, as the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, has.

Back in September, the Government appeared to have evidence that a second lockdown or circuit-breaker would be necessary. Why did it become so urgent that it had to be announced only last Saturday, and the Prime Minister had to announce what he planned, not in front of the House of Commons but at an emergency press conference, allegedly because of a leak? Are this Government fit for purpose? Are they able to produce the necessary legislation in a timely manner? If the information that the Government had last week was dramatically different from that in September, it would be useful to know, but it is not clear that it was. There were calls from the Official Opposition and the Liberal Democrats for a circuit-breaker much earlier. Why do the Government use the evidence only when they choose to then claim that it is urgent, making sure that there is little time for parliamentary scrutiny?

Like several of the noble Lords who have tabled amendments, I have concerns about the economy and mental health. I declare an interest as a resident fellow of a Cambridge college; I will be locked down, as will the students. I live in a flat; they will live in small rooms for a month. Have the Government done an assessment of the impact on mental health? On 16 March, I asked the Minister what assessments had been done, before the lockdown proposed then. On that occasion, he told me that I was

“entirely right to be concerned about the holistic challenge we face”

and that the announcement on 16 March

“focused on the clinical response”,

but that the Minister would

“be glad to answer any questions on specific subjects as they arise.”—[Official Report, 16/3/20; col. 1362.]

Eight and a half months later, can he give us some answers?