NHS National Health Inequalities Improvement Programme

Earl of Devon Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I hope that every child would have something more nutritious and healthier than just a bagel. I will happily discuss that with the noble Lord; I am not familiar with that particular case but it is something I will happily take up.

[The Earl of Devon (CB)]

My Lords, in response to the noble Baroness’s question on the South West Food Hub, I was on the advisory board until last week. That project has now folded, purely through lack of engagement from the Cabinet Office and the procurement services. Can the Minister speak to his colleagues at the Cabinet Office to see whether they can re-engage in these dynamic procurement activities for local farmers?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I would be happy to. I need to find out more first, and I would be delighted if there was some information or if we could meet on this, but I would be happy to take it up.

Health Promotion Bill [HL]

Earl of Devon Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 2nd December 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Devon (CB)]

My Lords, I add my thanks and congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, on bringing forward this Health Promotion Bill, encapsulating as it does many of the major recommendations of the National Plan for Sport and Recreation Committee. I was privileged to be a member of that committee from January 2021 until the publication of the report almost exactly a year ago.

Having revisited the report in preparation for today, I note how increasingly urgent its recommendations have become. As the ravages of long Covid scourge the nation, putting ever greater numbers on long-term sick leave, as the cost of living crisis and food inflation put a healthy diet out of reach for more and more families, as the cold chill of winter takes grip, with fuel prices skyrocketing, and as access to the NHS becomes ever more inaccessible, the health and well-being of our nation has never been more important. As living standards crumble before our eyes in the face of national and global headwinds, we need to build our resilience. This Bill does just that. I therefore strongly support it and condemn the Government’s apathy, as highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord Kamall.

I note my interests as listed in the appendix to the report and offer my huge thanks to the witnesses who contributed evidence during those dark and Zoomful days of the pandemic, among them schoolchildren, sports coaches, academics and even the odd world political leader. We were excellently chaired and extensively chivvied by the noble Lord, Lord Willis, wisely advised by Dr Mackintosh and energetically enabled by the dedicated team of Michael, Katie and Hannah. I thank them all.

The office for health promotion must sit within the Department of Health and Social Care and have responsibility for the national plan for sport. DCMS has for too long championed sport in this country as commercial high-end entertainment. As the football Premier League has shown, the UK has achieved unparalleled success in the highly leveraged global super-leagues of sport, but it has made us no healthier as a nation. It has made footballers and overseas club owners wealthier, but the nation is no fitter.

Just look at rugby union, a sport I once played at the dawn of the professional era. Its leading clubs are once more going bankrupt, it has brutalised its workforce through excess physicality and it has detached from its grass roots in pursuit of an audience and TV revenues. Even the legacy-laden London Olympics saw only a per cent or two increase in sports participation, while the numbers of those volunteering, coaching or officiating in sports actually declined.

This trickle-down approach to health promotion through sport has simply not worked. It is at local, community level that focus and funding must be directed. Physical literacy must be on a par with reading and maths, teachers and schools must be equipped to facilitate such learning and school fields and sports halls must be funded and treated as key community infrastructure, not locked and left to idle. Local travel must be active; close to two-thirds of Dutch children cycle to school, compared to only 3% of English children. Their weather is no better than ours, but their cycle paths are. We must also remember that sport and physical activity need not be competitive. We must not fetishise winning at all costs over participation and the inclusion of all in physical activity, as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, noted.

I was proud to bring a Devonian voice to the committee and was keen to highlight rural access, one of the favourite provisions of the noble Lord, Lord Addington. Farmers and land managers must be funded and encouraged to provide wider access to our countryside and all the physical and mental well-being that can be obtained therefrom. Wordsworth knew its worth. However, this access must not cost our biodiversity or the provision of healthy, nutritious food. That means it needs to be consensual, planned and permitted access, delivered in concert with local communities.

Rural land management is undergoing a generational upheaval. We must harness the well-being opportunity through social prescribing, environmental land management, proper planning and transportation reforms, all of which need to be coherently co-ordinated. This excellent Bill might just achieve this, so I recommend it to your Lordships’ House. In light of the completion yesterday of the Government’s ELMS review, can the Minister provide any detail on the funding and support for public access and social prescribing under the newly regilded environmental land management scheme?

Medicines and Medical Devices Bill

Earl of Devon Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 2nd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Devon (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I am not a medicines or medical devices expert, but I have enjoyed this debate and have benefited hugely from the breadth and depth of your Lordships’ expertise. I am an IP litigator qualified in the UK and the US and I have experience of representing pharma and medical device companies in both jurisdictions.

Many thanks to the Minister for his hard work on this Bill and throughout the current pandemic response. Never in our lifetime have our medical expertise and ability to foster cross-border innovation research and reliable clinical trials been more important. This is why the Government’s approach to this issue is such a disappointment. During the four years before I joined your Lordships’ House, I worked in the London office of a large US law firm, advising companies on the management of IP portfolios in Europe. Of particular interest to US pharma and medical devices companies was the unitary patent and the Unified Patent Court. As currently stated on the GOV.UK website, the UPC would give such companies,

“the choice of protecting your invention in up to 25 EU countries with a single unitary patent. This will streamline the system … You will be able to challenge and defend unitary patents in a single court action through the Unified Patent Court.”

The ability to use the UK’s academic and research expertise as a stepping stone for EU-wide IP protection was key to international investment in the industry and the professional services that support it in this country. In recognition of the UK’s pre-eminence in the field of medicines and medical devices, the UK was able to secure London as the seat of the UPC’s specialist central division to hear appellate cases relating to chemistry, including pharmaceuticals and the life sciences. In other words, London was to be Europe’s specialist centre for pharma and life-science intellectual property development and litigation.

Post Brexit, the previous Conservative Government agreed to proceed with ratification of the UPC, showing that it would be possible to leave Europe but retain the UK’s leadership in this field. But the current Government abandoned that sensible middle ground; in February, they withdrew our ratification of the UPC without consultation or debate. With that simple decision, London lost the UPC central division and the UK lost the opportunity to be at the forefront of the development of medicines and medical devices for a generation.

I raised this important issue with the Minister before the Summer Recess, noting how withdrawal from the UPC was simply not consistent with the Government’s aim, as stated by Matt Hancock, that they wanted the UK to be

“the best place in the world to design and trial the latest medical innovations.”—[Official Report, Commons, 2/3/2020; col. 662.]

Lord Bethell responded to me by saying that the Government did not believe that withdrawal from the UPC would make the development of medical devices, medicines and clinical trials harder and more expensive. However, in support, the Minister cited only the fact that this Bill provides for a consideration of the attractiveness of the UK as a place to develop medicines as part of the process of making regulations. This is Alice in Wonderland stuff. The Government cannot in February choose to withdraw the UK from the UPC and terminate its leadership position, and then hope to replace that leadership position with some warm words in a framework Bill. That is simply not enough.

The UK is currently negotiating free-trade agreements with Europe, the US and a host of other countries. Will the Minister enlighten us as to what the Government’s goals are in those negotiations with respect to intellectual property? How will the Government use those opportunities to make the UK once more

“the best place in the world to design and trial the latest medical innovations”?

Queen’s Speech

Earl of Devon Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Earl of Devon (CB)]

My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, and so many others more qualified than I. This was my first Queen’s Speech and it was a surreal experience indeed—and not just because I sat between the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and the erudite noble Viscount, Lord Ridley. Given the messy political reality of a legislative programme that will never see the light of day, this was, effectively, a party-political broadcast, and I question whether that is an appropriate use of Her Majesty’s ancient and regal authority.

As for the topics of today’s debate, I refer to the register. I am proprietor of a heritage-based social enterprise active in health and well-being, social care, and education. I am also a technology litigator with clients in the digital space, and I am a father of school-age children.

I am encouraged by support for integrated healthcare and the opportunity for the NHS to work more freely with partners. In Devon, I see how much volunteers, charities and private enterprise do to support public health and well-being: the more the Government can support local delivery of health and social care within communities, the better. I applaud the renewed focus upon mental health and highlight the need to ensure that everyone in society has ready access to a mental health professional—not because of mental illness but to support our mental wellness. I also strongly support the development of social prescribing. This will strengthen communities, improve health and decrease reliance on primary healthcare.

I note the commendable position that the NHS is not for sale in any future trade deal, but this must not preclude reasonable commercialisation. There are major benefits to be obtained by the secure use of anonymised health data at a national level. Given our single health system and our strength in data science, the UK must lead the world in the use of AI in healthcare, yet we lag behind in basic digitisation of medical records. What are the Government doing to address this?

In the digital space, the Government are focused upon online harms and a desire to make the UK “the safest place in the world to be online”. Though I support age verification, I sound a note of caution: in the brave new post-Brexit world, undue restrictions on internet platforms in the UK may well limit our access to cutting-edge ideas and technology. Rather than restrictive censorship, is it not better to encourage education in safe and appropriate internet usage? Rather than child-proofing the internet, it is more empowering to internet-proof our children and ensure that it is treated as a public space with enforceable public standards of behaviour.

Turning to culture and tourism, on which the noble Baronesses, Lady Doocey and Lady Bull, spoke so well, I applaud the work of the APPG on Arts, Health and Wellbeing, particularly its work on heritage and its contribution to healthy and sustainable communities.

While welcoming the recent announcement of funding to support public museums, I ask that the Minister acknowledge the huge contribution of private heritage to this sector. Historic Houses, of which Powderham is a member, preserves thousands of heritage landscapes, collections and buildings in their natural state, generating over 26 million visits each year—more than the National Trust—without any recourse to the public purse. Historic Houses is to our heritage what national parks are to our nature: thriving cultural centres alive within their natural environment. In comparison, galleries and museums are often lifeless efforts to preserve heritage outside its meaningful context—a form of zoo. Will the Government acknowledge that it is a national shame that these buildings are carrying over £1.3 billion in repair backlogs, with insurance and compliance costs now skyrocketing?

Finally, multiple heritage bodies have major concerns that the draft Environment Bill introduced today in the other place excludes heritage from its definition of the natural environment. It is dishonest to decouple our natural and man-made environments. We occupy the most man-made landscape in the world, and we need to be responsible for it.

Take the River Exe estuary as a simple example. The five miles of boggy marsh between my home and Exeter tell of over 3,000 years of human interaction with nature, from Bronze Age trading ingots through a major Roman city, to the medieval Countess Wear, creating England’s second biggest wool port. Thereafter we see England’s earliest canal, alongside acres of Dutch-drained early modern pasture, rearing England’s finest spring lamb. Then, we see Brunel’s remarkable atmospheric railway embankments, which stoically hold back the ever-rising sea levels to protect Exeter’s “green lung”—and Europe’s largest selection of car showrooms at Marsh Barton. The area is also, uniquely, an SSSI, a Ramsar site and a major RSPB reserve, not to mention the shellfish, cycle trails, foreshore and pubs, and England’s oldest sailing club. Nature and culture are indivisible in this landscape. As recognised by UNESCO’s Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage, the integration of culture and nature is essential to the sustainable development of both. We cannot and must not separate the two.