Trade Bill

Lord Patel Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Monday 7th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patel (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I speak strongly in support of Amendment 11, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton. The hour is late, and we spent a long time discussing the matter in Committee. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, and others have dealt with the subject in detail and eloquently. Hence, I will be brief, as the last speaker before the Front-Bench speakers.

No matter what the Government say about the NHS not being on the table for any trade negotiations with the USA, it is naive to think that that will be so. Members of the US Congress and big pharma have made it clear that they expect the NHS to be part of any negotiation of a United States trade deal. In fact, the chair of the Senate finance committee—a committee that will have a final say in any trade deal that will be made—said that it is clear that all goods and services are part of the negotiation and, furthermore, that the NHS would benefit from competition from US companies. US big pharma has always complained that the UK, with its regulatory and medicines pricing regime, does not pay full price for medicines. It has even suggested that, as a result, US patients end up paying a higher price.

The US data and tech firms see an opportunity in our NHS patients’ records to develop patient management platforms and an opportunity to conduct clinical trials on cohorts of stratified patient and much more. I can quote an example: the company Palantir that has been involved in data mining and in security and intelligence. It was given a contract for the price of £1, at the beginning of the pandemic in March, to develop a platform for Covid-19 data. The contract was to be re-examined three months later. It was extended briefly and now I gather that, without any public debate, it has been granted a contract for five more years. Why would a data mining company be interested in having data related to health and health management? The answer is quite obvious: data is gold. In the absence of any government policy in relation to security and governance of health and patient data, it is an open goal for tech companies.

As I mentioned in Committee, several US firms are already involved in managing services worth billions of pounds. The prize for running services and exploiting patient and service-based data will be worth tens of billions of pounds. In market-driven self-service, the losers will be the patients and taxpayers.

Recently, it was reported that there was a meeting, organised by the Office for Life Sciences, between NHS England and big pharma and big tech with the intention to digitise and use the data of tens of millions of patients. Such an exercise would cost billions of pounds, which might be funded by the tech firms, but there was discussion about who would hold the IP. The risk we run, not only concerning data but also about how the services are managed in the NHS, is that they will be given to overseas companies, particularly American companies, that will benefit and profit from it. The NHS will be the loser, and therefore I strongly support this amendment.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, this has been necessarily a short debate, but it has been an incredibly high quality debate. We have heard, from all the speakers, a high level of understanding of the issue and the dangers that Amendment 11 is seeking to address. I speak as one of those who signed Amendment 11. I support Amendment 43 and congratulate my noble friend Lady Sheehan on her eloquent presentation, but I am going to focus on Amendment 11 because it is a really important issue. We heard a lot about data from people who know a lot about data.

Sitting above this is the fact that the Government have no published cross-border data transfer policy. Without that, it seems as though each trade deal will be a series of negotiations without a framework. The noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, and my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones set out the benefits of having constraints and frameworks for this. It is clear from the Japan trade deal that the Government have indicated a level of flexibility around data. Once that has been delivered for one trade deal, it becomes a necessity for the next—and a bit more and a bit more. Even if that is not what will happen, I am sure the Minister understands that this fuels the fires of people’s suspicion and concern about the way in which data is being treated in this country.

From his position of great knowledge, the noble Lord, Lord Patel, set out some specific examples—not of a trade deal but of trade in this country—where data is already being parlayed. One things that has not been said is that, for patients to consent to their data being used, they have to believe that there will be a benefit. They do not want that benefit to flow across these borders through trade; they want it to accrue to the NHS. That is why Amendment 11 is important, and why I hope that it goes to a vote shortly and gets the support of Members from these Benches and beyond.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, spoke very clearly in moving this amendment. Like me, she recognises the benefits of trade, but only when health takes the central place in our trade policy. That is what Amendment 11 seeks to achieve.