Caroline Johnson MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 5 Mar 2025 · Department of Health and Social Care · Hansard source

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  One of the key things about the Government’s deal is that they have given in on money without asking for anything in return in terms of productivity. The Government needed to agree a pay deal that was sensible and affordable, not talk about the money that they are giving to the NHS while taking away with the other hand in taxes. Let us hear what some healthcare providers have had to say about the implications of Labour’s NICs rises for their constituents’ healthcare. The Royal College of General Practitioners has warned that the NICs increase will force GP practices to choose between redundancies and closure. The hospice sector believes that the cost of national insurance rises could be £30 million a year. The Government have given that sector a capital grant worth £100 million, which is welcome and will improve facilities; however, if those facilities are empty and cannot be staffed, they will not deliver much in the way of improvement. Air ambulances are also under threat from the Chancellor’s rise in national insurance and taxes in last year’s autumn Budget, with the local service in my constituency, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire air ambulance—which is entirely charitably funded—needing to find another £70,000 just to pay for those national insurance rises. The Independent Pharmacies Association estimates that the rises in employer national insurance contributions and the minimum wage will cost the average pharmacy over £12,000 a year, totalling more than £125 million for the sector as a whole. Nick Kaye, chairman of the National Pharmacy Association, has warned that “Pharmacies face a financial cliff edge at the beginning of April, with a triple whammy of rising National Insurance, National Living Wage, and business rates all arriving at once.” What impact will this have on our constituents’ health? The Government talk a good talk about bringing healthcare closer to the community, but actions speak louder than words, and putting extra pressure on community-delivered services is not a good way of delivering their aims. The Nuffield Trust suggests that the national insurance rise alone will add a £900 million burden to the adult social care sector. With other new costs factored in, the care sector is believed to be facing a bill of an additional £2.8 billion, dwarfing the £600 million extra allocated to the local authorities responsible for providing social care. This will have a devastating knock-on effect: the amount of care that can be bought by local authorities will fall, the cost of private care will rise—so more people will be reliant on the state, rather than the private sector—and the waiting lists that the Government claim to prioritise will also rise. The Nuffield Trust warns that many small care providers will either have to increase prices, stop accepting council-funded patients, or go bust. That will have a knock-on effect on the hospital sector, as people are unable to be discharged because there is not adequate social care for them. The Government talk about creating a new national care service, but they have managed to damage the existing one by hiking the costs borne by care homes through national insurance rises and other tax and wage increases. In January, the Government announced a deal with private hospitals in an attempt to cut waiting lists. The deal, which sounded good to start with, would see private hospitals being paid for each patient that they treated, incentivising them to treat as many people as possible. However, The Times reported that NHS England has recently capped the amount that each hospital can be paid. The chief executive of the Independent Healthcare Providers Network has warned that the policy will actually lengthen waiting times. Will the Minister comment on that? The Minister is focused on prevention, but when the Government announced that they would be cutting the overseas development aid budget by 40%, the Prime Minister said that the UK would continue to play a key humanitarian role on a range of issues, including global health and challenges such as vaccination. I would appreciate clarification from the Minister on whether the global health budget will be cut, or whether the cuts will be made from other aspects of the ODA budget. Workforce is the key asset of the NHS, yet sickness levels are running at around 5.5%, which is a considerable cost to Government and drag on productivity. They vary considerably across trusts and professions, with consistently less than 2% of consultants off sick, but almost 8% of ambulance support staff. If those rates could be reduced, it would lead to improved productivity and patients being treated much faster. What is the Minister doing to look at that? Perhaps she will have another one of her reviews.

• 5 Mar 2025 · Department of Health and Social Care · Hansard source

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  I draw right hon. and hon. Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as I am a consultant paediatrician. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) on securing this important debate on the finances of the NHS. Labour said that it had a plan to reform and improve our NHS. Unfortunately, it has become clear from the series of consultations—on the NHS plan, the 10-year plan, the patient safety review, leading the NHS and the independent commission to transform social care, to name just a few that are in progress—that Labour did not have a plan, other than to get into power and then consider what its plan should be. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Cotswolds has said, we need improvements in productivity, technology and long-term investment. I completely agree, and as a medic I could give many examples of wasteful spending, especially in relation to paperwork and increasingly inflexible guidance and procedures that are well-meaning but often unhelpful. There is general talk of productivity improvements from Government Members, but few specifics. I would be grateful if the Minister could provide any specifics in her closing remarks, but let us see what the Government have said and done so far. In the autumn Budget, the Chancellor announced that overall NHS funding would be increased by £22.6 billion over two years—for this year, that is £10.6 billion. The Government are asking us to welcome that extra money. It sounds great, but is it extra or not? Julian Kelly, NHS England’s chief financial officer, told the Health and Social Care Committee that the proposed 2.8% pay rise for 2025-26 would cost £3.8 billion. The NICs pressure is worth around £1.7 billion, alongside £1.9 billion in non-pay inflation, £0.8 billion for the GP settlement and £3.5 billion for basic demand growth in the NHS. Right hon. and hon. Members will note that those figures add up to more than £10.6 billion, and with the unions having threatened to strike again for even greater pay awards and with Labour’s propensity to capitulate to the unions, it is likely that that figure will increase. Can the Minister confirm whether the £10.6 billion that Labour talks about will really lead to an improvement in services, or will it merely cover inflation, tax rises and the pay rises given by the Labour Government to their union paymasters?

• 5 Mar 2025 · Department of Health and Social Care · Hansard source

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  Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that whether someone becomes ill is entirely dependent on whether they get another 2% in their pay packet? I am not sure that it is. The Government promised a great deal when they came into power last July. Since then, they have handed out inflation-busting pay rises, raised costs and abandoned election pledges. At the centre of the Government’s approach is a classic socialist trick—a sleight of hand, taking money away from NHS providers in taxes with one hand, and expecting praise when they give some of it back with the other. The public will see straight through it.

• 5 Mar 2025 · Department of Health and Social Care · Hansard source

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  I will give way in a moment; let us first look further at those tax rises. It is clear that the Chancellor had not properly considered the effects of the NICs rise on the wider healthcare system. For example, the Government have exempted the NHS from that tax rise, but that exemption does not cover general practice, hospices, charities, many social care providers—including many care homes—air ambulance charities, dental clinics, opticians, private healthcare providers, agency staff, local pharmacies and other suppliers and contractors, to name but a few.

• 5 Mar 2025 · Department of Health and Social Care · Hansard source

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  If the hon. Gentleman looks back at the figures, he will see that there has been a substantial real-terms increase in NHS funding over the past 14 years. That cannot be said for this year, potentially, which is why I am asking the question.

• 4 Mar 2025 · Draft Food and Feed (Regulated Products) (Amendment, Revocation, Consequential and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. As the Minister said, the regulations use a Brexit freedom to deregulate, and I welcome the fact that the Government are choosing to use that opportunity to reduce the amount of regulation that may be unnecessary. I was also pleased to hear the shadow Minister talking about the economic benefits— [ Laughter. ] I am sorry; it is early in the morning. The Minister talked about the benefits, including financial benefits, that our great food industry provides to this country. As a farmer’s wife, I am very familiar with those, and I would encourage hon. Members—particularly Government Members—to go to the farmers’ protest and rally in Downing Street and Whitehall after the Committee this morning. They will be able to get a pancake and some of our other great British food, and also to learn about what the Government are doing to the farming industry and why that is important. The first of the two changes in the regulations removes the requirement for 10-yearly renewals of authorisations for feed additives, genetically modified organisms and smoke flavourings, aligning the regimes with those for regulated food and feed products that do not require renewal. The second change eliminates the need for secondary legislation to bring the initial authorisations into effect, allowing them to be enacted following a ministerial decision and to be published in an official register. That will certainly make the process more efficient and more effective, but I am interested to understand the Minister’s views on the level of oversight that can be provided. If I heard her correctly, she talked about approving 500 renewals over the next three years. Given the many other significant demands on her time, can she guarantee that those renewals will be given the scrutiny and oversight required? The FSA and FSS will continue to assess products at the initial application stage and will maintain their powers to review authorised products if new evidence of risks emerges. The Minister talked about reviews, but what mechanism will trigger them? How will those organisations know that the risks are there if they are not doing regular reviews? The Minister talked about how applications will work in Great Britain, but can she tell us more about what regulatory framework will be available in Northern Ireland. How does she see trade between GB and NI working, given the difference on either side of the Irish sea? In summary, we do not plan to divide the Committee on the regulations, because we recognise their benefits, but we are keen to understand how the Minister feels that Parliament—and she herself—will be able to keep track of the various changes she will be making.

• 4 Mar 2025 · Draft Food and Feed (Regulated Products) (Amendment, Revocation, Consequential and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  I did not quite understand the Minister’s point regarding Northern Ireland. At the moment, under the new regulations, it is clear what will be done in Great Britain to approve new products. However, if a new product has been produced in another part of the United Kingdom—that is, Northern Ireland—how will it be assessed? How will products that have been assessed under the system in GB be able to be sold in Northern Ireland? Will they require further investigation?

• 26 Feb 2025 · British Indian Ocean Territory · Hansard source

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  What my right hon. Friend describes is truly shocking. This Labour Government are going to give away British sovereign territory, and they are going to charge the poor elderly pensioners and our businesspeople to do so. They are going to fundamentally fail in their first duty to keep Britain safe by making our country less safe. What on earth is motivating them to do this dreadful thing?

• 26 Feb 2025 · British Indian Ocean Territory · Hansard source

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  rose—

• 26 Feb 2025 · British Indian Ocean Territory · Hansard source

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  Unlike some of my esteemed colleagues, I am not a learned lawyer or a former Attorney General, but to an ordinary layperson like me, it sounds very much like the right hon. Lady and her Government are prepared to give away sovereign British territory and billions of pounds of taxpayers’ hard-earned income, simply in case somebody brings a court case sometime in the future that may or may not be successful. Can she please reassure me that that is not true?

• 26 Feb 2025 · Family Businesses · Hansard source

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  The Minister is talking about planning—I should declare an interest as a farmer’s wife—and says that 500 farmers will be affected. Of course, none of us can know who is going to die next year. While 500 farmers will be affected, there may be many, many more who might die and might be affected. There is a discrepancy between how many he thinks will definitely be affected—how many he predicts will die—and the actual number of people who may be affected and cannot plan their businesses accordingly, because they simply do not know. He argues that they can put their assets down a generation, but no one knows if there will be a car accident and the younger generation will be killed. He is simply taxing tragedy.

• 26 Feb 2025 · Family Businesses · Hansard source

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  My point was that the Minister may be correct that 520 estates will be affected, but others who may be affected will need to plan their businesses and lives accordingly. That is why so many more people are affected by his announcement than simply those who will die next year or the year after.

• 26 Feb 2025 · Family Businesses · Hansard source

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  What Labour seems not to understand is that every business starts with an idea, a hope or a dream, and the individual then puts their whole heart and soul, and every working hour they have, into building their business, often as a whole family endeavour over many generations. It is that, not just the economics and the jobs, that Labour is destroying.

• 13 Feb 2025 · Transport Infrastructure: Rural Communities · Hansard source

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  Sleaford has a beautiful grade II listed railway station in popular use. However, it is very difficult for those with disabilities to access the second platform because there is no lift. I have long campaigned for a lift, and I worked with East Midlands Railway, with the financial support of the previous Government, on a feasibility study for a lift that is in keeping with the heritage station. Will this Government back access for my constituents and access for people to come and visit our beautiful town?

• 13 Feb 2025 · HIV Testing Week · Hansard source

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  It is clear that the battle against HIV is a cross-party issue. We have seen strides and improvements over the years under Governments of different colours. Yes, I was the public health Minister, and we met at an event where I announced the results of the first year of the opt-out testing and its success in reducing infections. HIV testing is really important. I was pleased to see the Prime Minister test earlier this week; that is helpful in reducing the stigma associated with testing. It showed that anybody in any circumstances can have a test. Opt-out testing has identified cases where people who were thought to be very low risk unexpectedly turned out to be HIV-positive. When we brought in the opt-out testing, we targeted first the A&Es in areas of the highest risk, and we need to continue to target those highest-risk areas. In October 2024, the Department of Health and Social Care revealed that over half of those with HIV had been previously diagnosed abroad. Will the Department consider the implications of these trends when it puts together its new HIV action plan in order to achieve the goal of no new HIV transmissions in the UK by 2030? Countries such as Australia and New Zealand require applicants to take an HIV test before they obtain a visa. Have there been any discussions between the Department of Health and Social Care and the Home Office about introducing such a requirement in the UK, as we have for tuberculosis? Guidance from the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities—the Government’s own guidance, effectively —suggests that all men and women, and recently arrived children, known to be from a country of high prevalence should be recommended a test. It might be helpful if the Government followed their own guidance, because if we test the high-risk population, we stand more chance of picking up more cases, which would be beneficial. Under the opt-out testing scheme brought in by the Conservative Government, a patient can explicitly decline instead of explicitly accept an HIV test. It has been rolled out in many A&Es across the country, and I am pleased that it will be coming to more. It has identified hundreds of people who were undiagnosed or lost to follow-up for treatment for HIV, and includes hepatitis B and C. Identification of those cases helps the individuals concerned and helps to reduce transmission across the wider population. Between 2019 and 2020, the estimated number of diagnosed cases in England declined. However, somewhat counterintuitively, opt-out testing suggests there are more cases than we realise. Does the Minister have plans to re-estimate the number of undiagnosed HIV cases that may be out in the community waiting to be treated, in the light of the evidence from opt-out testing? The Opposition welcome the Government’s commitment to fund opt-out testing until March 2026, but NHS services need clarity on funding beyond that point. Will the Minister clarify whether long-term funding for opt-out HIV testing will be considered as part of this year’s spending review? HIV prevention goes beyond testing. A perennial issue is access to PrEP treatment, to maintain the reduction in HIV cases in England. PrEP has been described as a miracle drug, which prevents HIV-negative people from acquiring the virus, and is a key tool to stop new HIV transmissions by 2030. However, waiting times for PrEP are too long—at one point, they were measured in months rather than weeks. What steps is the Minister taking to improve that? The last Government improved access to PrEP across the country by setting up the PrEP access and equity task and finish group. What steps have been taken to implement the group’s recommendations since the Government took office? We have only one Parliament left to finally eradicate new cases of HIV by 2030. We owe it to everyone who has lost their life to this virus, everyone who has faced the stigma—thankfully, that is reduced but it still exists—of being HIV-positive and everyone who is living with HIV today to end new transmissions once and for all. I hope the Government continue the progress of the last Government with their new HIV action plan, and I hope that it will be developed soon. The former Minister, the hon. Member for Gorton and Denton (Andrew Gwynne), said in November that the plan was in production. I hope that it is getting closer to completion and that the Minister can give us an idea of when it will be complete. I hope that today’s debate will inspire thousands of people to get themselves tested.

• 13 Feb 2025 · HIV Testing Week · Hansard source

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  The key is to ask the Government what support they will give to the UN and what conversations they are having with their US counterparts about the benefits to people both overseas and at home of ensuring that the battle against HIV and AIDS is won.

• 13 Feb 2025 · HIV Testing Week · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) on securing this important debate, and I thank the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Kevin McKenna) for sharing his lived experience of this condition. As we mark National HIV Testing Week 2025, we should be proud of the progress we have made since the ’70s and ’80s in raising awareness of the disease and reducing stigma, but we must reflect on the great challenges that remain in the battle against HIV and AIDS. I pay tribute to charities such as the National AIDS Trust, the George House Trust and the Terrence Higgins Trust, whose work has been at the forefront of the fight against HIV and to improve the nation’s sexual health. The campaign strapline for National HIV Testing Week is “I test”—a message that cannot be repeated enough. Public campaigns such as this have helped to normalise HIV testing as routine and beneficial to both the individual concerned and society at large. Testing is quick, easy, confidential and free. It is the gateway to prevention and treatment and, ultimately, to ending new HIV transmissions. During National HIV Testing Week, anyone in England can order a free postal HIV test, funded by the Department of Health and Social Care and delivered by the Terrence Higgins Trust, as part of the national HIV prevention programme for England. I encourage anyone who is concerned to get such a test and take it. There has been encouraging progress in reducing the prevalence of HIV across England in recent years. In introducing a national HIV action plan, the last Government sought to achieve an 80% reduction in new infections by 2025. Remarkably, the UK achieved the UNAIDS 95-95-95 targets back in 2020: 95% of individuals living with HIV were thought to be diagnosed, 99% of them were on treatment and 98% were achieving good viral suppression. A growing proportion of HIV testing has been taking place by post or at home—44% in 2023 compared with 19% in 2019—which shows that the tests are acceptable to the public and welcomed by them. There has been a substantial increase in the number of tests taking place in emergency departments, with 857,000 in 2023 compared with 114,000 in 2019, mostly because of the opt-out testing introduced by the last Government. We cannot be complacent. Although there have been areas of progress, in recent years we have seen a reversal of hard-won gains in reducing HIV transmission. Data published by the UK Health Security Agency in 2024 shows that the number of heterosexual men and women in England newly diagnosed with HIV has increased by more than 30% since 2022. Around 5,000 undiagnosed people are currently living with HIV in England. HIV and AIDS cannot be solved in the UK without acknowledging the global context. Last year, AIDS-related illness claimed as many lives as the total of all wars, homicides and natural disasters that have ravaged our planet. In parts of southern Africa, in countries such as Botswana and Zimbabwe, more than a fifth of the adult population is living with HIV. Such figures remind us that the global fight with HIV is far from over. I was troubled to hear in a House of Lords debate earlier this week that the head of UNAIDS has warned that global HIV infections could increase by more than 600% by 2029 if the US continues to suspend the UN HIV/AIDS programme. That will mean higher infection rates here in the UK, as communicable diseases do not recognise national borders.

• 12 Feb 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  rose —

• 12 Feb 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I am interested in the hon. Gentleman’s concept of “for the purpose”. Can he be clear that when he is writing his dictionary of definitions, as per clause 140, he will ensure that the definitions are clear so that when people are looking at information on sex, they know whether they are dealing with biological sex or some other definition that the Minister may have come up with?

• 12 Feb 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to have the opportunity to contribute to the debate, which I have really enjoyed listening to. I particularly enjoyed the contribution of the hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Alison Hume), who talked about writers and stories. Her discussion reminded me of the book I am reading with my son, Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton’s “The 39-Storey Treehouse”, where they have just built a book making machine and have gone off to enjoy themselves while the book is written. I do not quite know how the story will end yet. That reminds us of the balance between the benefits that innovations such as AI can bring and the challenge, as the hon. Member said, of ensuring that people are fairly remunerated for their efforts, whether they be on building the machines or writing the stories. I will direct my remarks to two particular areas of the Bill. First, clause 141 deals with what it refers to as “purported intimate” images, otherwise referred to as deepfake pornography images. There are images of all hon. Members and a majority of our constituents online, fully clothed—at least, I hope so—but individuals can take those innocent images of us or our constituents and use computer software to insert them into another image, generating images that appear to show an individual in an intimate state, undressed or engaging in sexual activity. Why do they do that? For their own sexual gratification, to share with others—perhaps for money—or to humiliate, threaten or control the individual in the image or their loved ones. That has a devastating effect on people’s lives. No hon. Members will be surprised to hear that 99% of victims of that evil crime are women. It is important to recognise the work of Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge. She introduced a private Member’s Bill in this area last December. It was unfortunate that the Government chose not to support her legislation at that time, but I am grateful that they have drafted this clause of the Bill, which has the same effect. It was Baroness Owen’s tenacity and explanations that persuaded the Government to ensure that the threshold is consent, rather than the victim needing to prove intent, in the use of images. She persuaded them to increase the penalty to include imprisonment, reflecting the severity of the crime. She also persuaded them of the need to amend the Sentencing Act 2020 to end the somewhat farcical situation in which an individual will be prosecuted for creating an image and, at the end of the court case, have that same image handed back to them as part of their property. The Government gave the Baroness one further undertaking. Sometimes, images are not discovered immediately after they are taken; or, if a group of images is found on someone’s computer, it may take a while to identify the victim. In such cases, a six-month timeout loophole can cause individuals to get away with these hideous crimes. The Government undertook to amend section 127 of the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980, which limits jurisdiction to within six months of a crime, to ensure that people caught for a crime after six months has elapsed or whose prosecution takes place after six months have elapsed can still be held to justice and account. I ask the Minister to explain why I cannot find that in the Bill—it may be there and I just cannot find it. If he could clarify that point, I would be grateful. The other point I want to raise is accuracy. We have talked a lot about data, but data is useful only if it is accurate. We will all have heard the story of baby Lilah, a beautiful baby girl born in Sutton-in-Ashfield who was registered as male by accident. It is not very easy to have side notes in digital data. How do we ensure that data is accurate? Three clauses in the Bill may help us with that. Clause 45(6) says that information must be accurate, clause 28(3) and (4) suggest that the Secretary of State must check listed organisations for data reliability, and clause 140 requires the Secretary of State to produce a data dictionary to ensure that we know the definitions of all the data points. The Secretary State spoke about the huge opportunity that data offers the NHS. I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as I am a consultant paediatrician. Others have talked about the huge opportunities that AI and data use and research can present to the NHS, but there is also a risk. How does the Minister intend to define sex? The Labour Cabinet and the Prime Minister have repeatedly struggled to define what is a woman. Leaving that to secondary legislation, considered in a small Committee, is not sufficient scrutiny for such an important matter. Earlier in the debate, the Secretary of State referred to the powers that the Bill gives the Secretary of State under secondary legislation and why things are not included in the Bill itself. This issue should be given more scrutiny than that of an SI Committee. It is important to protect women: women’s sport, women’s privacy and women’s single-sex spaces. It is important for intimate care. Many people want to receive intimate care, particularly domiciliary care, by somebody of the same sex. How will they know if the data is not available? Data is also important to protect those with a trans identity. Many blood reference ranges are different for males and females. Haemoglobin varies from laboratory to laboratory, but is roughly 13 to 18 in males and 11.5 to 16.5 in females. If data is not complete or accurate, some individuals may receive unnecessary investigation. Data for screening and other health messages is important. We do not want male people called for cervical screening or men not to receive prostate information.

• 12 Feb 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  The Minister is being extremely generous with his time.

• 12 Feb 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  He talked about deepfake pornography—the purported intimate images. One undertaking that the Government gave Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge was that they would remove the prosecution limitation of six months from the offence being committed. However, I have not seen that in the Bill. Do the Government intend to table an amendment in Committee, or would they accept an Opposition amendment at that stage?

• 12 Feb 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  It is certainly true that across the western world at the moment, there seems to be some confusion on some of the basics of biology and humanity. Data is important for protecting children, too. One data provider listed in clause 28 is the Disclosure and Barring Service. GB News reported that there were 12,000 prosecutions between January 2019 and June 2022 of people on the sex offenders register who did not inform police of data changes. It is crucial that data is accurate and up to date, so will the Secretary of State commit to the integrity of biological sex data in the Bill and in the Government’s datasets? Last September, the UK Health Security Agency released data on sexually transmitted infections by sex and sexual orientation, which is important because of the different epidemiological nature of infections in the different populations. However, the footnotes said that men were defined in the data as cisgender and transgender men, and women as cisgender and transgender women. That somewhat undermines the data integrity and the purpose of splitting the data in the first place. Data that is wrong, unhelpful, misleading or misused by malicious actors can be dangerous. Many are concerned. How does the Minister plan to define sex, and what are his plans for incongruous data? In the debate in the upper House, it was reported that 3,000 people have changed their sex data in their passport, and 15,000 have changed it with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency on their driving licence. It was said in the House of Lords debate that up to 100,000 people may have incongruous official datasets between items such as passports and driving licences. How does the Minister intend to resolve that if we are to have one large dataset for each person? Finally, clause 45(8) sets out that a person may need to pay fees in respect of disclosure. Will we expect people to pay for their own data, and, if so, how much? I know Labour is very keen on increasing taxes, but can the Minister guarantee that the cost will never outweigh the admin cost of producing the data?

• 11 Feb 2025 · Global Health and Immunisation · Hansard source

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  Another time when it is important to work together is during a pandemic, such as by sharing research. Unfortunately, recent history tells us that when Labour negotiates, Britain loses out. Can the Secretary of State confirm that, whatever emerges from discussions with the World Health Organisation, he will not reduce the UK’s capacity to take decisions in the interests of the British people.

• 11 Feb 2025 · Global Health and Immunisation · Hansard source

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  There were almost 67,000 cases of serious antimicrobial-resistant infections in the United Kingdom in 2023. War is increasing such infections globally; 80% of patients in one Kyiv hospital in Ukraine are said to have such infections. The Conservative Government had a plan to tackle that. Do the Labour Government plan to follow that plan, are they on track to meet those targets, and if not, what will the Secretary of State do about it?