Baroness May of Maidenhead
Member of the House of Lords · Conservative · United Kingdom
“First, I worry that the Bill is removing yet further the powers of the Office of Rail and Road to hold the railways and Great British Railways to account. I remember when Tom Winsor was the Rail Regulator, and a rather determined Rail Regulator he was too, but after him, things got a little mushy.”
“Not only will that cost the taxpayer money, completely unnecessarily; it is as if somebody in the Department for Transport—maybe the Minister, maybe a civil servant, or perhaps a special adviser—has suggested, “Actually if we’re going to make a change, people need to see there’s a change, so let’s repaint all the trains”.”
“My third concern is this. Last week, the new Member of Parliament for Makerfield, who it is widely assumed will soon be our Prime Minister, made a speech in which he applauded and spoke up for the interests of place, of locality, of that sense of belonging to an area, of local identity.”
“That ability is going to be wiped away by this Bill and by the creation of Great British Railways. It is an issue I argued with Keith Williams when he was producing his report, and I recognise that on this side of the House, our hands are not entirely clean in relation to the concept of Great British Railways, albeit with differences from…”
“I did so not just as shadow Secretary of State for Transport for a period, but also because a lot of my constituents were commuters and the train service mattered to them. But I had the advantage of dealing with those issues in an era of privatisation. I remember British Rail.”
“My Lords, first, I declare my interest as a member of the GWR stakeholder advisory board, ably and knowledgeably chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester. I add my voice to the Minister’s remarks on the 21st anniversary of those terrible attacks on our transport system.”
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“I thank you, Mr Speaker, and the Government for enabling this debate today. I stood on a manifesto commitment to maintain international aid funding at 0.7% of gross national income—and not just that, because we said: “We will proudly maintain our commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of GNI on development”. Early last year, the pandemic hit.”
“I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. This is the first step in opening up Britain for business. However, I note that in his statement he said that people should expect that their experience at the border may be different, with longer waiting times than before. When queues at the border have been a problem in the past, extra staff have been brought in, including from other Government Departments, to support Border Force. Will my right hon. Friend, on behalf of the Government, guarantee that every effort will be made to bring in extra resources and deploy staff in different ways, including changing staff rotas at Border Force, to ensure that there can be a smooth movement of people through our borders and that we do not see inordinately long queues?”
“I am sure that other Members will, like me, have had constituency cases in which there has been a problem with the treatment an individual received from the NHS, and they want an apology and to know that someone will ensure that it does not happen again to somebody else, but they come up against a brick wall, because the natural inclination is to defend the institution, rather than address the issue that has been raised.”
“What was clear to me when these issues were raised with me is that over decades women had suffered, children had suffered and families had suffered, and the impacts are still being felt today. What was also clear was that the voices of patients, of women and of others had been raised and had consistently been ignored. There had been a sort of attitude that said, “There, there. You’re a woman; you just have to put up with it.” The unwillingness to listen and act had occurred under successive Governments, through the Department of Health and various aspects of the national health service. I have to say to the Minister that sadly such an approach is perhaps not unexpected by Members of the House.”
“I would also like to add my thanks to the noble Baroness Cumberlege for the work she did in chairing the review, and in producing such a no-holds-barred and absolutely-to-the-point review, which made very clear for the Government the problems that had occurred and what needed to be done. I will also take this opportunity to say to the Minister that I would like to thank the Government for their decision to establish a strategy for women’s health, which I think is important. But that is for the future; what we are talking about now, of course, are problems that occurred in the past but also problems that are still occurring, as we have just heard in relation to mesh, and indeed as with sodium valproate, which I will refer to later.”
“I join the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) in thanking the Backbench Business Committee for enabling this important debate. I decided that the independent medicines and medical devices safety review should be set up because I was deeply concerned about the impact, which had been raised over many years, of the use of certain medicines and medical devices on women, and in particular the use of pelvic mesh, sodium valproate and hormone pregnancy tests, predominantly Primodos. I would like to take this opportunity to commend all Members of the House who have campaigned on these issues over the years.”
“The commissioner is important, because it is the commissioner who will enable the user’s experience—the patient’s voice—to be heard. By hearing that voice, it will be possible to detect and stop the use of medicines and medical devices that lead to avoidable harms.”
“The recommendations were not made lightly; they were made after listening to considerable evidence and hearing the voice of people who had suffered for years as a result of the use of these medicines or medical devices. The report identified where changes needed to be made. Of course responses take time and of course the Department has been dealing with the pandemic, but I hope that the Government are going to respond properly on all the issues raised. The Government have agreed to set up an independent patient safety commissioner—partly, I have to say, because of the action in the House of Lords in relation to amendments to a Bill—and they are now consulting on the position, but we do not know when the commissioner is going to be in post.”
“For women there is an added dimension—the widespread and wholly unacceptable labelling of so many symptoms as ‘normal’ and attributable to ‘women’s problems’.” It went on: “Mistakes are perpetuated through a culture of denial, a resistance to no-blame learning, and an absence of overall effective accountability.” It was apt that the report was called “First Do No Harm”; as the noble Baroness Cumberlege said: “It is a phrase that should serve as a guiding principle, and the starting point, not only for doctors but for all the other component parts of our healthcare system. Too often, we believe it has not.” Like the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle, I am concerned that the Government have not responded to and accepted the recommendations of the review in full.”
“The report of the independent review made this very clear: “There is an institutional and professional resistance to changing practice even in the face of mounting safety concerns. There can be a culture of dismissive and arrogant attitudes that only serve to intimidate and confuse.”
“The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right and I shall come to the issue of redress in relation to these particular aspects of pelvic mesh, sodium valproate and Primodos and other HPTs. I was making the general point that I see constituency cases of individuals where a mistake has been made by the NHS. They want an apology and to know that change is going to take place, but they come up against a brick wall and sometimes find themselves battling and ending up in court to try to get some redress—with all the problems that that creates—because the institution has defended itself, rather than taking the patient’s voice seriously. Our NHS does amazing work day by day and it has done amazing work during the pandemic, but, sadly, when mistakes are made, it does not always respond in the right way.”
“The service which at its heart has our safety and protection ignored concerns over safety for too many years. The independent report recommends steps for the system to change. I urge the Government to embrace the recommendations in full. That way, we will be on the way to ensuring that we have a system that genuinely first does no harm.”
“I hope that the Government do not think that that is job done, because this is an ongoing issue that has to be addressed. It is not just about providing information to women; it is also about ensuring that their clinicians are well informed when they are prescribing and dealing with their cases. Women suffered considerably from the use of pelvic mesh, from hormone-based pregnancy tests, predominantly Primodos, and from sodium valproate, but they and their children are still suffering today. At the heart of this situation lay a health system that, in the words of the report, is “not good enough at spotting trends in practice and outcomes that give rise to safety concerns. Listening to patients is pivotal to that.” The system did not listen. It saw real pain and debilitation as women’s problems.”
“Setting up the patient reference group was fine, but I understand that it is due to publish findings shortly, and nobody knows whether the patient’s voice is going to be taken into account or how it can be in the future. I urge the Government to ensure that patients are part of the implementation; it is their experience that we are talking about, so it is so important that they are included. My final point relates to sodium valproate and it partly comes from constituency experience. This medicine has a one in two risk of causing harm to a baby if a woman is taking it while she is, or becomes, pregnant. What lies behind this issue is information and education, but it took a year for the Government to write to women to raise awareness of the risk.”
“It is also expensive for the national health service; in 2018-19, the NHS paid £2.4 billion in clinical negligence claims. But redress is about far more than compensation. It is about relating to the real impact that the use of these medicines and medical devices has had on people, such as the need for special education for children who have been affected because their mothers have taken sodium valproate when pregnant. There are many other examples. I urge the Government to look again at that issue. I also want to raise the issue of the patient’s voice, because this has all been about an unwillingness in the past to listen to the patient’s voice.”
“It is about people who are suffering real-life experiences and impacts as a result of the use of medicines and medical devices; it is about identifying those situations and ensuring that action is taken to stop them happening so that others can be protected. The issue of redress was mentioned by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle and the hon. Member for—I apologise, because the hon. Gentleman is in the House so frequently, but I have forgotten his constituency— [ Interruption. ] Strangford, thank you. The issue was also mentioned by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). The Government have said that an agency is not needed, yet time and again the only redress for patients is through recourse to the courts. That is expensive and stressful.”
“I absolutely agree about the importance of the patient safety commissioner; they have to be able to do the job that is intended and set out for them to do. I know that there will be those who will be concerned that their sponsoring Department is the Department of Health and Social Care. It is natural because this is a health issue, but I hope that the Department will make every effort to ensure that it cannot be accused of trying to water down the role of the independent safety commissioner, because, as we are saying, it is important for the user’s experience to be heard. This is not about trying to get at the Department of Health or the NHS or anything.”
“It has been a theme of Conservative Governments now for some considerable time. We have taken it up in G7 meetings, and we have encouraged others around the world to take up that theme. Of course, a girl who is educated is less likely to be lured into modern slavery. However, if we cut the programmes for dealing with modern slavery, that girl may not be able to get into education because the slave drivers and the gangs—the criminal gangs—may have got to her first. We have to look at these issues holistically and at the linkages between them.”
“Of course, it is a vote on the estimates for the FCDO. It cannot be used as a proxy vote on 0.7%, and I hope the Government will accept that and recognise that the calls for a vote on 0.7% are still there. There are two issues that I particularly want to raise. The first is that, in the limited information available to us on aid spending from the Government, there seems to be little suggestion from the Government that they are actually paying attention to the important linkages between the different elements of spending in the aid budget. This is often an holistic matter, and these things cannot just be looked at in silos. To give just one example of this, our right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is rightly very keen to encourage girls’ education around the world.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the very good speech from the Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), and I echo her comments in thanking FCDO staff and aid workers around the world for the work that they do, often, as she said, in extremely difficult circumstances. I would also like to say to the Minister that I am grateful to Lord Ahmad for the discussions he is having with me on modern slavery and initiatives on modern slavery, and those discussions are continuing. Before I come to the specific points I want to make on the estimates, I will make a general point on this debate, because I believe that, in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) last week, the Prime Minister implied that this debate was a vote on 0.7%.”
“We spend our aid differently, and we have developed—and successive International Development Secretaries did this too—real expertise. We are now hitting the needy across the world with a double whammy because they are losing our funding and they are losing our expertise as well.”
“Member for Rotherham, but there are others, including the cut in funding to starving people in Yemen, for example, and all of these are having a real impact on the ground. The FCDO also needs to look very carefully at the DFID expertise that is now within the FCDO. As it looks across its estimates and at how it is spending its money in the Department, it needs to make very certain that it does not lose that expertise. There have been times in the past when people have rightly questioned the way in which our aid money has been spent, but I have to say that that has changed in recent years, largely due to and initiated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield when he was the International Development Secretary.”
“I note that the Select Committee, in response to the decision to merge DFID into the FCO, said that it had “significant concerns that the merger may jeopardise the ongoing effectiveness of future UK aid spending… In the long run, the creation of the new Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office could reduce the UK’s clout on the world stage.” I fear that it is reducing the UK’s clout on the world stage, and this cut in overseas aid is but one example of that, although we focus, as we have in previous debates on this issue, on the very real impact on the ground of the money being cut from different programmes. The health programme has been mentioned by the Select Committee Chairman, the hon.”
“Investing 0.7 percent of Gross National Income…on international development is at the heart of that vision; it shows we are an enterprising, outward-looking and truly global Britain that is fully engaged with the world.” That was at the end of September 2020, and in November 2020 the funding was cut. Either one hand does not know what the other hand is doing in the Government, or they were just trying to calm everybody into a sense that everything was going to be okay before they actually wielded the knife on this particular issue. The second point I want to make is about the impact on the UK’s presence on the world stage of the decisions that have been taken. This relates not just to ODA spending, but to the spending of the FCDO in general.”
“I want to note that, in their response to the fourth special report of the Select Committee, in late September —28 September—last year, the Government said: “The Government’s manifesto made clear that we would proudly maintain our commitment to spending 0.7 percent of our national income on development—a commitment enshrined in law and one to which the new Department will honour its responsibilities. The Integrated Review, which will inform the priorities and direction for this new department, will set an ambitious vision for the future of the UK as an active, internationalist, problem-solving and burden-sharing nation.”
“Indeed. My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. I gave just one example, but actually we have to look at aid funding holistically, and look at the linkages between areas and the impact of cuts in one area on another area. There is no evidence, I am afraid, from what I have seen from the Government, that that is what they have done. It does appear that they have just cut in silos. We see, for example, that the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery has an 80% cut in its funding and there is a 25% cut in funding for girls’ education, but these are linked. I urge the Government to look at those links.”
“If we do that, we might be able to return, as was said in the Government response to the fourth special report, to being “an enterprising, outward-looking and truly global Britain that is fully engaged with the world.” Sadly, at the moment, the message is rather different.”
“When a programme is cut, we cannot just say, “Well, you are not having that money this year, but next year you are going to have it.” People will no longer be employed to give the aid on the ground. We need the expertise to be able to build the programmes up. We are looking at a perfect storm, where not only has the money gone away but, when the time comes—I hope it will be next year that the Government restore 0.7%—we will find that the people are not in the Department to ensure that that is being done, and being done effectively. I say to the Minister that I sincerely hope that we can restore the respect that we have had around the world, through our funding and our expertise, restore the 0.7%, look holistically at the aid spending and not lose DFID expertise.”
“I thank my right hon. Friend for clarifying that point so well. If we are going to continue to be respected as a country that leads on overseas aid, it is absolutely imperative that we not only spend the money, but that we also have the expertise to ensure that it is being spent properly. Hosting receptions in the British embassy, and getting to know local businessmen and politicians, is a different skillset from knowing how to deliver aid on the ground logistically, so that British taxpayers’ money is spent in the most effective way. Maintaining that expertise is particularly important if the Government are to be believed, as we hope they are, when they say that they are going to restore the 0.7%.”
“So much hard work has gone into ensuring that we have an ICS in our area that delivers for our constituents. I hear the same from other hon. Members in the debate this evening. I therefore ask the Minister to do what reflects the natural networks that define primacy of place and not to destroy the good will that has gone into making those partnerships work. Do not break up Frimley ICS. Just for once, let common sense prevail.”
“Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex and in interventions, Frimley is not the only ICS that is under threat where Members of Parliament are concerned about the impact on their constituents. That brings me to the concept that underpins the White Paper—primacy of place. “Place” is not defined simply by a local authority boundary. A local authority boundary defines the area of the local authority, but primacy of place has a deeper meaning. It involves people’s behaviour and natural networks. In east Berkshire, our acute hospital is Wexham Park in Slough and is part of the NHS Frimley Health Foundation Trust. The natural geographical area for east Berkshire to be part of is the Frimley health trust area. That makes common sense to people—those working in the NHS and our constituents.”
“The NHS has been under intense pressure during the pandemic, but as we come out of the pandemic it is also under increased pressure with the backlogs in surgery and in the provision of other services, and with the increasing pressures there will be on mental health services. Are we to say at this time to people working in the NHS, “What we want you to do is to go away and break up this thing that you’ve brought together and worked very hard to ensure is working so well, and create entirely new ones”? In the case of Frimley, three ICSs would probably be created as a result. That can only lead to a disruption in services. Who suffers from a disruption in services? The people who suffer will be our constituents. As we heard from my hon.”
“Frimley ICS is supported by all the GPs and healthcare providers in east Berkshire, and by GPs and others in Hampshire and Surrey, which Frimley ICS also covers. Frimley ICS is supported by all the east Berkshire local authorities, all the east Berkshire MPs, who, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex pointed out, were not consulted as part of these proposals going forward. Our message collectively to the Government is a very simple one: Frimley ICS is working well, it provides excellent services to our constituents, do not break it up. Far from breaking it up, Frimley ICS should be a template for ICSs across the rest of the country. The message can be put more simply: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That is particularly important at this point in time.”
“It has been achieved by people coming together, working together in a network of partners whose aim has been to provide the best possible outcomes for our constituents. Yet now the Government want to break it up—why? It is because it is bureaucratically neater to align an ICS boundary with a local authority boundary. I understand that in this instance one local authority leader argued that his local authority should be covered by a single ICS and therefore the boundaries should be the same. I refer the Minister to the White Paper, which says: “Frequently, place level commissioning within an integrated care system will align geographically to a local authority boundary”. It says “frequently”, not in every case, at every occasion or in every ICS we are looking at, so it is not necessary to align every ICS with a local authority boundary.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) on securing this debate, and thank him and the Minister for their courtesy in agreeing that I could speak briefly in it. I want to focus, first, on my local integrated care system. The majority of my constituency is covered by the Frimley ICS, as is the rest of east Berkshire. I know that the comments I am going to make are supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland), the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) and my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie). Frimley ICS is one of the best performing and most effective ICSs in the country—arguably, it is the best performing and most effective ICS in the country. That has been achieved by partnership working across county boundaries and across local authorities.”
“Like, I am sure, all Members of the House, my thoughts are with Daniel Morgan’s family today. At the heart of this damning, thorough report is yet another example of an organ of the state, the job of which was to protect the public, having prioritised the reputation of the institution over the delivery of justice. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the vast majority of police officers act with integrity and an overriding sense of public duty, but that where corruption does occur it must be rooted out with vigour, unlike what happened throughout this episode and the investigation to find the killer of Daniel Morgan? As the independent panel has said, every corrupt activity must be identified and dealt with on every occasion.”
“We have established our former colleague here in this House, Nick Hurd, as a ministerial representative working with the Grenfell families after that tragedy, but I would say to the Lord Chancellor that I see that role as quite different from the role of an independent public advocate. The independence of the public advocate is incredibly important. The Lord Chancellor wants to get it right, but please get it right quickly.”
“My right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor has acknowledged that the collapse of this trial has been the final blow to the Hillsborough families in their desperate search for justice over so many years. He has referenced the independent public advocate. In 2017, I pledged: “To ensure that the pain and suffering of the Hillsborough families…is not repeated, we will introduce an independent public advocate who will act for bereaved families after a public disaster and support them at public inquests.” We are now four years on, so can I urge him to act swiftly in this matter?”
“The Government may say all they have, as the Minister has, about the importance of the aviation industry, but they need to decide whether they want an airline industry and aviation sector in the UK or not, because at the rate they are going, they will not have one, certainly not as a key sector in the economy, as it was before the pandemic. It is incomprehensible, I think, that one of the most heavily vaccinated countries in the world is the one that is most reluctant to give its citizens the freedoms those vaccinations should support.”
“There will be new variants every year. If the Government’s position is that we cannot open up travel until there are no new variants elsewhere in the world, we will never be able to travel abroad ever again. The third fact that the Government need to state much more clearly is that sadly people will die from covid here in the UK in the future, as 10,000 to 20,000 people do every year from flu. We are falling behind the rest of Europe in our decisions to open up, as my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady) has indicated.”
“That is not to mention the impact on the airlines, on travel agents here and on the travel and tourist industry in our longest-standing trading partner in Europe. Business travel is practically impossible: global Britain has shut its doors to business and investors. In a normal pre-pandemic year, passengers travelling through Heathrow spent £16 billion throughout the country, including at places such as Legoland Windsor, which is partly in my constituency. That has been lost. There are some facts on which the Government need to be upfront with the British people and about which Ministers need to think a bit more when they make decisions. First, we will not eradicate covid-19 from the UK. There will not be a time when we can say that there will never be another case of covid-19 in this country. Secondly, variants will keep on coming.”
“In 2020, I went to Switzerland in August and South Korea in September. There was no vaccine but travel was possible. This year, there is a vaccine but travel is not possible. I really do not understand the Government’s stance. Of course, it is permissible for a person to travel to countries on the amber list, provided that it is practicable for them to quarantine when they come back, but Government Ministers tell people that they must not travel and cannot go on holiday to places on the amber list. The messaging is mixed and the system is chaotic. Portugal was put on the green list, people went to the football, then Portugal was put on the amber list, leaving holidaymakers scrabbling for flights and devastated families having to cancel their plans.”
“I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. This is a disappointing debate, because one year and one week ago this very issue was raised in this House. A different Minister was at the Dispatch Box at the time, but she promised me that the Government were working hard across the sector to “get internationally agreed standard health measures” —[ Official Report , 3 June 2020; Vol. 676, c. 850.] in place. One year on, we are no further forward. Indeed, we have a devastated industry, jobs lost and global Britain shut for business. More than not being any further forward, we have gone backwards. We now have more than 50% of the adult population vaccinated—it is a wonderful programme—yet we are more restricted on travel than we were last year.”
“In April 1989, 96 Liverpool fans were unlawfully killed at Hillsborough, yet nobody has been successfully prosecuted for their part in those unlawful killings. The most recent trial collapsed, because although it was accepted that police evidence had been altered, as it was evidence to a public inquiry, it did not constitute perversion of the course of justice. Will my right hon. Friend urgently look at the ramifications of that judgment for current and future public inquiries, and ensure that people are given the justice that has been so cruelly denied to the families of the Hillsborough 96?”
“But the damage it does to our reputation means that it will be far harder for us as a country to argue for the change that we want internationally—and that is across the board, including at COP26 and in respect of our setting out and putting into place the ambitions of the Integrated Review, which does not even mention modern slavery as one of the Government’s development priorities. I only hope that modern slavery is still on the G7 agenda, as it has been in the past. The cut from 0.7% will have a devastating impact on the poorest in the world and it will damage the UK. I urge the Government to reinstate the 0.7% target: it is what they promised, it will show that we act according to our values and it will save lives.”
“The third reason I oppose the cut is the impact on the UK’s standing in the world. People have respected us for our commitment to 0.7%; now, as we have heard, we are the only country in the G7 that is cutting aid at this time. People do not listen to the UK because we are the UK; they listen to us because of what we do and how we put our values into practice. Our commitment to that 0.7% has, for example, enabled us to argue the case for different definitions of ODA spending. Cutting this spending will have an impact on our standing. Will we suddenly see countries cutting us off? No. Will we suddenly be kicked off international tables? No.”
“The United Kingdom has been the world leader in tackling modern slavery. Now we see organisations having to go cap in hand to other Governments to make up for the shortfall caused by the UK’s decision to cut international development spending. Aid spending is not just about people in countries far away. Tackling modern slavery has an impact here on the streets of the United Kingdom. Supporting economic development elsewhere will help to cut the number of people who feel they have to migrate to the UK in order to look for work, and cutting ODA spending has an impact on other Departments. I recall in the Home Office that we used ODA spending to fund some of the work we did with refugees. If we cut that funding, either the work will not be done or the Home Office will have to find that money from other parts of its budget.”
“My second reason is the impact, which I have just alluded to, that the cut will have on the poorest people around the world. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), in his thought-provoking and forceful speech, gave us some examples of the impact the cut will have—the damage it will cause to lives; the lives that will be lost. I want to mention just one particular area of interest to me: modern slavery. As one example, the global fund to end modern slavery is having its funding cut by 80%. That means that programmes will be lost, including programmes to work to end the commercial sexual exploitation of children, with all the damaging and devastating impact on young lives that the loss of that programme will have. The global fund will try to restore that money from elsewhere, including from other Governments.”
“Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting permission for this debate. I oppose the cut from 0.7% in international development funding for three reasons. First, I stood at the election on a manifesto that said: “We will proudly maintain our commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of GNI on development”. Now, the Government will say, as the Chief Secretary has today, that covid has changed the circumstances, but the Government are also taking pride in and responsibility for the fact that our economy will bounce back this year, and covid has also changed the circumstances for the poorest people around the world. For many of them there will be no bounce back, because for some of them it will simply be too late. So I urge the Government to stand by their word and stand by our manifesto commitment on international development funding.”
“The challenge for ARIA is that it needs to be truly innovative, it needs to have blue skies thinking and it needs to be doing what other people are not doing, but it has to have a purpose in doing that. What I hope we will not see is an organisation where lots of scientists and people get together, think lots of wild thoughts, enjoy talking about them and possibly publish a few papers, but at the end of the day, there is no practical difference to people’s lives as a result of that. The aim of this is to do that innovative thinking but, in due course, for that innovative thinking—whether it is taken up by other scientists, business or whoever—to lead to a real improvement in people’s lives.”