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30 Nov 2009 : Column 579



30 Nov 2009 : Column 579

House of Lords

Monday, 30 November 2009.

2.30 pm

Prayers-read by the Lord Bishop of Liverpool.

Death of a Member: Baroness David

Announcement

2.36 pm

The Lord Speaker (Baroness Hayman): My Lords, with deep regret I have to inform the House of the death yesterday of Lady David. On behalf of the whole House, I extend our sympathies to the noble Baroness's family and friends.

Health: Genomic Medicine

Question

2.37 pm

Asked By Lord Warner

Baroness Thornton: My Lords, we have asked all 10 strategic health authorities to lead work regionally across the NHS to deliver pathology modernisation in the light of the report of my noble friend Lord Carter and to advise us on the transition costs and timescales involved. The report on genomic medicine contained a large number of recommendations. However, we expect to respond before the end of the year.

Lord Warner: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that Answer. Is she aware that it is now nearly four years since my noble friend Lord Carter of Coles was asked to investigate this area? Is she further aware that the noble Lord, Lord Darzi, promised me in a Written Answer in July that we would have a full report on implementation of this service area "later this year"?

Baroness Thornton: My Lords, my noble friend will be aware that change on this scale does not happen across the whole country overnight. All 10 strategic health authorities are now working together to formulate local responses to the consolidation agenda as set out in the Carter report. However, they need time to identify what the transition will look like in terms of time and cost as they decide the future of pathology services in their local areas. My noble friend will be pleased to know that, following the work of my noble friend Lord Darzi, we have warned the NHS that an assumption about improved efficiency in pathology services is likely at some stage to be built into the tariff payments used to calculate all secondary care income.



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Lord Patel: My Lords, I am pleased to hear from the Minister that the Government will respond to the report on genomic medicine of the Science and Technology Committee, which I had the privilege to chair. Does she agree that, unless pathology services are properly organised for modern diagnostics and molecular and genetic tests, the postcode lottery that currently exists will continue, with more deaths occurring because of late diagnosis, inappropriate treatment and inappropriate monitoring?

Baroness Thornton: The noble Lord is quite right: it is important that we pursue this reform agenda. We support the noble Lord's report on centralising the genetic labs into the molecular pathology labs. He can anticipate that when we publish our response later this year we will make clear our continuing support for the bringing together of molecular pathology and genetic labs. We agree that this has great potential to benefit patients through better use of the laboratory workforce and more effective uptake.

Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, does the Minister agree that, no matter how well you bring the services together, pathology is still a science that depends very much on the individual pathologist diagnosing, as opposed to biochemical tests, all of which can now be done more or less automatically? What improvements will be made in ways of monitoring standards after this is done?

Baroness Thornton: We anticipate not a reduction but a bringing together of laboratories and scientists to create a more effective and efficient service.

Lord Campbell-Savours: Could consolidation lead to job losses? Is there not a danger that we might be going down a privatisation route?

Baroness Thornton: The reform recommended by the review was to match the skills of the workforce to the job done, to maximise the contribution of staff and not to save money. In fact, there are job shortages in this area. The reprofiling will bring with it better career opportunities for junior staff, with senior staff freed up to use their expertise to more effect. This is not about reducing numbers but about being more effective. Nor is it about privatisation. The private sector already provides limited pathology services, but the job of the commissioners of services is to find the best and most appropriate sources of services and the best expertise available to them.

Baroness Barker: How can IT connectivity be brought up to a standard sufficient to enable the reforms to take place when the rest of the NHS IT system has been such an expensive disaster?

Baroness Thornton: I do not agree with the noble Baroness's contention on the lack of effectiveness of the IT. We expect that built into the reform and the centralising of services will be the need for effective

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communication. IT services play a large part in getting results back to patients and their clinicians as quickly as possible.

Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve: Has any view been reached about the relative costs of proliferating high-tech services in each trust versus consolidation, as recommended in the Carter report and in the Select Committee's report on genomic medicine?

Baroness Thornton: We already know that consolidation and centralisation of pathology services in Kent and in the north-east have not only enhanced the services there but also saved millions of pounds.

Earl Howe: My Lords, the report of the noble Lord, Lord Carter, recommended improved training of the pathology workforce. Can the Minister outline what improvements in pathology training for existing and new staff are either in train or have been implemented so far?

Baroness Thornton: This is work in progress. I shall write to the noble Earl with the detail. However, training and recruitment of staff-as I said, we are short of technicians in this area-are important and integral parts of the implementation of the report.

Baroness Howarth of Breckland: My Lords, on two occasions we have heard in a reply-from the noble Lord, Lord Darzi, and from the Minister herself-that there will be a report by the end of the year. Could I ask which year? Do the Government have a precise timetable?

Baroness Thornton: It will be by the end of 2009.

Business: Entrepreneurship

Question

2.44 pm

Asked By Lord Haskel

The Minister for Trade and Investment (Lord Davies of Abersoch): My Lords, our economy depends on healthy, successful small businesses. The Government have taken steps to develop a strong enterprise culture, giving everyone the opportunity to be entrepreneurial, irrespective of background or location, and seeking to ensure they have the skills they need. We have developed an environment in which enterprise can flourish, reducing red tape, ensuring small businesses can access the finance they need, and providing easy access to advice and support though the Business Link network and website.



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Lord Haskel: I thank my noble friend for that reply. Did he see the first shot at an innovation index, produced by NESTA last Thursday? The index attempts to gather together all those entrepreneurial and enterprising activities that go into creating and running a business. Do the Government think that the index gives a fair and accurate picture of the benefits that innovation brings to our economy?

Lord Davies of Abersoch: I thank my noble friend for his question. We welcome NESTA's findings. It is an important topic for which we need better data. The report demonstrates the extent to which UK businesses already invest in innovation, but it also demonstrates that entrepreneurship is a critical element of successful innovation. Because the UK is strong on entrepreneurship, we are well placed to transform good ideas into successful innovation.

Lord Teverson: My Lords, I was interested that the Minister mentioned background and geography with regard to entrepreneurship being encouraged, but what about gender balance? It is so obvious still that although women are able to participate in entrepreneurial and business activity, there is still a very skewed distribution as regards participation, even at the early start businesses. How do the Government wish to correct that balance?

Noble Lords: Hear, hear.

Lord Davies of Abersoch: Well, hear, hear. It is a real challenge. Only an estimated 15 per cent of the UK's 4.8 million SMEs are led by women. There are 1.1 million self-employed women in the UK, which is a 20 per cent increase since 2000, but this is a real challenge for the UK. If we had the same percentage of women in business as the US has, we would have another 700,000 to 800,000 SMEs. That is why the results just published from the women's taskforce are hugely important. We will implement the recommendations and we need more women in business in Britain.

Lord Peston: My Lords, without wishing to undermine the excellent work which I am sure my noble friend Lord Sugar will be doing, the evidence overwhelmingly is that entrepreneurs are born and not made. What is also interesting is how many of them come from overseas or are the children of immigrants. Is that not the important point that we should bear in mind? We need to seek out the entrepreneurs rather than convert people who have no entrepreneurial ability with the idea that we can make the entrepreneurs.

Lord Davies of Abersoch: The World Bank still rates the UK as the first in Europe and the second in the G8 with regard to ease of doing business. We need to start educating and inspiring young people to be entrepreneurs and to start new businesses. That is why the Youth Enterprise is important; it is also why we must inspire international students in the UK who decide to stay. We must inspire young people to start new businesses, which is why the Government are giving so much support to Youth Enterprise and to ethnic minority groups.



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Lord Bilimoria: My Lords, for entrepreneurship and enterprise to succeed, I am sure the Minister would agree that business needs support as well as access to finance. The latest estimates put the amount of support given by the Government to the financial sector and the banks at £1.2 trillion. Have the Government given anywhere near even a small fraction of that to support finance and access to finance to businesses and SMEs, which employ 13 million people in this country? Have the Government got their priorities right? Are the Government listening to the banks or are they listening to business?

Lord Davies of Abersoch: We are doing both. We first of all had to recapitalise the banks; we then had to provide real help for small businesses. The variety of schemes that we have introduced, from the Enterprise Finance Guarantee scheme to many other initiatives, have given real help to small businesses. The challenge for next year is to ensure that the banks are there with access to finance as companies grow their turnover and as the economy recovers.

Lord De Mauley: My Lords, despite the Minister's optimistic initial response to his noble friend's Question, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor's annual report shows that total United Kingdom entrepreneurial activity is down from 7.7 per cent in 2001 to 5.5 per cent today, and that we are falling badly behind our international counterparts. Does he not understand that people feel that the Government have spent too much time talking about helping business and not enough time acting?

Lord Davies of Abersoch: Let me give the noble Lord a statistic straight back: the OECD says that the UK has the lowest barriers to entrepreneurship of all OECD countries. We have had 476,700 new start-ups in England and Wales in the year ending March 2009. Huge emphasis is being given to helping SMEs; they are the lifeblood of this economy, which is why the Government are giving them so much support.

Lord Broers: My Lords, further to that point, is the Minister sure that tax and other incentives are competitive? I declare my interest as a past chairman of Plastic Logic, an exciting new company in organic electronics. When we came to build our first large facility, the UK was not even on the shortlist of places where we decided to locate that factory-it is now in Dresden. Even New York State and Singapore came in well ahead of the UK in providing incentives for us to place that factory.

Lord Davies of Abersoch: I have had the benefit of visiting the premises of that company in Cambridge and have met it in Germany, so I am disappointed with the decision that was made. A 28 per cent corporation tax, with a 21 per cent rate for small business, means that the UK's corporation tax rate is now at the lowest level ever. We continue to have the lowest corporation tax of the major G7 economies. I understand that the Tories are suggesting that they may one day cut it, but that would be at the expense of capital allowances and reliefs.



30 Nov 2009 : Column 584

Media: Ownership

Question

2.52 pm

Asked By Lord Dykes

Lord Davies of Oldham: The Government have no plans to conduct a review of foreign and overseas-based ownership of news providers in Britain.

Lord Dykes: My Lords, is not the United Kingdom the only leading European country where government policy options are regularly and routinely hijacked by these dodgy characters who do not pay UK taxes properly and yet insist on inflicting their unpalatable and extremist views on a long-suffering British public? Is it not high time that even the famously timid Press Complaints Commission decided to have a close look at this matter which is of great concern to a growing number of people, not least with the present situation of some rather sinister-looking linkages between the former editor of a Sunday tabloid newspaper and a leading opposition party?

Lord Davies of Oldham: That suggests quite a wide agenda, my Lords. I shall confine myself to the obvious point that the Press Complaints Commission would not be the first body that we would think of consulting about these issues; it has a fairly narrow remit which is nothing at all to do with this issue. A body that is connected with this issue is Ofcom, which is obliged to examine this position every three years. Its latest report came out only a fortnight ago, and it is largely consistent with government policy.

Lord Soley: I welcome Ofcom's decision, but is there not a strong case for either the PCC or someone else to look at the management structure of these newspapers? It strikes you that when complaints are found by the PCC to be correct, very little is done by the newspapers in their management structure either to prevent such abuses happening again or even to help their staff address those problems. We have a rather bizarre position where newspapers are declining in sales and need to improve the quality of their journalism if they are to survive against the internet, and yet in some cases are producing news that has far more in common with creative literature than it has with news reporting.

Lord Davies of Oldham: Well, my Lords, the Press Complaints Commission is the body which provides self-regulation for the press. My noble friend is inviting me to talk about how newspapers are actually managed, which I think would represent a considerable intrusion in the concept of the freedom of the press.



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Lord McNally: My Lords, does not the Minister simply exude complacency in the face of reality? Not only is there is a strong lack of confidence in the Press Complaints Commission, which is a sweetheart regulator, but our judges are making libel law that makes us a libel tourist destination, while the march of new technologies actually undermines the finances of the printed press. In the face of those realities, is it not unbelievable complacency for the Government simply to sit pat while our newspaper industry is in real peril?

Lord Davies of Oldham: How extraordinary, my Lords, that the noble Lord should upbraid the Government for being complacent when we are introducing a Bill on the digital economy that covers a substantial part of the news media in this country and gives us the opportunity to examine Ofcom's report on this aspect. As for the newspaper industry's financial future and the health of the press, those are matters for the newspapers to sort out themselves. We all recognise that in a pluralist world, they are certainly under greater pressure; however, if the free press enjoys freedom from government intrusion on what it contains, it also enjoys freedom from government intrusion on how to safeguard its financial interests.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, the Minister has just praised self-regulation, yet later this afternoon this House will propose that we no longer have self-regulation. There seems to be a gap in the Government's thinking on this. However, is it not time for a royal commission on the press which could take into account all the views that have been expressed here this afternoon and in the wider country?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, the difference with regard to self-regulation is that Members of this House are paid from public money, while the newspaper industry gets its finance from private resources.

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