Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, I have put my name to the amendment and pay tribute to the hard work put in by the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, on making progress in this area. It has occasionally seemed a little like trudging through the Somme mud, but we have made some progress. I share her view that we want to hear at length from the noble Earl about the assurances promised by the Secretary of State, particularly on the governance issue. I want to raise in a little more detail the issues in paragraphs (b) and (c) of the amendment, regarding the ability of Public Health England to undertake and publish independent research and to bid for research funding from any source. This remains an unresolved issue. The dialogue is continuing in the Department of Health because in November a joint working party was set up between the Health Protection Agency, which is being abolished, and the department about the research activities of the new Public Health England. I remind noble Lords that this is particularly significant because at stake is the large sum of money that the HPA, as a non-departmental public body, raised for research, its own funding of research, as well as the scientific independence and excellence of its staff. There has been a great deal of concern that creating an executive agency with civil servants would make it difficult for that research quality and volume to be maintained in the new world. Despite the Health Secretary's assurances, concerns emanating from within the current agency remain around whether things have really been sewn up in terms of the ability of PHA, within the resources available to it, to control its destiny in the future and to go out to seek the research contracts that will enable it to meet the threats and concerns about public health that may have to be faced. The nub of this issue comes down to a simple matter that I should like to leave with the noble Lord and on which I ask him to provide assurances. My understanding is that the problem at the moment is that the department has taken funds from the Health Protection Agency and Public Health England and made them available only for academic partnership research projects. The concern is that this might lead to Public Health England being prevented from carrying out research if that was not flavour of the month in academic institutions. There could be conflict between the concerns of academics to pursue partnership research and the real needs that the scientists within Public Health England consider to be in the public interest in terms of the research agenda to be followed. That is the main unresolved issue causing concern to the scientists within the Health Protection Agency staff who are soon-to-be-transmogrified into Public Health England. The more assurances that the noble Earl can give the more they will satisfy not only the signatories to the amendment but the future employees of Public Health England who are to transfer as scientists to the new organisation.