My Lords, this has been a very long and wide-ranging debate on amendments which are pretty simple in their effect. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have supported my amendment and the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Thornton in particular. The thing that has impressed me most is that that support has come from right across the political spectrum with the notable exception of the Minister, my good friend the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, and, of course, the noble Lord, Lord Lansley.
The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, took me back to the time in the 1990s when she and I were engaged in fairly ferocious debate on the potential of PFI. As she courteously reminded the Committee, it was a debate that she lost. She then went on to say that I had been scaremongering. I do not think I was scaremongering then, and I do not think I am scaremongering today with this amendment, because it is pretty modest. It seeks to ensure that services can be taken back into the public service. As the noble Lord, Lord Fox, said, in a way it is trying to help to codify the Prime Minister’s words and commitments to keeping the public services public and being able to use the public sector in a particular way. That is the modesty of that amendment, and I am surprised that the Minister has not been able to accept it.
Surely, if he wants to reassure us—he worked very hard to, and I congratulate him on his reply—the most reassuring thing to do would be to accept our amendment to the Bill and put beyond any doubt the Prime
Minister’s commitment by ensuring that we could keep services public, protect public services and bring things back into the public service where we needed to. Imagine if we were in a position now, with the Covid epidemic, where for some reason or another we had precluded us having the ability to bring back in-house test, track and trace. That would be disastrous. It is evident to all of us that test, track and trace as it is currently being operated by a number of private sector operators is not performing as well as it should. To say, ludicrously, that we could not use the public service to rectify that and improve it would surely be absurd. In a sense, that is where my argument leads: we should be able use the public service in that way.
It is a tradition, of course, and a matter of practice that in Grand Committee one should not press one’s amendment to a vote and one cannot, but this is an issue that we will have to return to when we get to Report. Although I shall read the Minister’s words of reassurance with great care, I do not think there was sufficient in them to provide the Committee or the House with the sort of reassurance and trust that we seek. This afternoon I beg leave to withdraw the amendment, but I think your Lordships will want to return to this on Report, and I rather hope that we do.