My Lords, I will make three quick points about the government amendments in this group, which I broadly welcome. The first relates to Amendments 4 and 42, where the Minister has clearly listened carefully to the forceful arguments made by my noble friend Lord Lansley, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, and others in Committee. I am delighted that he has.
For those of us who have not been involved in the discussions, and following on from the points that the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, made about why language from the European regulation has been adopted—“safeguarding public health”—it would be helpful if my noble friend could explain, on the record, why that language has been chosen. That is particularly the case given that he expressed some reluctance in Committee, bearing in mind that the regulations being referred to also had some relevance to operating the internal market, not simply medicines safety. It would be good to hear from him on that.
Secondly, on Amendments 8 and 44, unlike other noble Lords I did not believe that there was a suspect motivation behind the use of the word “attractive” by my noble friend and the Bill team, or any desire to reduce stringency to attract investment. But I would be grateful if my noble friend could confirm that the Government remain as determined as ever, if not more so, to grow the UK’s life sciences sector, and that it was never their intention to lower regulatory standards to achieve this.
Thirdly, on Amendments 9 and 45, I commend my noble friend on the subtle but important changes already referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, in Clauses 1(3)(c) and 14(3)(c), especially the inclusion of manufacturing and broader medical research. The salience of these two parts of our overall supply chain has come to the fore during the pandemic, which has demonstrated our strengths in basic science but, unfortunately, exposed our weaknesses in manufacturing resilience. It seems right that this should be explicitly recognised in the Bill and I commend my noble friend for making those important changes and for demonstrating, once again, his ample appetite for listening and acting.