Health and Social Care Bill

I shall be very brief. In simple terms, the Secretary of State now has a duty to promote research. Clearly, that research must have integrity, and this amendment is about protecting that integrity. I think that we all agree that medical research is crucial to the UK’s healthcare system, the economy—as the noble Lord, Lord Darzi, made clear in our previous debate—and our standing as an international research community. I make it clear to the Committee that the claim that the incidence of malpractice is widespread is wrong—there is not widespread malpractice in health research or in any part of our research base—but it would also be wrong to say that we have a perfect system and there is not some malpractice. While peer review is an extremely robust method for assessing the quality of the science and the research, it was never intended as a mechanism to detect fraud. There is an assumption when you peer-review a piece of research that the data are accurate and that what you are doing is looking at the methodology, the evidence and the conclusions to see whether they stand up to scrutiny. You do not simply go back and look at the whole of the data. We know that there are a number of irregular goings-on at various levels of research, particularly at junior level, from ghost-writing and guest authorship to plagiarism and falsification of data. As science, particularly medical science, relies on trust, it is important that we have a robust system in place which guarantees research integrity as far as it is possible. Andrew Wakefield, who built the case against the use of the MMR vaccine, based his evidence on a very small sample, falsified the data and manipulated patient records. It is clear that we need a system that would prevent that happening again. The reality is that it took seven years before that research was fully retracted and, to this day, the level of MMR vaccine uptake remains below the 95 per cent that we would regard as sufficient to confer immunity on the population. In other words, that incident of malpractice continues to have an effect. Children are being affected as a result and mothers in particular are worried. The House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee recently looked at peer review in scientific publications and reported on 18 July. One of its recommendations was: "““Oversight of research integrity in the UK is in need of revision. The current situation is unsatisfactory. We are concerned that the UK does not seem to have an oversight body for research ""integrity that provides ‘advice and support to research employers and assurance to research funders’, across all disciplines””." Interestingly, the Government said in response: "““The Government agrees that action on assurance of research integrity is required””." They went on to say, quite rightly, that it was the responsibility of employers, whether they be universities, research laboratories or private organisations, to guarantee the integrity of their research. They said that they did not want there to be a new research integrity agency or an equivalent, but, instead, a ““Research Integrity Concordat””, which brought together universities and bodies involved with research and which the Government would oversee. My reason for this amendment is to ask my noble friend the Minister what progress is being made to form a research integrity concordat. When do we actually expect that to be finalised? While there is evidence in Australia, Norway and the United States, where there are defined offices of research integrity, the Government have said that they do not want to go down that road; they actually want a concordat. For what it is worth, I support the Government on this; I think that that move is right. It is only right, however, if that concordat becomes a reality, so my real question to the Minister is when it is going to become a reality. When can he assure the House that we do not need to have a different organisation in order to ensure that the duty of research—which is now going to be imposed on the Secretary of State—does not blow up in his face at some future date? I beg to move.