It is, of course, 125 years since the birth of Aneurin Bevan, who famously said:
“Illness is…a misfortune the cost of which should be shared by the community”.
That cost, as the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) said, should not be borne by the victims of genocide, abuse or slavery, so I support amendment 48 and, indeed, amendments (a) and (b).
I am the trade rapporteur of the Council of Europe in respect of safeguarding human rights, democracy and the rule of law. I very much hope that where there is abuse or slave labour, we pursue filtering out such imports from procurement in general. Curing illness should not be at the cost of creating illness and harm abroad.
Obviously we need security of supply. We have seen China use embargoes and trade sanctions against Australian wine and Lithuanian products, or whatever, so we need
a safe supply, much of it home-grown, for when we face such a problem or a pandemic. I put it to the Minister that we need to look much more at generating production and procurement in the public sector. It is no good going to the pub landlord of the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) to get expensive PPE. We need both value for money and ethical sourcing.
Some of the proposals for integrated care boards involve corporations that have a vested interest. If we remove competitive tendering, waiting lists and costs would both go up. It is critical that we get value for money.
Looking at what happened in Wales during the pandemic, we find that the cost of PPE was, in fact, half the cost of PPE in England. The £1.1 billion given to Wales for test and trace was a Barnett consequential, but we spent only half of that, £533 million, because we used public sector procurement and production effectively.
Through a combination of ethical procurement and public sector provision, we can keep the light of the health service shining, we can keep the faith and we can build a stronger, more successful and cost-effective health service.