My Lords, I am grateful to all who have contributed to what has been an excellent debate. I welcome my noble friend’s offer to have further discussions, which I am sure will be taken up actively by all those concerned.
However, there seems to be a bit of a mismatch between my noble friend’s reply and the very real concerns expressed across the House, including by the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, in summing up. The noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, said that there was insufficient emphasis and obligation for integration, and that the whole country would benefit from wealth creation—a point well made by my noble friend Lady Neville-Jones as well.
I was very moved by the reference of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, to the loss of status and standing of teaching hospitals. My father, a GP, always used to say that if you want something done, have it done in a teaching hospital. My late uncle was a surgeon at the Royal Infirmary, where his students rather fondly called him “Mack the Knife”—I hope for positive reasons, because he used it skilfully, but unfortunately it is too late to ask.
We need to press my noble friend further on strengthening the obligation and making it much firmer in the Bill. Is he prepared to move in that direction? I would like to say how proud I am to be British and living in a country where we have such a strong record on research and the data available. My noble friend the Minister did not respond on where we are with clinical trials—my noble friend Lady Neville-Jones and I particularly asked him about that—and I would be very grateful if he could write to me separately. On the basis that we can have further discussions on this, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment at this stage.