Food, Diet and Obesity Committee Report

Baroness Goudie Excerpts

Friday 28th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goudie (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Walmsley on the way she chaired the meeting and kept us together, including making us do a lot of extra homework. It was tremendous, and I so enjoyed working with all our colleagues on the committee. I thank the clerks, Stuart and Lucy, and our special adviser. They found fantastic witnesses and ensured that all of them turned up and that, where they could not come, we got great evidence. It made such a difference to the report.

I am pleased to join the debate as a member of the committee and to discuss our report, Recipe for Health: A Plan to Fix Our Broken Food System. I welcome the opportunity to reflect on the urgent need for reform in how we produce, market and consume food in the United Kingdom. We should consider this in terms of how children and children who are not born yet will have to live in this society, with the high number of obese people we have, and remember that, if a mother is obese, the child has a high likelihood of being obese as well. We must look at that and encourage mothers, through maternal health and in every way, to try to change how they eat. However, we must assist them, including by changing something in the planning system that we learned about in the committee, which is that a lot of flats are now being built or converted where there is no kitchen, so the only thing in the let is a microwave. That is something we must try to alter. It is not for this report, and it is not for the Food Minister, but it is something to be passed down with change in planning laws.

Our food system is broken. Over 60% of UK adults are overweight or obese, and diet-related illnesses consume our national health billions each year. However, let us be clear, it is not merely a matter of personal choice; this is a systematic failure driven by a food industry dominated by multinational giants—companies such as Nestlé, PepsiCo and fast-food chains, as we found out in Blackpool, that flood our shelves and high streets with ultra-processed foods. These products, packed with sugar, salt and unhealthy fats, make up over half of the average British diet—one of the highest rates in Europe. Why? It is because they are cheap to produce and have long shelf lives. How long have they been on the shelves or in the warehouses by the time they get to anybody’s home? They are engineered to keep us coming back for more. This is not an accident; it is the business model. Through relentless lobbying, they have stalled or diluted policies meant to protect public health. Let us take the HFSS advertising restrictions—rules designed to limit junk food ads aimed at children. The report highlights how industry pushback delayed those measures, with groups such as the Food and Drink Federation decrying the impact on “innovation” and “jobs”. The result is a generation hooked before it can make informed choices.

Supermarkets are complicit too. A handful of chains control most of our grocery markets, determining what consumers see and buy. The report points out how shelf space is auctioned off to the highest bidders, processed food brands—as we notice when we go to the supermarket—while fresh local produce is sidelined. In low-income areas, cheap own-brand ultra-processed foods dominate, making healthy eating a luxury that many cannot afford. Products labelled “low fat” or “high protein” are still loaded with additives and sugar. This confusion, the committee warns, drowns out clear nutritional advice.

Profit is the driving force behind this crisis. Reformulating products to cut sugar or salt risks losing that addictive edge and, with it, sales. Voluntary pledges such as the failed public health responsibility deal have proven ineffective. Without a legal framework and enforcement, the industry will not change. The report cites a £6 billion annual burden on the National Health Service due to obesity—money that could fund schools and school meals; as we know, school meals are not made in schools any more but in different places and then brought to schools. They are not good food. Further, school budgets are now run by schools and, sometimes, if they need money for other issues in the school, they cut school meals—it is an easy cut, without anybody noticing. We have to be quite tough about school meals and what children are fed at school.

The Recipe for Health report offers a bold plan to fix this mess, and it starts with breaking corporate strangleholds. First, we need tougher regulation. The committee calls for mandatory reformulation targets forcing companies to cut sugar, salt and fat, with penalties for non-compliance. The soft drinks industry levy cut sugar in sodas by 44%; imagine that success applied across the food categories. Secondly, we must ban all junk food marketing everywhere. Our children deserve the chance to grow up free from corporate manipulation. Thirdly, we must level the playing field. The report urges subsidies for healthy foods—making fruit, vegetables and whole grains cheaper than a Happy Meal. We should tax ultra-processed foods harder and use the revenue to fund community kitchens or school meal programmes that teach children to love real food. We also should consider going back to teaching cooking meals in schools.

Adult Social Care (Adult Social Care Committee Report)

Baroness Goudie Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goudie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Andrews for the way she led this committee. She set out with us, working together, how we would put this report to the House and the Government. I thank the staff of the committee, who gave us expert advice. Having worked on other committees, I can say that the staff are amazing.

The hardest part was for all of those who gave us evidence. It was very difficult for them giving evidence to us, and for us to accept the kind of lives they were living. Those people are really alive; people forget that they are not just a number or a file but real people. I wish that those in local authorities, in government and in the health service would acknowledge this and not leave them out on the edge.

I support my noble friend Lord Davies. I have worked with him in the other place on the issue of women who end up being carers. It is taken for granted that they can give up work and put everything aside to do this. It is very difficult for them to return to work because they are not necessarily respected for what they have done, which is huge and is saving local authorities and the Government a huge amount of money.

Further, these women understand that the person they are caring for—in some cases, more than one—wants to live at home. Nobody wants to go into an institution or be taken into some place that is not what they like. They end up dying sooner, and it is so unfair. People have to understand that people want to stay at home. We, as a country, must insist that people are allowed to be cared for in their own home.

Moving on to the report, these are the most important points about adult social care in England. First, it is funded largely from the revenue of local authorities. Secondly, a major source of that funding is from central government grants to local authorities. Thirdly, this funding has been dramatically decreasing. Fourthly, this inevitably has had adverse effects on the delivery of social care services. Fifthly, it is also having adverse effects on forward planning for meaningful reforms. If you are not funding and looking to the future at what funding we need, it is impossible to make any reforms. It is now causing huge problems for the National Health Service, in bed blocking and in other forms, which then has a further knock-on effect.

Adequate government funding is essential. I hope the Minister will be able to tell us how the Government see this going forward. As I said earlier, we are dealing with people. Given the present financial constraints, as paragraphs 105 to 109 of the committee’s report observe, access to appropriate social care services is extremely difficult to achieve. Needs assessments are based on increasingly narrow eligibility criteria. It is never explained to people properly what is required. Needs become extreme and urgent before they are recognised as requiring support.

Also, we need to look at why planning to make adequate changes to the inside or outside of a house takes so long. It should be automatic, and you should not have to wait six months or for inspections. This should be done immediately. The cuts in resources and services are very painful. These problems must be urgently resolved and addressed. The Government must deliver realistic, predictable and long-term funding to allow adult social care and its workforce to be properly resourced and planned to thrive.

Covid-19: Vaccines and Medical Equipment

Baroness Goudie Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Goudie]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure equitable access (1) to vaccines, and (2) to medical equipment, to address the Covid-19 pandemic.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Bethell) (Con)]

My Lords, the UK is at the forefront of efforts to drive global collaboration on the development of new vaccines and has committed to procuring a Covid-19 vaccine for the UK, the Crown dependencies and the overseas territories. We are collaborating with international partners on vaccine development, manufacturing scale-up and future distribution. The NHS has allocated and assigned more than 28,000 items of critical care equipment across the UK and Crown dependencies and the remainder is available for allocation across England according to NHS regions, based on future need.

[Baroness Goudie (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, equitable access to vaccines has a number of dimensions and all must be secured across the world and in the UK. The Covid-19 pandemic respects no lines: if we neglect the developing world, we neglect ourselves. A lack of global access will hamper global health and development. Inequitable access would impede the unity of the United Kingdom.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

The UK has pledged more than £1 billion in aid to counter health, humanitarian and economic risks, including £829 million on the development and delivery of vaccines. I thank all those involved in the COVAX Facility, a multinational mechanism administered by Gavi which pools funding. The COVAX scheme is an emphatically impactful scheme. Britain has taken a leadership role in it, and I thank all those involved in its development.

NHS: Cancer Treatments

Baroness Goudie Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goudie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble and very good friend Tessa Jowell, whom I have been friends with for over 40 years, from our days on Camden and Brent councils and through many other campaigns for her to become a parliamentarian and so on. I find today’s debate on evaluating innovative cancer treatments very important.

Britain has a first-class reputation for research but, at the same time, we do not always manage to get the treatment to the patients as early as we should. A number of citizens from around the world want to come to Britain because they know that we have a good reputation for the research and treatment of cancer. It has to go further; there must be more sharing of research and data in Britain and around the world. This would save time and save lives. Travelling is tiring and dangerous for patients with cancer. We must have places of excellence in cities, so that people can at least get to them.

I would like to thank Athena Lamnisos, from the Eve Appeal, for her great work. I have worked closely with her. The Eve Appeal is the UK national charity raising awareness and funding research into five gynaecological cancers: ovarian, womb, cervical, vaginal and vulval. It was set up to save women’s lives by funding ground-breaking research and is focused on early detection and developing effective methods of risk prediction, as well as developing screening for women-only cancers. It is vital that the health service continues to fund screening, which must be made more widely available. Many lives will be saved if cancer is detected early. In the same way as my noble friend described issues surrounding prostate cancer, women also must not be afraid to go for these tests.

I would also like to thank Vanessa Elliott, consultant at St George’s Hospital, and Sarah Rudman, consultant oncologist at Guy’s and St Thomas’, who were very helpful to me in preparing for this debate. They thought that I would have hours to speak. I told them that it would be only three minutes, but they have been very helpful nevertheless. I hope that we will have a longer debate on cancer and the health service at some stage when I can talk at greater length. The Brain Tumour Charity and many others who contacted us all have explained how serious and important it is that cancer is dealt with as quickly as possible.

There are lots of imperfections in clinical trial design and the process could be improved. In oncology, they try to have good working relationships with pharma in order to be involved in the trial design process at the earliest opportunity. It is hoped that focusing on design will lead to a drug licence. Most of the time the pharmaceutical industry and clinicians are aligned, but not always. In general, though, the drug development process is still chunky. Traditionally, most trials still progress through phases 1, 2 and 3, which is expensive in terms of finance, nursing and doctors’ time and, importantly, patient effort. It is also time-consuming and may result in patients waiting too long for new treatments. We must ensure that when there are new treatments there is time available when patients are willing to experiment with those treatments.

In recent years, more innovative drug trials have been used in an attempt to reduce the length of the drug-development process. That is what can happen if we share around the world. It is important for patients also to have equitable access to the early phase of clinical trials. These trial units are often found only in large cancer centres, and not all patients have access to them. Well-enough patients who have exhausted conventional treatments and tumour-specific trials may want to access unlicensed drugs.

Mental Health: Young People

Baroness Goudie Excerpts

Monday 7th April 2014 Lords Chamber

Tabled by

[Baroness Goudie]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they have taken to reduce mental illness among young people.

[Lord Patel of Bradford (Lab)]

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lady Goudie, and at her request, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in her name on the Order Paper.