Health and Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Stowell of Beeston and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Report stage
Wednesday 16th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, whose contribution reflects her extensive wisdom and knowledge in this area. I just want to say that I commend my noble friend Lady Sugg for her leadership in bringing forward the amendment. I, too, will listen to what the Minister says in reply this evening, but instinctively I support what my noble friend is seeking to achieve.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support Amendment 183. My background in this goes back to March 2020, in those difficult, scary, early days of the pandemic, when your Lordships’ House was operating on a skeleton crew. That led to me, as very new Peer, moving the amendment to the coronavirus regulations that would have allowed for telemedicine. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, who I note has signed this amendment, for supporting me through that process, because I had little idea about what I was doing in terms of your Lordships’ House. It is worth noting that we were doing that in part in acknowledgement that women would not otherwise have access to the necessary medical service of an abortion, but also because we knew that NHS resources were going to be enormously stretched. We are still in a situation where NHS resources are enormously stretched. Earlier we were talking about the Ukrainian refugees whom we will be welcoming here and the medical services that they will need.

Of course, we want to say that, in this area of medicine, we should be putting resources into all the NHS services that women need, but the evidence is overwhelming that telemedicine abortion is giving women a better service. I pick up the point made by the right reverend Prelate that there may be safeguarding concerns. There is evidence, particularly from MSI Reproductive Choices, reporting a major uplift in safeguarding disclosures, including from survivors of domestic and sexual abuse, with telemedicine.

On the medical side of this is a simple clear fact: since telemedicine has been introduced, complication rates from abortion have fallen by 20%. You do not have to listen to just me on this; permanent provision of abortion telemedicine is supported by eight royal colleges and medical societies, including the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Royal College of Midwives and the British Medical Association. I also point out that abortion telemedicine is going to continue in Wales and Scotland, based on the evidence. The arguments are simply overwhelming: this is the best option.

Health and Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Stowell of Beeston and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Committee stage
Friday 4th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

I will be very brief. I declare my chairmanship of the Communications and Digital Committee. A lot of powerful speeches have been made all around the House today and clearly, we are all united in our care and concern for the issue of child obesity. The complexity of what is proposed in this legislation has been illustrated to such an extent that there is a case for delaying implementing these measures so that it is got right.

But the main reason for my decision to speak in this debate is the issue of fairness, equal treatment and the difference in the way these regulations apply to broadcasters and to the online platforms. The noble Viscount, Lord Colville, and my noble friend Lord Black of Brentwood have already spoken in some detail about the inequality of treatment between broadcasters and news publishers, and the online platforms.

I spell out clearly that what we are talking about here is that responsibility for the control and compliance of advertising that appears on television or radio rests with broadcasters, which can be sanctioned severely with huge fines by regulators if they allow anything that is non-compliant to air. But responsibility does not rest with the online platforms, which take far more in profit from the advertising they publish on their sites than any broadcaster is able to. They are equally able to control what appears on their platforms, as the noble Viscount powerfully described. Could my noble friend the Minister therefore explain why the Government are not ensuring parity between broadcasters and the likes of Google and Facebook at the point of legislation, to ensure parity in the way this will be applied?

Also under the heading of fairness, I say that, in the case of the small manufacturers of the products affected by the advertising ban, I support the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, which ensures that the definition of “SME” in the Bill does not provide a loophole exempting large international manufacturers from these advertising restrictions just because they have a small workforce in this country.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I feel the need to balance the sides of this debate. I attached my name to Amendment 244 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. I associate myself with everything said by her and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, in particular, as well as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, who gave powerful and well-evidenced presentations of why we need to see action here. Given the time and the fact that I have a train to catch, I will be brief.

The noble Lords, Lord Black and Lord Moylan, talked about freedom of speech—the freedom of the advertisers to push on to children whatever they want to push. I put against that the freedom to flourish and live a healthy life with a decent lifespan. The figures quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, illustrated that that is not being achieved and there is a deep inequality in our society.

The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, talked about how difficult it would be to measure or separate out the impact of these measures. We are in a hugely obesogenic environment. We have this huge problem with obesity not because human nature has suddenly changed and people have lost self-control, but because they are bombarded and barraged from all sides with ultra-processed pap, which we should stop all advertising of. I do not think that “High in fat, sugar and salt” goes far enough. There is evidence that under-11s—primary school kids—cannot distinguish between adverts and editorial content, so we have to protect them.

Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Black, asked about the international comparisons. Perhaps one of the most obvious ones is Norway, which brought in a ban somewhat similar to this in 2012. It has struggled for the reasons outlined by many noble Lords. Indeed, a study was produced by Oslo Metropolitan University last year, using the categorisation of the WHO European Office for Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases. Eight out of 10 adverts that young people in Norway were seeing online were for unhealthy food. That is a problem, but it is an argument not for doing nothing but for tackling the whole obesogenic environment that our young people are growing up in, with demonstrable effects. Norway, which has taken similar action to that which we are talking about today, as have Spain, Portugal, Slovenia, Latvia and Lithuania—that is just a shortlist—has half the level of childhood obesity that we do, and it regards it as a serious problem.