Communications Act 2003 (Restrictions on the Advertising of Less Healthy Food) (Effective Date) (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Debate between Baroness Walmsley and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Monday 27th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, who set out so clearly that we have to get away from blaming individuals for the fact that we have, as a society, a deeply damaging and disastrous relationship with food. Perhaps going even further than the noble Baroness, I stress that what is behind that is a broken food system—that what is supplied into the system is deeply unhealthy and damaging in all kinds of ways. It is both what is presented to people and what comes into the system that are problems.

It might be fairly said, as the noble Baroness just did, that tonight we are talking about partial, inadequate measures—and I offer the Green group’s support for both these regret Motions—but they are, at least, measures to do something. We can look at another partial, inadequate measure that has come into effect and we are starting to see the results of: the Soft Drinks Industry Levy Regulations 2018. It is very small and partial, but a recent study published in PLOS Medicine showed that we have seen an 8% reduction in obesity in girls aged 10 and 11 as a result of that. There is a gender aspect that I do not think anyone yet fully understands. It is a limited state of progress, but it is better than heading in the opposite direction.

Looking where we are now, here is one figure that is truly shocking: last year, 660 under-fives were admitted to hospital with obesity given as the primary cause of their admission. That is what our broken food system is doing. Restrictions on advertising were hard fought for and much discussed during the Health and Social Care Bill, and I remember sitting in your Lordships’ Chamber over what I suspect was many hours. Yet here we are today, and I cannot help reflecting on an earlier discussion in your Lordships’ House in which it was suggested that the Scottish Government were bringing in the bottle return scheme far too quickly. That was a three-year delivery from the regulations being passed to them being implemented. That was something Westminster could not imagine.

Looking to the general public, one of the things I have found again and again on that issue and issues tackling obesity is that people say, “We heard the government announcement, but it does not seem to have happened.” People think that once the Government have announced something it is happening, and the Government use that, announcing things again and again that never get delivered. It really is past time that we should be seeing the delivery here. I will finish with a question to the Minister: what is the higher priority here, the health of the nation or the profits of broadcasters?

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I am afraid I am a weary veteran of discussions about these regulations. As your Lordships know, the House’s Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has absolutely slated them and the information provided with them. It mentions:

“The Explanatory Memorandum (EM) states that in 2019”—


that is a year after the industry was first warned that this sort of ban was going to be implemented—

“under current voluntary restrictions, children were exposed to 2.9 billion ‘less healthy food and drink TV impacts and 11 billion less healthy food and drink impressions online’”.

That is 13.9 billion hits. That was four years ago. In the four years between the measures first being announced and us legislating for the ban last summer, there were 13.9 billion every year, coming to 55.6 billion hits for unhealthy foods, which is an existential scale of influence on children’s food choices. Now we are being told there is going to be another three years of it; at the same rate, that is another 41.7 billion hits to persuade children to eat unhealthily. That comes to 97.3 billion adverts—a figure 12 times the population of the world. There cannot be a child in this country over that period of time who has not seen hundreds and thousands of adverts persuading them to make the wrong food choices.

We are told that the industry needs longer to prepare and the Government need longer to consult. The Government are consulting on simple technical issues that should not take many weeks, let alone another three years. Indeed, I understand there is an idea of changing the definition of these foods, but we already have a clear mechanism for deciding what these foods are. It is called the nutrient profiling model, and the industry knows it perfectly well, because since 2007, it has not been able to advertise those foods around children’s television programmes. So why do we have to wait another three years? How on earth do these delays line up with the Government’s strategy to halve childhood obesity by 2030? These things simply do not match up.

COP 27: Commitments

Debate between Baroness Walmsley and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Thursday 24th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I welcome the Minister’s celebration of the contribution of indigenous people and civil society to successive COPs, but I asked whether the UK would work to exclude oil and gas lobbyists from future COPs?

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

May I request that the Minister writes to me about tidal stream energy?

Health and Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Walmsley and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Lords Hansard _ Part 1 & Report stage
Wednesday 16th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I feel I have to respond immediately to that. I intended to speak anyway, having attached my name to an amendment on alcohol advertising in Committee. I would have attached my name to this amendment both in Committee and on Report, had there been space.

The noble Lord, Lord Vinson, talked about freedom of choice. I do not know how many people know that a bottle of wine can contain anywhere between zero and 59 grams of free sugar per bottle. Surely the public do not have the freedom of choice to decide which wine they consume and which level of sugar they consume.

The noble Lord made a point about the difficulty of labelling. Bottles of wine are shipped to many different countries with labels in different languages. We have computers these days which can cope with these things quite simply and easily. It is clearly not beyond the wit of producers to achieve this.

The Government often like to talk about being world-leading. I point them to an editorial in the Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology titled Shining a light on international alcohol industry lobbying, showing just how powerful this incredibly wealthy industry is in influencing and damaging public health messages around the world. Would the Government not like to be world-leading in standing up against this industry lobbying, in the interests of public health?

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, at the risk of being boring, I am one of those people who has been asking for this for the last 20 years. I started off asking for the number of units of alcohol in a bottle of wine. Every manufacturer of these alcoholic drinks knows exactly what goes into them. On the issue of labelling products from abroad, there are a lot of foodstuffs that come from abroad and they have to abide by British rules on labelling, so why not wine and spirits? It is time we did this. It is terribly important for public health, and I hope the Minister will say yes.

Health and Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Walmsley and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Monday 31st January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, after this rich and informative debate, I will briefly make two points and offer the Green group’s support for all these amendments.

I share the shock expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and others that we are in a situation where in the House of Lords we are trying to put the situation back to what it was before because the Bill is making it so much worse.

I particularly want to address Amendment 269 about young carers. I should perhaps declare that I have never been carer—I have not been in that situation. But I want to share a little bit of what I learned from Sophie Dishman, who I met in 2015, when she was a student at the University of Sunderland. She told me that she became a carer at about the age of 12, but that it was only when she was 18 that she realised that she was a carer—a point that many others have addressed. As well as continuing to care, she created a campaign at the University of Sunderland to inform others about the situation and perhaps help others identify themselves as a carer. She produced a very clever, witty, attractive tote bag, with the line, “Being a carer at uni can be a lot to carry around”, a check list of all the things that you might have to do being both a student and a carer, and a useful leaflet, designed for staff in particular, showing signs that a carer might need help.

I want to make the point, which I do not think anyone else has made, that young carers are by nature people who have developed an enormous amount of capability, knowledge and skills. They are amazing individuals. It is not only the right thing to do but in society’s interest to make sure they are able, as the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, said earlier, to flourish and develop those capabilities. It is in our interest to do that.

I want to point to an article that has been out for only a couple of weeks, in volume 27, issue 1 of Child & Family Social Work. The headline is

“It’s making his bad days into my bad days”,

and the article is about young carers in the Covid emergency. This is where we are now. It is about just how much more difficult the withdrawal of services has made it for carers, particularly young carers. We have a huge, as yet uncertain, but certainly large, burden from long Covid, and many people will be taking on huge caring responsibilities because of it.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, if the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, is the general, we are all her foot soldiers. There have been some excellent speeches. In particular, the noble Baroness outlined for us what are, I hope, the unintended consequences of what the Government are doing in their proposals about discharge to assess. It does not seem right that it is up to this House to put back the rights and abilities of carers to do their caring without too much impact on themselves. I hope the Minister heard what the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, and others, such as the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said about that. We heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, how much worse the situation has been for so many carers—in particular those who care for people with learning disabilities or mental health problems—during the pandemic, when, unfortunately, it was necessary to withdraw certain services that they normally rely upon. I hope that, when we have heard the Minister’s response, we can come back to Clause 80 on Report if we are not satisfied with the Government’s response, because the situation is not good, even now.

I am grateful to Carers UK and Barnardo’s, which have given us some dreadful horror stories about the situation of carers when the person they care for is being discharged from hospital. One of the worst that I read about was when the carer was only told when the person being discharged was actually in the ambulance on the way home. They had to run around trying to get a commode, which that person would certainly need when they got home. The situation is so much worse for a young carer who does not necessarily know their way around the system in the same way that an adult carer might. Although I support all the amendments in this group, that is why I added my name to Amendment 269 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham. It is all about the need to identify and ensure appropriate support for young carers before a patient leaves hospital. I really take on board my noble friend Lord Scriven’s view that you should not do it at the end of the stay in hospital: you should start thinking about it when the person goes into hospital.

Caring for a sick or disabled person, no matter how strong the bonds of love, is a difficult and exhausting challenge. It is hard enough for adults, the majority of whom, as we have heard from my noble friend Lady Tyler, are women; we have heard about the effects on their finances and pensions. Many adults do not feel equipped to do it adequately, and it is even harder for children. How can a child be expected to have the knowledge and skills needed to care adequately for an adult and, at the same time, benefit from education and prepare for their own future life?

We know that circumstances sometimes put children in this position, but it is essential that public services provide as much support as possible. However, we know that, although it is estimated that there might be around 800,000 young carers in the whole of the UK, sometimes even their school does not know who they are. In some cases, the young carers themselves prefer it that way, because they see it as a stigma or something that their friends might not quite understand; but it does mean, of course, that they do not get the help that they need, and neither does the person being cared for.

I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, that a proper assessment must be done either before the patient leaves hospital or very promptly post discharge. I hear all the problems about that; yet, carers, according to an ONS report in 2017, save the state more than £60 billion every year, which is more than is spent on formal caring—although it is not clear how much of that is saved by young carers. On the other hand, it has been assessed that a family with a young carer has an income, on average, £5,000 a year lower than other families—so these families are often poor too.

Local authorities already have considerable duties relating to identifying, assessing and supporting young carers, and we have heard of at least two very good schemes. Many of them do it very well, despite the fact that some of these young people are hard to find. However, it is essential that some duties also apply to the NHS, and they must not be lost in the move to integrated care systems. Adequate focus must be placed on these duties by the ICB having a rigorous system or framework to ensure a process for assessment. As my noble friend Lord Scriven pointed out, this is step one in ensuring that needs are subsequently met.

Health and Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Walmsley and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Committee stage
Thursday 20th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, this has been an extremely rich and informative debate on a diverse set of amendments. My contribution will be fairly brief, but I want first to reflect on the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, about the elephant in the room. He reflected on many other contributions about the lack of real integration of health and social care in the Bill, and the way the Bill is essentially written for health. I do not disagree with that identification of that elephant, but a second giant creature in the room is being ignored—let us call it a mammoth—which is the lack of adequate funding and numbers of people for health and social care. That means that those silos are seeking to defend their funding and resources, and reserve it for what they see as their core functions. They therefore find it very difficult to reach out and stretch into new areas even where that would have huge net positive impact overall.

To reflect on a couple of other things, I heartily endorse the call from the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, for a reverse Beeching for the NHS with the reopening of community hospitals. I am not sure whether he coined that phrase; I might borrow it, if he does not mind.

I will also comment on Amendment 51A in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Finlay and Lady Jolly, about emergency services going to everyone in the area. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, is in his place. This very much ties in with an amendment that he spoke to on Tuesday. He told a tale, which I will not repeat, about a case in which someone was denied a treatment in a neighbouring area that they desperately needed because of arguments about which area they were in. This is potentially a huge problem with the structure we are creating that has to be taken on board. Amendment 51A deals with the responsibility, but of course there also have to be funds to go with that responsibility.

It has not got a lot of attention, but I also commend Amendment 100 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, on the duty to promote rehabilitation. When we talk about dramatic medical interventions—the high-profile stuff—it is generally acknowledged, but always as an afterthought, that the person who has had that big dramatic intervention will not suddenly be cured tomorrow, in most cases. There is a long process of recovery. Indeed, I have put on my reading list Recovery: The Lost Art of Convalescence by Dr Gavin Francis, which has been glowingly reviewed in many places. That is something we all should be thinking about a lot more.

Finally, I come to Amendment 110, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, to which I attached my name because, as the noble Baroness said in her introduction, this is something that we have addressed again and again in the police Bill and the Domestic Abuse Act, but it is very acutely an NHS problem. I draw on an article from the Nursing Times on 24 December. It is an account of a nurse, who was called Claire in the article. When she was going through a checklist with a patient that had been provided by a charity—this was something extra added in from the outside, not core NHS—she realised that she herself was a victim of domestic abuse. She had said yes to more of the questions than the patient had. That is a demonstration of what the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, said: training is not given to medical professionals to see what is happening to themselves and to their patients. Maybe it is added in because a charity has managed to get something into the system, but it will certainly not be across the system.

We hope we are doing this Bill for the long term—although perhaps we are not so certain, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said—but we have to note that this is happening in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. I note that the NHS sexual assault referral figures for the first half of 2020 dropped significantly. That also picks up a great deal of domestic abuse, yet online searches for domestic abuse were up by 350% in the same period. We have an NHS that has been forced to focus on the Covid-19 pandemic, often drawing away resources that might have started to deal with domestic abuse anyway. We have a huge rise in the problem. Considering the moment we are at now, it is crucial that domestic abuse is in the Bill.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, this is an enormously important debate because it deals with my favourite word in health and care: prevention. Prevention is so important because it is cost effective. Although successive Governments give more and more to health services, no Government will ever be able to give enough to the NHS, because we have an ageing population and innovative medical interventions are getting more and more expensive, unless we do things differently and more cost effectively.

The noble Lord, Lord Black of Brentwood, outlined one very good, cost-effective intervention. It is an excellent example of something that has absolutely powerful evidence of its cost effectiveness but which is not being undertaken everywhere. I would like to know what evidence those areas that are not using fracture liaison services have that their way of doing it is better and more cost effective. I do not think they have that evidence. It is an example of where if you do not mandate it they will not all do it, and then they will not be spending their money effectively. I support the noble Lord’s amendment.

It is also very important that we prevent not just the second fall but the first, because, as the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, said in her very important intervention, including what she said about tourist areas, which is very significant, people do die from falls. I had a very old friend who recently did. It was the first fall. I am afraid that person died because he had internal bleeding that nobody spotted. It is really important.

My noble friend Lord Rennard mentioned something really important that is pre-primary intervention: health education. If you know that you are likely to have good, strong, healthy bones from weight-bearing exercise and a diet that has enough calcium and vitamin D, you are much less likely to have the first fall. Fortunately for the Minister, that is beyond his remit. I am sure he is pleased about that, because he has quite enough to do. The Department for Education should listen to that.

My noble friends on these Benches have highlighted some other areas where effective prevention services are not being done properly. I think we were all struck by the chaotic situation that my noble friend Lady Barker highlighted; something really has to be done about that. A lot of good has been done but a lot more could be done, and, again, it would be cost-effective.

The noble Lord, Lord Layard, has suggested a very cost-effective intervention. If we diagnose and intervene on mental health issues early then we can prevent all kinds of more severe mental and physical health problems. I support the ratchet method that the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, referred to of increasing the amount of funding that goes there. Although the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, rightly listed the number of times that the Government have put more money into mental health services, the question is: have they kept up with the demand and the backlog? I do not think they have.

We have an opportunity in the Bill to improve our measures to prevent ill health, as well as treat it, which is of course more cost-effective, especially when services are delivered by small social enterprises working at community level. I have added my name to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, because I believe these prevention services should be available as close as possible to those who need them most. If that does not happen then the people who need them will not access them, and health inequality will continue.

That is particularly important for those communities where health inequality is at its worst and where preventable diseases are most prevalent. For example, the services might include healthy weight management services, therapies to address less severe mental health conditions, and alcohol and drug addiction services, in addition to the usual GP services. The population groups are not just those in poverty but marginalised groups such as homeless people, those in temporary accommodation, refugees, Gypsy and Traveller communities, and others who may not be plugged into regular services, and that includes those in rural areas.

Many of these services are delivered very effectively by social enterprises or charities, where any surpluses are ploughed straight back into more services. Many of them also provide weekend services, which were mentioned as lacking by the noble Baroness, Lady Masham. Boards that do not ensure the survival of such services are really missing a trick that would help them to deliver their duty to level up health inequalities, because these organisations are usually very close to their communities and know exactly what is needed and where. They are not constrained by the regulations or the culture of large organisations, and are therefore more flexible and fleet of foot, and therefore very cost-effective.

On rural areas, I shall give your Lordships a brief example from my noble friend Lady Jolly, who lives in a very remote part of Cornwall. She says:

“We have a satellite surgery in our local village, it is in the ground floor of an old cottage. The pharmacist visits once a week, and a practice nurse visits once a week. When she is seeing a patient they have to switch the radio on so that no one can hear the conversation”—


because of patient confidentiality. In that village you have to drive 20 miles to reach a GP. That is the sort of place where we really need community access to health services of all kinds. It would be nice to think that the ICB would be aware of that and act accordingly, and it might perhaps be worth putting a duty in the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I join pretty much everyone else in commending the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, for tabling these amendments. I have attached my name to Amendment 67, although it could have been to any of them.

It is worth making two broad points. In her wonderful contribution on the last group, the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, used the really key phrase,

“the community provided the health”.

That is what this group of amendments is talking about.

A couple of groups back, the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, talked about how, if the health system is working for people with learning disabilities, it is working for everybody. If we bring in the kind of institutions, frameworks and supports that we are talking about here—if we think about stopping people getting ill and caring for ill people—we will make our communities vastly better for everybody. This is an important point to make.

Like most noble Lords, I could come up with a list as long as your arm of wonderful places I have visited. I will not, but I will mention one, which brings together three elements of this: creativity, nature and culture. The Green Backyard in Peterborough is the most wonderful space. I defy anyone to walk into it and not smile. It has amazing, colourful, moving sculptures powered by water, with food growing—amazing salads filled with flowers. When I visited, I spoke to the carer of another visitor. This visitor had very profound disabilities—she was blind and non-verbal—but her carer said, “I’ve never seen anything like it. After the first time we came to visit, the next Monday, which she knew was the day we visited, she was all packed up, dressed and ready to go out.” This was obviously catering to someone’s needs absolutely brilliantly, but it nearly got bulldozed and turned into a block of flats a few years ago. Luckily, it was saved, but that is the situation we so often find ourselves in.

I also want to mention Amendment 90, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth. The noble Lord, Lord Best, has already said a great deal on this, so I will seek to add just a couple of small points—well, one small point and one quite big one. There is something called the lifetime homes standard, which I learned about when I visited Derwenthorpe in York with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The thing I remember about it, because it was so simple and obvious, was that the two-storey houses there had all been built with a space between the joists so that, if you needed to put a lift in up to the first floor, where the bedrooms were, it was a really simple and low-cost thing to do. It was a very simple piece of design. This will not be covered in the Health and Care Bill, but this relates to so many aspects of our society. You could say that housing is a health issue. In the first group this morning, we talked about social care and how many people cannot leave hospital and go home because their accommodation is unsuitable. We need to think all the way along the line across our society to make sure that does not happen.

Finally, I want to pick out one or two words in this amendment, which talks about housing and urban environments. I thought here of the New Ground co-housing development in north London, which is for women aged over 50. One aspect of it is looking at how people can support each other, be good neighbours and form a community that can provide support. This morning, I attended a King’s Fund briefing talking about social care and there was a great deal of talk about the need for digital innovation and technology. I tweeted, “What about social innovation?” We have to think about how we organise our societies and urban environments so that people can form those kinds of communities. If you visit any area of new housing being built around the country, there is typically precious little in it to encourage that kind of community development. The housing point is obvious, as is the environment point, but let us not lose the community and urban structure points from that amendment either.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, it has been an excellent debate. We have heard about all the various kinds of arts and the effect of housing. We heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, about sport and leisure. We heard about the importance of green spaces in helping us with our physical and mental health. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, rightly mentioned that loneliness kills. If one can address that, it affects not just one’s sense of worth and well-being, as has been said, but one’s sense of community.

Parliament is a community. It sometimes does not feel like it, because we have various groups, political parties, Members, staff and so on, but we also have a lot of all-party groups and this is significant. We have sports, arts and heritage, drama and music groups. I have been a member of the Parliament choir for 22 years and have found great solace in it—I really missed it during the pandemic.

Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) (Amendment) (Coronavirus) (No. 2) Regulations 2021

Debate between Baroness Walmsley and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Tuesday 14th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, before I follow up my noble friend Lady Tyler’s comments, I want to say how much I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. The way in which this has been done—I agree also with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt—is absolutely shocking; it is a contempt of Parliament. I was horrified when I read the report of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee about how bad it was and how late the sort of impact assessment—I call it a sort of impact assessment —has been produced.

Of course, we do not need an impact assessment to know what the problem at the heart of this is, apart from the compulsion element, which I understand: it is the fact that so many people are hesitant and mistrusting about having a vaccination. We also know from the work of Healthwatch, mentioned by my noble friend, that the most effective way of addressing the problems that people have with the vaccination is to have a one-to-one discussion with them so that they can say what their problems are and have them addressed. It needs to be done with a person whom they trust—somebody who they believe has some knowledge and understanding of the issues.

The difficulty with doing this at the moment is that all those people are very busy. We have the winter problems coming up; we have the omicron variant of Covid-19 increasing day by day and our NHS is on the edge of falling over. So I have a little suggestion for the Minister. There are plenty of doctors and nurses relatively recently retired who for one reason or another are reluctant to come back into the front line at the moment. However, they retain the respect of the health community. I understand from the executive summary that the total cost of replacing members of staff who are likely to leave because, whatever happens, they do not want to have a vaccine is £270 million. Could not some of that money be used to get those doctors and nurses with the knowledge and the trust of their recent fellows to have those conversations, without interrupting the staffing of hospitals, where it is bad enough at the moment, as we have lots of vacancies? We know that we cannot take all those people out to have those conversations, because it takes time and it has to be done with sensitivity and consideration. Could not some of that money be used to bring back some of those very experienced people to have those conversations and, hopefully, to reduce the number of those who absolutely will not be vaccinated and, sadly, will leave the profession?

I shall ask the Minister one more question. A few weeks ago, I asked him whether patients had the right to request that they should be treated by vaccinated staff only. Whatever the Government do, it will not all be done until April, which is months away. So there will be lots of patients treated between now and then by people who are not vaccinated. I asked the Minister whether patients had a right to request to be treated by vaccinated people only. He very kindly wrote to me, but I am afraid he was not able to give me a definitive answer. Now all the work has been done on this statutory instrument, I wonder whether things have become any clearer on that issue.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, a great deal of concern about procedure has been expressed from all sides of your Lordships’ House. I have nothing to add on that, except to say that I share those concerns.

I have two specific questions for the Minister. The first builds on the comments of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, who talked about how we have to win the argument on vaccination and the concern about unintended consequences and potentially discriminatory outcomes. When I look at the impact assessment, it is focused entirely on the care and health sectors. For example, paragraph 126 refers to

“the possibility of negative behaviour change resulting from the policy. For example, a German experiment found that vaccination requirements increased anger among individuals with existing negative vaccination attitudes and led to a decrease in uptake”.

As far as I can see, there does not appear to be in this impact assessment any consideration of impacts outside the health and care sectors. If we are creating this process, it will have impacts right across society, not just in the health and care sectors. We are talking about systems thinking here: not just what making a decision in the health and care sectors means for the health and care sectors, but what it means across the whole of society. What are the negative impacts of people in general deciding not to get vaccinated because of this?

The second point I draw from a very useful briefing from the Homecare Association. I do not think anyone else has asked this question, and I feel I should ask it for the Homecare Association. It said that it is extremely concerned about the intention to legislate rather than persuade. It is asking about a contingency plan if, indeed, the results are towards the worst end of the impact assessment. What are the Government doing to plan for this situation, when we have already had 1.5 million hours of commissioned care not delivered between August and October because of lack of availability? If this gets much worse, what plans do the Government have to fill the gaps?