Childhood Obesity

Baroness Wyld Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, there are individual programmes specifically targeting those from deprived backgrounds. I emphasise the childhood obesity trailblazer programme, which has funding for several councils to pioneer forward-thinking ideas to address childhood obesity among those target populations.

The other area that I emphasise is exercise in school. Of course, obesity is linked to intake, not exercise, but exercise helps to get the disciplines right around looking after one’s mind and body. The £320 million going into school sports facilities is a massive bonus in this area.

[Baroness Wyld (Con)]

My Lords, could my noble friend say, a little more specifically, what training and support will be available to health visitors for the very earliest intervention? Would not the one-year and two-year checks that the majority of children go along to be an ideal opportunity to inform parents about the nutritional needs of very young children so that they can make those informed choices?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

Health checks in the early years of childhood are an incredibly valuable opportunity to intervene in a number of health inputs. Diet and exercise are two of those. Training is in place for health visitors to provide dietary advice but, when back at the department, I will ask whether we are working on any new initiatives at the moment and write back to my noble friend.

Covid-19: Mental Health

Baroness Wyld Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell]

My Lords, we are feeling our way in this area. There have been benefits from some of the moves online. People have been able to see more of their consultants, they have found that some of the content provided has been helpful, and the reach has gone up. However, I completely agree with the noble Baroness that it will not work for everyone. I pay tribute to mental health professionals who have maintained face-to-face contact during the epidemic, with all the threats associated, and we continue to look closely at how to fit appropriate technology and digital access to the right people and in the right format.

[Baroness Wyld (Con) [V]]

My Lords, what is the Government’s assessment of the impact of Covid-19 on antenatal and perinatal mental health services, and what steps are they taking to ensure that expectant and new parents are able to access the support they might need in person, particularly given the nuanced nature of potentially accessing services for the first time?

[Lord Bethell]

The area of antenatal and natal services has developed a huge amount of concern and, as my noble friend may remember, we adjusted the guidelines to give parents greater access to mother and child at an early stage. This area does concern us. However, it is a relief that, generally speaking, the disease has not hit pregnant women and early born children in the way that it has hit elderly people, and for that we are grateful.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Wyld Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wyld (Con)]

My Lords, we have a new Parliament, and the most exciting part of election night 2019 for me was Blyth Valley becoming famous. I have fond memories of Blyth Valley and the neighbouring constituency, Wansbeck, where my grandma and grandad lived in Ashington—and where Labour held on, by the way. There is so much in the gracious Speech that should allow those who may have loaned the Government their votes some cause for optimism.

This time, when I sat listening to the Speech, I genuinely felt as though I heard an echo from the doorsteps, from those we met when we travelled with the seaside towns Select Committee, or those I spend time with when I take my family up north. From business rates to railways, to secure funding for education, I am optimistic that this Government “gets it”.

I want to focus a bit more on the north-east. As this will include education, I refer to my registered interest as a non-exec member of the Ofsted board. First, I return just for a moment to my grandparents. They are no longer with us, but they were loyal Labour voters all their lives. I confess to having felt a tinge of sadness when I texted my mum on election night. This was obviously not at the numerous Conservative victories in the north-east, which I found exciting—we were allowed dissent in my family and I hope we still are —but you cannot grow up in a Labour family without developing respect and even a degree of affection for the Labour Party that they supported.

I have no idea whether my grandparents would have voted Labour this time—some of my family felt they could not—but I know that those decent, hardworking, aspirational people of a former mining community would have been heartbroken by Jeremy Corbyn and the behaviour of Momentum and that they would have called out anti-Semitism just as many brave people within Labour did. So, although it may not be my place, I say this to Opposition Members in this House, who have always treated me with great kindness and in many cases have been generous with their time, their advice and their excellent expertise: I hope they get their party back, for the sake of a healthy democracy, and I genuinely wish them well in the coming leadership elections.

There is much in the gracious Speech where the cross-party expertise within your Lordships’ House will be invaluable, not least the Government’s commitment to finding consensus on social care. As the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, rightly said, let us just get on with it. I very much look forward to a more productive Parliament than the previous one.

Turning to education, I am relieved that the Government have committed to increasing education funding and to a whole raft of measures to support communities that are sometimes described as “left-behind”. Can we now start to change our language about them? I am glad that this Government are looking to the future. For example, Blyth and its surrounding areas are already a hub of innovation for clean energy and are creating jobs of the future. The Government’s industrial strategy already rightly recognises this, with investment flowing into the renewable energy catapult in Blyth and a whole host of other north-east led initiatives.

We must ensure that we equip people with the skills to flourish in green jobs or on any other route they choose. The general point I want to make is that if we want to rebalance the UK economy, we have to create a sort of virtuous cycle of training and employment for all kinds of skilled, technical and graduate jobs. While we talk endlessly about raising aspiration and achievement, this is any good only if people know that it is actually going to get them somewhere.

Going back to schools, I am sure that the Government appreciate how urgently we need to close the gap between educational outcomes in parts of the north and south. In the north-east there are many outstanding schools from which others around the country could and should learn, but the big picture cannot be avoided on many indicators, in particular the fact that the performance of primary schools is often better on the whole than that of secondaries. One of the things that I worry about almost more than anything in Britain today is that we have proof in our hands that these kids are super-bright—we can see this in all the stats from key stage 1 and 2 results—but then that potential gets lost, and all too often we hear about everything going wrong at secondary level. However, there are a lot of examples to show that this does not have to be the case. It is a solvable problem, and this has to be one of the Government’s top priorities.

I would like to see the Government going beyond legislation and using their convening power. I would like to see Ministers doing more to encourage businesses and start-ups to think more creatively about how to bring work experience to more areas and how to engage with young people through educational institutions and then share best practice. The change of pace in the workplace is so fast now that we cannot think in terms of old-fashioned careers services. I will return to this in future debates because I am running out of time.

In short, I think we have a brilliant chance to bring our country together and, in the Prime Minister’s words, unleash its potential. It has been a really frustrating and difficult time for everyone, but every single one of us now has the opportunity to change that.

Children and Young People: Mental Health Services

Baroness Wyld Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The noble Baroness makes an excellent point about the importance of that age group. I will write to her giving the specifics of the support available to children and families with children of that age. A significant amount of funding is going into specialist perinatal and mental health services for mothers, which is a big part of the picture, but not the whole. Health visitors are being trained in mental health support. I will write to the noble Baroness with more details but I am sure there is more to be done.

[Baroness Wyld (Con)]

My Lords, have the Government made any analysis of the number of children living with parents who are suffering with mental illnesses more widely? Given the good projects that I have seen in primary schools, it is clear that this issue affects the whole family. It is not the child or the parents sitting in isolation but a family issue. I welcome the Green Paper but can we ensure that families know that it is for them to come forward, that they are in a safe space free of stigma, and that it is not just a child sitting in a box in a policy team?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

My noble friend is right. Some of the schemes that are already active in schools—I am sure she knows about and will have seen schemes such as Place2Be—not only provide support for children but invite families in to provide family therapy where it is required. It is rare that these issues are isolated; they often affect, in one way or another, all members of the family. That is what we are trying to do and deliver through the schools.

National Child Obesity Strategy

Baroness Wyld Excerpts

Monday 26th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wyld (Con)]

My Lords, health visitors play a key role in helping parents to tackle and prevent obesity. Is my noble friend the Minister confident that all health visiting teams have the resources and the support they need to do this?

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

My noble friend is absolutely right and as the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, said, it is about getting into families when children are young. My noble friend will I think be reassured, as I hope the House will, to know that not only are there more health visitors than ever but, as part of that, we have a healthy child programme looking at the prevention and identification of obesity. Health visitors are trained in critical elements such as promoting breastfeeding, nutrition and physical activity to encourage healthy babies.