Covid-19 Update

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell]

The Government are under no illusions about the size of the challenge. The package announced in the Budget was an initial commitment. Whatever funds are needed will be made available, in particular to support the NHS and our social care but also to support hard-working businesses and those that provide employment and sustenance to the country.

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton]

My Lords, could I tempt the Minister to say a little bit about the antibodies test? Obviously, the test being used at the moment to tell you if you have coronavirus is a swab test. But the one that could make a huge difference to NHS staff would be an antibody test, particularly if it gave one immunity. This could completely transform the workforce and people’s ability to get to work if they had been exposed in the past. Could he say a little more about that?

[Lord Bethell]

The noble Lord has hit upon an essential conundrum of the testing framework. I am not the expert who can give chapter and verse, but my layman’s understanding is that the antibodies test on which he rightly focuses is some way away. The biggest difficulty for testing is knowing who has had the virus but never shown the symptoms. Unfortunately, one of the difficult challenges for our response is not yet having that test; it holds us back, but we are working on it very hard indeed.

Access to Palliative Care and Treatment of Children Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 2nd reading (Hansard)
Friday 7th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, and I agree with a great deal of what she said. It is also a privilege to have heard, and be able to salute, the excellent maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Brownlow of Shurlock Row. The points he touched on suggest that he will be a valuable addition to your Lordships’ House.

I am delighted, too, to support my noble friend’s Bill for a variety of reasons. I hope that the Government will find our deliberations constructive, whichever way they feel they must go at the end of our debate, because there is considerable room for improvement in end-of-life and palliative care. My noble friend Lady Finlay is absolutely right about that. I hope she will forgive me but I must say that, curiously, I come to support her through our divergence of views over assisted dying. My noble friend eloquently opposed assisted dying because, as with so many of the medical profession, she felt it incompatible with her role as a doctor but also—perhaps more importantly, relative to our discussion today—because she feels that in this day and age no one should die in pain, given the palliative care that is potentially available. That is at the crux of her Bill.

There was, as I recall, a fairly widespread desire in the assisted dying debate to see better palliative care. I completely accept that assisted dying is a matter of principle that goes well beyond the scope of this Bill; nevertheless, there are several areas where the two debates intersect. They intersect because though no one should now die in agony, the fact is that they sometimes do. Even if that is seldom the case, which of course we all hope, what is beyond contention is that palliative care and hospice availability is something of a postcode lottery, as we have heard.

Before going any further I pay tribute to the many quite exceptional staff, up and down the country, who provide absolutely wonderful care and support, which amounts to love and compassion. I have been privileged to witness this and was deeply moved by the generous commitment of staff. We hear all too often about abuse and cruelty in the care of the elderly and vulnerable, and of course that is terrible, but not often enough about examples of best practice in our hospices or the dedication of doctors such as my noble friend. To find oneself at the end of life in one of these hospices with an enlightened consultant is great fortune indeed. But it should not be a question of good fortune or luck, or depend on where you live.

One thing that is certain in this world—even in your Lordships’ House—is that every one of us will die. Many of us will not need neurosurgery, cardiac treatment or a new hip but we will, as sure as night follows day, vacate our perch. We should face that unavoidable fact, not morbidly, but with imagination and creativity. We will not all die in our sleep, quietly and peacefully, however much we might wish for that—although palliative care can help. Surely the one thing we all want is the best possible medical assistance to lead us gently from one world to the next, even if the next is only the unquiet grave.

It is odd, as my noble friend has pointed out, that this area of medicine suffers in comparison with other healthcare services. It is good, as we have also heard already, that the Prime Minister announced in August last year that £25 million would be provided for hospices and palliative care services. Unfortunately, spread over these combined care facilities, that does not go terribly far, so I ask the Minister, as others have done, whether there will be a similar figure for 2020 and possibly for succeeding years.

I turn to the second part of the Bill. Clearly, the painful cases—and, oh, how painful they are—where medical advice goes against the wishes of the family of children receiving treatment that doctors might wish to withdraw or alter, and where a High Court application has to be made, are circumstances that we should seek to limit as much as possible. Whether mediation, a necessarily rather amorphous and pliable concept, could assist in reducing such applications I am not quite sure—fortunately, I shall be followed by a much greater legal mind than mine—but anything that helps the relationship between the parties has to be welcomed.

Both these subjects are sensitive, even taboo to some, but airing them with clarity and compassion can only help us to find better ways of living and, indeed, dying.

Health: Tinnitus

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister endorse the views of many researchers, some of whom she has just mentioned, in their warning that listening to loud music—for example, in amplification, in front of speakers at rock concerts or in ear buds—could be an explosion waiting to happen in future generations? Secondly—this may apply to some noble Lords not yet afflicted—any slight loss of hearing should be dealt with sooner rather than later, because that research has also discovered that if you do not do something about it, it can possibly lead to dementia.

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

The noble Lord is absolutely right that contact should be made with a GP regarding hearing loss as soon as possible, that links between hearing loss and dementia have been found and that it is extremely important that we increase research in this area. That is exactly why I have asked officials to get together a round table regarding hearing loss and dementia to drive up research in this area as soon as possible.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Rennard. I will concentrate largely but not exclusively on two subjects in the gracious Speech: education and culture. In many ways, these are intertwined, synonymous and mutually dependent on each other. Well, that at least should be the case. However, despite the huge success of the creative industries in this country and their significant economic contribution to the Treasury, I fear that there is real slippage in terms of investing in the next generation of creative artists.

During a recent Oral Question about government preparation for the future of subsequent generations, asked by my noble friend Lord Bird, I asked the Minister about reported financial threats to music hubs. These hubs have been deservedly lauded by the Government but have also been used as their “get out of jail” card when they have been tackled on the very real lack of music in schools and its disappearance from syllabuses such as the Ebacc. Concern over the funding of music hubs has been highlighted by widely reported comments from, for example, Sir Simon Rattle and the mother of the brilliant young cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason. She said that his success would never have happened in today’s schools—a pretty sobering thought—and that the lack of state-school funding for the creative arts is creating a “two-tier culture”. Sheku, the winner of BBC “Young Musician of the Year”, was educated at a state school in Nottingham and his mother has expressed deep concern for the future of succeeding generations of children. The noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, graciously promised me a response on the financial security of music hubs from the Department for Education and I would be most grateful if the Minister could chase up this much-needed reassurance.

Exposure to the creative arts is not only a good financial investment. It also has a profound social dividend and should be the right of every child, not just the privileged. Being given the means to express joy, anger or frustration through the arts is cathartic. It helps to reduce friction and, potentially, violence. Playing in an orchestra or singing in a choir teaches children how to listen to each other and work as a team.

I move on to another concern widely held in the musical and arts world, which has already been voiced in this Chamber: that of the difficulty of travel post Brexit—especially when accompanied by a cello. Artists visiting this country already accept much lower fees than those offered on the continent. Promoters and orchestral managers really worry that, if increasingly stressful visa and travel arrangements are added to that, these artists, who contribute to the vibrant exchange of ideas, simply will not bother coming. For much the same reason, foreign students, who bring in cross-cultural ideas as well as vital funds, will no longer come to our colleges and academies. I know that the Government are looking at this and I would be grateful for any update on progress.

Finally, I move on to health—a drum I have frequently beaten. I think the only Private Member’s Bill to start in the Lords and make its way onto the statute book in the last Session was an amendment to the Children Act 1989. It related to FGM and strengthened the protection for young girls at risk from this barbaric practice, which has absolutely no foundation in either religion or medicine. I do not suppose that there is a single noble Lord in this Chamber who is not appalled by this and who does not think that mutilating a young girl’s genitals is an utterly abhorrent, and of course criminal, act. But the most recent figures from NHS Digital, where FGM must be reported if it is seen, show that, every quarter, between 1,000 and 2,000 cases are seen by health workers. So, despite enormous efforts by the Ministry of Justice and the Department of Health—I know how seriously they take this—we cannot and must not be complacent. We must continue to educate. I, for one, will continue to agitate until this loathsome practice is entirely eradicated from what we surely all like to think of as our civilised society.

Children and Young People: Obesity

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Tuesday 17th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to be allowed to speak briefly in the gap. What I wish to say extends and amplifies what other noble Lords have said. In the area on the border between mid-Wales and England where I spend a lot of time, I have noticed that the provision of leisure centres is crucial to families, especially less privileged families who can take children to learn to swim. We know that swimming is a very fine way of keeping fit, but it is also important that children are able to swim. My question to the Minister is simply this: does he feel that the provision of leisure centres is important in the Government’s fight to prevent childhood obesity?

Health: Polypill

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, perhaps I might say a few words since we have a little time in hand. I am very interested in the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, because preventing cardiac disease is something that we should be considering for the future. Indeed, I think we are all agreed on that. However, I can see many of the problems. I very much agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, that we have to be careful that people, especially young people, do not think that this is a sort of panacea—especially with obesity and the danger of diabetes, for example—and that by taking this magic pill we will somehow put off the moment. That would be dangerous. However, I can see that with more research—this is where I agree absolutely with the noble Baroness—this is something that we should keep an eye on. I am very grateful for the debate, which I found extremely interesting.