Long Covid

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Thornton for a masterly introduction to this debate. I speak with a little trepidation because I am no authority in this area, but I recognised very quickly what the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, had to say. His request to the Government about the need for a national cohort is very important indeed, and if the Government do nothing more today, I hope they will at least respond to that.

I approach this from an unusual angle. When Covid started, noble Lords may recall that every day, on the BBC, we saw photographs of the people who were dying. They were mainly old. There was a preponderance of men rather than women. A disproportionately high number came from the UK’s BAME population and 50% of those dying were overweight. My noble friend Lady Thornton knows that I have laboured on this subject for a long time. I and others noticed this. The research findings then bore out that there was a categorisation in this form—the research backed it up. The Government then decided that they had to do something about obesity and very quickly produced their 2021 strategy, as these underlying causes were substantial contributory factors.

We had higher death rates in the UK than the rest of Europe. Our numbers led the field for a period. Put me right if I am wrong, but I think we have performed particularly poorly. We did extraordinarily well with the vaccines, but the death rate was very high indeed. We are generally seen as one of the unhealthiest nations in Europe, part of which goes back to obesity, again linked with Covid. I have not read Covid-19 and Occupational Impacts, only glanced at it, but some important information there relates to the BAME community and sheds light on the problem there. However, I cannot find out whether there are any common factors on a substantial scale that can be identified within people with long Covid.

For example, I know people who have got long Covid who are overweight. They were overweight before, so they had an underlying cause and they were at risk. They continue with long Covid, yet they have a continuing problem with their weight. This is a difficult subject but we must address it honestly and straightforwardly. If there are continuing underlying factors not dissimilar from the problem in the first instance, we must acknowledge them, look at them, give support and assistance in those areas, and not run away from some of the difficulties that may be around. In this country these days, we run away so much from some of our underlying problems. It is too difficult politically and too sensitive to address them on head-on.

I am speaking marginally out of tone with the rest of the debate. I have just as much compassion, but it is important to have a frank and honest debate on this topic. I express my gratitude again to my noble friend for the opportunity to speak up and fully debate the topic before us. It is a very big one, which may be repeated elsewhere with other issues that come along later. I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us whether we are performing badly compared with the rest of Europe—whether we are getting more cases of long Covid than elsewhere. Are we doing better or less research than elsewhere in Europe? I pick up from the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, that the evidence indicates that we are leading the field in the research, which is good.

Fundamentally, we must keep coming back to prevention in the first instance. Until we make our country healthier, we will not be in a position to meet all the problems that will come with climate change, new diseases and unforeseen issues. If we are healthier in the ill to come, as we face it, we stand a much better chance of doing better next time round, with fewer people left with a continuing illness than we have at the moment.