Asked by: Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the value of Government-funded research into the impact of calorie labelling on alcohol products, given that such information has been provided on other drinks for many years.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department commissioned a National Institute for Health and Care Research study on understanding the impact of alcohol calorie labelling on alcohol and calorie selection, purchasing, and consumption. This study is underway, and due to end in 2026. The findings from this work will be useful in showing the potential impact of calorie labelling on reducing calorie intake and alcohol consumption.
Under our Health Mission, the Government is committed to prioritising preventative public health measures to support people to live longer, healthier lives. The Department will continue to work across Government to determine the best ways to reduce alcohol-related harms.
Asked by: Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many limb amputations were performed in NHS hospitals in (1) 2005, (2) 2010, (3) 2015, and (4) 2020, and what was the principal cause of these.
Answered by Lord Markham - Shadow Minister (Science, Innovation and Technology)
A table showing the number of finished consultant episodes with a main or secondary procedure code for limb amputation, broken down by primary diagnosis group and the year of the operation, is attached due to the size of the data.
Asked by: Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the number of children eligible for free school meals who are not registered to receive them; and what steps they are taking to encourage registration.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)
The department does not routinely collect information on the proportion of pupils that would be entitled to a Free School Meal (FSM) but do not make a claim.
The department wants to ensure as many eligible pupils as possible are claiming their FSM, and to make it simple for schools and local authorities to determine eligibility. To support this, the department provides an Eligibility Checking System to make processes as straightforward as possible. A model registration form has been developed to help schools encourage parents to sign up for FSM. In addition, the department provides guidance to Jobcentre Plus advisers, so that they can make Universal Credit recipients aware that they may also be entitled to wider benefits, including FSM.
Asked by: Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what are the key incentives needed to achieve sustained long-term weight reduction in cases of obesity.
Answered by Lord Markham - Shadow Minister (Science, Innovation and Technology)
Local authorities and the National Health Service provide weight management services to support their communities to achieve and maintain a healthier weight. These services incentivise behaviour change, by encouraging the development of sustainable habits and fostering independence and self-management
Maintaining weight loss over the medium and long term is challenging in an environment where high saturated fat, salt and sugar food are readily available, marketed, and cheaper than healthier alternatives. That is why the Government is taking action to help people maintain a healthier weight such as: the introduction of out of home calorie labelling regulations for food sold in large businesses, including restaurants, cafes and takeaways; the introduction of restrictions on the promotion by location of less healthy products in key selling locations in store and online; and working with the food industry to make further progress on reformulation and making healthier choices easier.
The Government also launched ‘The Better Health: Rewards’ pilot in February 2023 for adults who live in Wolverhampton. This is an innovative app-based health intervention where participants can download an app, receive a free wearable fitness tracker, and can earn points for completing diet and physical activity challenges which they can redeem for rewards in an in-app store. This pilot is designed to test whether financial incentives can be used to support people to improve their diet and physical activity behaviour.
Asked by: Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what was the cost to the NHS of prescribing the heroine substitute drug methodone in (1) 2005, (2) 2010, (3) 2015, and (4) 2020.
Answered by Lord Markham - Shadow Minister (Science, Innovation and Technology)
Information on the cost to the NHS of prescribing methadone is not held centrally.
Asked by: Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they will change the conditions on which Universal Infant Free School Meal grants are made to ensure that the grants are expended solely on improving the quality of school meals to meet their child obesity targets.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)
Universal Infant Free School Meals (UIFSM) are funded through a direct grant to schools. To recognise the pressures facing schools, the Department announced an £18 million increase to the per-pupil funding rate for UIFSM to support with costs around food, transport and staff wages.
UIFSM helps to improve children’s education, boost their health and save parents around £400 a year. There are no plans to change the conditions in which these grants are made. The Department is continuing to review funding in order to ensure that schools continue to be able to provide healthy and nutritious meals in school. The funding for the free school meal (FSM) factor is increasing in line with the latest available GDP deflator forecast when the New Funding Formula (NFF) was published in July 2022.
Schools receive their provisional allocations for UIFSM in June based on the final allocation of the previous academic year. Schools receive a subsequent allocation of revenue funding in early summer, adjusted either up or down to reflect actual number of meals taken. This is calculated using an average taken from the October and January Censuses.
Local Authorities can decide whether they should top up the UIFSM allocation from their general maintenance and improvement budgets in the light of local circumstances, as they would do in any other year.
Asked by: Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to use more trained therapists to ease the backlog of NHS patients with mental health problems.
Answered by Lord Markham - Shadow Minister (Science, Innovation and Technology)
Through the NHS Long Term Plan we are committed to transforming and expanding mental health services in England by 2023/24 so that an additional two million people can get the mental health support that they need. This commitment is backed by our plans through the NHS Long Term Plan to grow the mental health workforce by an additional 27,000 professionals, including more trained therapists to provide more people with National Health Service talking therapies, by 2023/24.
Asked by: Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they will revise school meal food standards to ensure that guidelines on children's recommended maximum daily sugar intake are displayed.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)
The standards for school food are set out in the Requirements for School Food Regulations 2014. The Regulations ensure that schools provide children with healthy food and drink options, and make sure that children receive the energy and nutrition they need across the school day. The Standards define the foods and drinks that must be provided, those which are restricted, and those which must not be provided. Foods high in fat, salt and sugar, including high sugar foods and confectionery, are restricted.
The current standards provide a robust yet flexible framework to ensure that pupils in England continue to receive high-quality and nutritious food, that builds healthy eating habits for life.
Asked by: Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Home Office Introducing Public Health Measures Impact Assessment 2019, published on 4 July 2019, which found that the Cardiff Model for violence reduction would cut the costs of violence by £858 million over 10 years if five per cent of Community Service Partnerships implemented it, what plans they have to extend its use throughout (1) England, and (2) Wales.
Answered by Lord Sharpe of Epsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Cardiff Model is a multi-agency approach to violence prevention that relies on the strategic use of information and data from health and law enforcement services to improve policing and community violence prevention initiatives. The Government recognises the benefits of using the Cardiff Model to tackle serious violence and have adopted the approach across a number of policies and projects.
For example, the Serious Violence Duty will commence on the 31st January 2023 and will be rolled out across England and Wales. Introduced through the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, the Serious Violence Duty will require a range of specified authorities, such as the police, local government, youth offending teams, health and probation services, to work collaboratively, sharing data and information to analyse the local problem, and put in place a strategy to prevent and reduce serious violence within their local communities, through existing partnership structures where possible.
The proactive sharing of data between health and law enforcement, as set out in the Cardiff Model, has also been adopted and built upon by our Violence Reduction Units (VRUs) who also seek to incorporate data from wider multi-agency partners to generate new insights into violent crime trends and drivers. As of this financial year, we now have 20 VRUs operating in the 20 police force areas worst affected by serious violence. Effective data sharing is a key priority for VRUs, and the Home Office closely monitors progress against this.
The Government also encourages all Community Safety Partnerships (CSPs) to meet the expectation to work with local hospitals to implement the sharing of appropriate health data to tackle serious violence, as detailed in the 2018 Serious Violence Strategy for England and Wales.
Asked by: Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government when they will publish the fourth and final report from their Sugar Reduction Programme.
Answered by Lord Markham - Shadow Minister (Science, Innovation and Technology)
The fourth progress report, Sugar reduction – industry progress 2015 to 2020: Including the final report for foods included in the programme and the latest data for drinks included in the Soft Drinks Industry Levy and juices and milk based drinks on the sugar reduction programme was published on 1 December. A copy of the report is attached.