Diabetic Prevention Programme

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for the question and pay tribute to him for his work in this area over many years. He is absolutely right. One of the challenges of this programme is that it is a nine-month course. Clearly, like many things, it was impacted by Covid, with a lack of in-person consultations and appointments. However, the silver lining to the cloud was the digital service. The course was able to move some patients on to digital services and to self-referring. One impact of that has been more people signing up to this programme.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, is it possible that it is not the course that is at fault but the people who go on it? Has the department not considered charging people a refundable attendance fee to ensure that they roll up?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his question but what is more important is that we get people who have diabetes on to the programme in the first place. As we adjust the programme to take account of the pandemic, for example, and digital offers, we are also looking at different ways to work with different communities. For example, I was talking to a young girl of Bengali origin in my department the other day. I said, “What do we do about getting to the heart of the communities, given that we are in Westminster and Whitehall?” She said that one of the problems in her community is that, “We love ghee—we love clarified butter, in our curries and our rotis.” We are looking at alternative recipes and menus so that people can still have the same food but it can be healthier.