Food, Diet and Obesity Committee Report
Lord Rennard Excerpts(2 weeks, 4 days ago)
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Lord Rennard (LD)
My Lords, our debate has created much passion and many personal emotions for me, including in thinking about the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, and his experience of giving up alcohol 43 years ago. We have had a fairly wide consensus across the House on many measures that are needed to help reduce the large gap in life expectancy between the richest and the poorest in this country; to reduce the figure of two in every five children in England leaving primary school above a healthy weight; and to lessen the financial and other burdens placed on people who are overweight and on the nation as a whole. But we have also heard constant frustration about the Government’s very limited response to the excellent report. Indeed, I think the flavour of the debate has been largely to describe the response as pitiful.
Thirty years ago, I was 40 kilos heavier than I am now—or, to put it another way, I am now more than six stone lighter. My weight is still going down, but it has been an issue throughout my life and a source of depression. It made me a target for bullying from school onwards. I consider myself fortunate to now be classified as “overweight” rather than “obese”, but we cannot just hope for good fortune to reverse the escalating scale of the problem with obesity and its links, for people like me, to type 2 diabetes and other health conditions.
In discussing the Government’s response to the excellent report of our Select Committee, so brilliantly led by my noble friend Lady Walmsley, our debate has highlighted much of what I feel that I have learned personally, and often painfully, as I used to let my own health get completely out of control. We have highlighted very strongly how the Government really must take forward more of the many practical and positive suggestions in the report. We know that they have some determination to do so, but that this determination is still very limited.
I mention my personal struggle with weight and diabetes because one of the things that we must address is the stigma that accompanies these conditions as we address educating children, and their parents, about such issues. The approach of personal responsibility and “pull your own socks up”, if I might thus describe the approach set out by the noble Lord, Lord McColl, is not just unhelpful but deeply counterproductive.
I learned nothing about nutrition at school. I am probably one of the few Members of this House who had free school meals. I always chose the options with chips, but I see much worse options being chosen these days, as children leave school in the early afternoon, not having had any form of lunch, and pour into the nearby fried chicken and burger shops. In relation to food generally, I prefer the French approach described by the noble Baroness, Lady Meyer.
I am pleased that more fast food outlets will, in future, be blocked from selling cheap, unhealthy, high-fat products so near to schools, but in my view they should really be banned from selling such products in close proximity to schools altogether. I welcome the long-overdue restrictions on the advertising of their products targeted at young people. But, as my noble friend Lady Suttie said, parents do not have information or understanding about sugar content. We really must properly address issues of labelling.
Only the provision of healthy and nutritious free school meals will really help to address the problems we are talking about. In the meantime, I welcome the greater provision of breakfast clubs, which I hope will offer healthy alternatives to white toast and sugary cereals.
Boys and girls, men and women can all suffer from body image issues, as well as from the health conditions that arise from being overweight, including the greater likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes. Schools need to address these issues while doing much more to promote health education, cookery skills, as described by the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, and physical activity in schools and after school.
The resulting ill-health caused by being overweight or obese is, for many families, a major factor in their relative poverty. It limits their capacity to work, their life experiences and their emotional well-being, and puts significant burdens on the state through our health and care system. It results in damage to the economy, as there is far more reliance on the state and there are fewer tax contributions. The Institute for Government estimates that the economic impact of obesity in this country is between 1% and 2% of our GDP.
Healthier food is, sadly, more expensive than the least healthy options. Families are trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty causing ill health, which makes it harder for them to get out of poverty and live more healthily. That is why I and my party strongly support scrapping the two-child limit for universal credit or tax credits. But we are going in the wrong direction this week with the Government’s new measures, which will push 50,000 more children into poverty and a total of 250,000 people altogether.
The Government’s response to the report accepts that
“mandatory regulation can drive change”,
and says that parts of the industry welcome the setting of a level playing field to avoid the most unscrupulous in the food and drink industry seeking competitive advantage. But we should also ask why action that was promised after the Covid pandemic highlighted the dangers of being overweight was suddenly rolled back. The answer is the unscrupulous lobbying on behalf of parts of the industry, adopting tactics with which some of us are familiar from the tobacco industry. They seek to scare MPs and those who work for them into thinking that action to improve the nation’s health may be damaging electorally. Such lobbyists use their dark arts via well-funded think tanks, which, unlike political parties, can keep their sources of funding secret. Those who lobby in this way must be forced in future to declare their sources of funding and to list them, together with all their contacts with Ministers, parliamentarians and those who work with us. The soft drinks levy has proved hugely successful and we need such a measure now for foods, especially for ultra-processed foods.
Some of what the Government are doing is welcome, but there is widespread agreement about the problems, as the report clearly shows. The Government can and should go further and faster and be more radical as we seek to tackle the epidemics of obesity and diabetes.
NHS Dentistry
Lord Rennard Excerpts(3 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Baroness Merron (Lab)
I welcome the suggestion from the noble Baroness, and I will raise that with the Minister, Stephen Kinnock. What I can say is that strengthening the dental workforce is absolutely central, as we have to rebuild NHS dentistry in this country. Integrated care boards have started already to recruit for dental posts through a golden hello scheme. That means that up to 240 dentists will receive payments of £20,000 across three years to work in those areas that need them most. Already, as of 10 February this year, 35 dentists have commenced in post, a further 33 dentists have been recruited, and hundreds of job posts are currently advertised. There is a long way to go, but we have made a very strong start.
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, we will hear from the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, next and then the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur.
Lord Rennard (LD)
My Lords, the promised extra 700,000 appointments will mean just two extra appointments a month for each NHS dentist in England. The Health and Social Care Select Committee concluded in 2023 that the current dental contract is not fit for purpose, so will a new dental contract stop penalising dentists who take on more units of dental activity or patients with more complex dental needs?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
The noble Lord makes a very strong case for reform of the dental contract. The Minister concerned is very alive to the points he makes but, again, I will draw his attention to them. I do not quite recognise the figure that the noble Lord referred to on the number of extra appointments. If I can give just one example: out of 700,000 extra appointments, in the Midlands that will mean 143,424 extra appointments. I also emphasise that it is 700,000 extra appointments every year. If the noble Lord would let me have the figures to which he referred, I would be very happy to look into them.
Soft Drinks Industry Levy
Lord Rennard Excerpts(4 weeks ago)
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Lord Rennard
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the success of the Soft Drinks Industry Levy in comparison to voluntary sugar, salt and calorie reduction and reformulation measures.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Merron) (Lab)
My Lords, the soft drinks industry levy has nearly halved the sugar in soft drinks. By uprating the levy, as was announced in the Budget, we will ensure it remains fit for purpose and drives further restrictions. The voluntary programme has delivered meaningful product change and learning on what more is possible. We continue to drive reformulation through promotion and advertising restrictions, which are showing promising results. We will continue this momentum to create a healthier generation.
Lord Rennard (LD)
My Lords, the levy has reduced considerably the number of children who would otherwise have been admitted to hospital for dental extractions. Two-thirds of the public support an expansion of the principle of this levy to other high-sugar foods, with revenue raised funding children’s health programmes. Will the Minister commit to supporting the Recipe for Change campaign, which is backed by over 50 health charities and medical colleges, given that if the proposed sugar and salt levy in Henry Dimbleby’s National Food Strategy was implemented it could avoid more than 320,000 cases of type 2 diabetes over the next 25 years?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I understand why the noble Lord raises this: he, like me, wishes to reduce obesity rates. Although the soft drinks industry levy is showing success, it is much harder, as he will be aware, to apply the same in respect of food, simply because of its formulation: there is no other sugar in soft drinks beforehand, whereas there is in food. Although I understand the pressure to do this, and we continue to do more, it is not quite as straightforward to draw the direct comparisons, as I know he understands.
Health: Obesity
Lord Rennard Excerpts(3 months, 1 week ago)
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Lord Rennard (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that one of the major problems with tackling obesity in the UK is that we are second only to the United States in our consumption of ultra-processed foods? While the steps she announced are welcome, do we not need further measures, such as providing free, healthy, nutritious school meals as an alternative to the unhealthy fast food shops close to many schools?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I certainly agree with the noble Lord about the need for favourable alternatives, and to educate people, particularly at a young age, about what healthy eating can look like, but it is also important to create the right environment and circumstances, and not everybody has that to hand. The provision of free school meals in the way the noble Lord referred to is of course a matter for local government to decide. I can say that the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition has reviewed the evidence about ultra-processed foods and believes that further research is needed, which we have commissioned. Importantly, the committee has added UPFs to its watching brief and many are covered by existing legislation, because there are regulations on foods high in fat, salt and sugar which are applicable to ultra-processed foods.
Fracture Liaison Services
Lord Rennard Excerpts(4 months, 1 week ago)
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Lord Rennard (LD)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in a debate in which there is such strong consensus. The noble Lord, Lord Black of Brentwood, is again to be congratulated on raising this vital issue of fracture liaison services and asking the new Government about progress towards achieving the previous Government’s target of 100% coverage by 2030. In 2021 we were given the figure of 51%—or 63 out of 123—NHS trusts across England having fracture liaison services. There is now 100% coverage in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, so it is disappointing if the figure is still the same 51% for England.
We have heard how osteoporosis affects 3.5 million people in the UK, causing more than half a million fractures each year, and that, according to the Royal Osteoporosis Society, two-thirds of the people who need treatment are missing out, leaving them vulnerable to further life-altering fractures—and we have heard how women are disproportionately affected. Both the Sunday Express and the Mail on Sunday have been mentioned for partnering with the Royal Osteoporosis Society to campaign for an end to the postcode lottery that leaves so many people without fracture liaison clinics.
The new Government have promised to roll out a plan to ensure that every part of the country has access to FLS. All the main parties in the general election promised this, but we have heard tonight that investment needs to be made now if the Government are to achieve the target by 2030.
We have heard how the Royal Osteoporosis Society has estimated that just a £30 million investment in fracture liaison services could prevent 74,000 fractures, including 31,000 hip fractures, over five years—but, we are all asking, will this expenditure take place and will it be soon? The issue of providing universal cover for fracture liaison clinics may not create such big headlines as those about cancer treatments or accident and emergency waiting times, but, as we have heard, the issue affects so very many people. The political will really must be there if we are to address the need to reduce the number of hip and other fractures.
I have always advised people that whichever party wins an election, the Treasury stays in power, and that the Treasury often adopts a very short-term approach demanding a rapid return on any investment. This approach needs to change across the health and care sector if we really want to move towards more prevention and needing less cure. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, said, fracture liaison services provide a relatively rapid return on that investment.
There are still considerable challenges. The clinical workload of those expected to undertake roles within the services is immense. Rheumatology services were hit enormously by Covid and years of underinvestment. We can work with multidisciplinary teams and new technologies such as AI in order to streamline care, improve efficiency and help clinicians to manage growing demand, achieving economies of scale, but technology alone is not the answer; we also need meaningful investment in preventive services.
Type 2 Diabetes: Continuous Glucose Monitors
Lord Rennard Excerpts(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Rennard
To ask His Majesty’s Government how they intend to monitor access to continuous glucose monitors for people with type 2 diabetes; and how such monitoring will take account of any inequalities based on deprivation and ethnicity.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I could get used to that reception, but I am not sure that I will get used to three Questions and a repeat UQ. However, I thank your Lordships’ House.
More than 200,000 eligible people living with diabetes currently benefit from real-time CGM, or continuous glucose monitoring. CGM data-reporting systems are being developed to aid the delivery of rollout by integrated care boards. Alongside this, the data is collected as part of the national diabetes audit. From 2025-26, NHS England plans to publish that data routinely on the audit’s quarterly dashboard, which will provide the insights that ICBs need, including data on CGM uptake, variation and health inequalities.
Lord Rennard (LD)
Many more people with type 2 diabetes could benefit from this technology. People living in deprivation and people of black and south Asian ethnicity are more likely to develop type 2 diabetes, are less likely to receive essential diabetes care and experience worse health outcomes. However, according to Diabetes UK, only 24 of 42 integrated care boards in England have a policy for continuous glucose monitoring for people with type 2 diabetes that is in line with guidance from NICE. How will the Government ensure equal access to such monitors for people with type 2 diabetes?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
The noble Lord makes a very fair observation. Work is going on in a wider equality monitoring programme exploring how to keep an eye on equality repercussions, including ethnicity, by reference to protected characteristics in the Equality Act 2010. Importantly to the point he raised, the review includes consideration of how NHS ethnic group categories can be updated. The outcome of the review—this is the point I really want to emphasise—will ultimately guide a process of reducing inequalities, but I accept his challenge and his point.
Diets: Fat
Lord Rennard Excerpts(5 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Rennard (LD)
My Lords, I am a type 2 diabetic. I overcome some embarrassment about my weight to say that I have lost more than 30 kilos over the past 30 years. More importantly, I have kept it off.
Self-evidently, however, I need to lose more weight. My diabetic control has been very difficult and required major lifestyle changes, but they were not enough. So, in the past four months, I have been assisted in improving my diabetic control and reducing my weight by a further few kilograms with the help of Mounjaro, a drug from Eli Lilly. Since being diagnosed with diabetes in 1994, I have always had great support from St Thomas’ Hospital. It advised me a few years ago that a typical type 2 diabetic like me, in their 50s and 60s, can be expected to put on an average of between one and two kilos every year. Over a decade or two, that gain of between 20 and 40 kilograms is likely to have catastrophic health consequences requiring significant and costly medical intervention.
For many people struggling with their weight and diabetic control, these new injections give great hope, but we should not see any of the different injections becoming available as a silver bullet to achieve weight loss. We should recognise first that they are helpful in improving diabetic control, which can be very difficult, as your pancreas becomes less and less effective at producing insulin and your sugar levels rise. The associated weight loss with these drugs is also helpful, but such treatment is far from appropriate as a first resort and some people struggle with unpleasant side-effects from them.
However, we should never accept an approach towards obesity or diabetic control which says little more than, “Pull your socks up, make yourself eat much less, but eat more fat”. This approach will lead only to the obesity crisis in many of the more affluent countries becoming even greater. It will result in great damage to the health of their populations, their health systems and their economies. The Atkins diet is now widely discredited after the demise of the author of the books on it.
The British Dietetic Association says that fat plays an important part in our diet and that people need a small amount of it. But it has warned against a high intake of saturated fats, which are often found in processed foods and associated with weight gain, making diabetic control harder, causing joint problems and some cancers.
The questions for us to discuss should be about how to take strong steps to help prevent people becoming obese in the first place and how to help them achieve and maintain healthier lifestyles, manage their diets better, and adopt healthier lifestyles, including regular exercise.
As the excellent report from the Select Committee on Food, Diet and Obesity, chaired by my noble friend Lady Walmsley, suggested last week, we need a broad range of measures to tackle the obesity crisis. I would begin with healthy, nutritious, and free school meals and stopping the proliferation of fried chicken and burger shops in close proximity to schools. We need, as the Select Committee says, to reduce the prevalence of marketing and advertising of unhealthy ultra-processed foods, especially to children. We need also to promote health education and physical activity in schools and after school.
Poverty must also be recognised as a significant factor in many people having unhealthy diets and suffering from health inequalities. Poor parents struggle to provide healthy diets for their families. Healthier foods are more than twice as expensive per calorie as less healthy foods. One of the most important poverty-relieving measures would be to scrap the two-child limit for universal credit or tax credits. I am disappointed that this was not in yesterday’s Budget.
In conclusion, we need to follow medical advice and look at evidence over time about the use of injections assisting diabetic control and weight loss. We cannot simply let people think that they can just resort to expensive weekly injections provided by the state. But nor can the state ignore the tremendous costs of obesity and diabetes.
Smoking
Lord Rennard Excerpts(1 year, 2 months ago)
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Lord Rennard
To ask His Majesty’s Government what progress they have made towards the ambition of creating a “smokefree” generation by 2030.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Markham) (Con)
Smoking is responsible for around 80,000 deaths a year in the UK, costs our country £17 billion a year and puts a huge burden on the National Health Service. That is why we will shortly introduce the tobacco and vapes Bill to Parliament in the coming weeks, to create the first smoke-free generation and further crack down on youth vaping. The Bill will be informed by our recent consultation, which we will publish soon.
Lord Rennard (LD)
My Lords, all parties have agreed on the need to reduce the prevalence of smoking in this country to below 5% by 2030, so the Bill to prevent young people ever becoming smokers is vital. Does the Minister accept that we need to do more to help the over 6 million people in this country who are addicted smokers, most of whom are struggling to give up smoking and want to? They are damaging their health and that of others affected by smoking. Does he agree that allowing integrated care boards to make further cuts to tobacco dependence treatment budgets will not help us to achieve this target?
Lord Markham (Con)
I thank the noble Lord. Actually, Khan recommended four major things to achieve that in his report Smokefree 2030. The first was to increase the anti-smoking spend that the noble Lord refers to. As part of this, we propose to increase that spend from £70 million to £140 million—so we are doing absolutely what the noble Lord suggests. The second was to increase the age of sale, which of course this legislation is all about. The third was to promote vaping to help quit smoking. Again, the legislation will do that. The fourth was to increase NHS prevention methods which, again, we will do from here. So it is very much a range of measures to stop people ever smoking but also to stop many who are currently smoking by helping them to quit.
King’s Speech
Lord Rennard Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Lord Rennard (LD)
My Lords, in the seven minutes in which we are asked to speak today, seven people will have hospital appointments because of their smoking habit. The Department of Health and Social Care estimates that this amounts to around 450,000 hospital appointments in England every year. In the seven hours we expect to debate today, around 700 GP appointments will be made because of smoking. Cancer Research UK estimates that around 900,000 GP appointments are made every year because of smoking. In England alone, nearly 200 people will die every day because of smoking.
The tobacco manufacturers try to suggest that the frequent ill health and the 50% death rate of those who smoke are a simply a matter of their personal choice, but smoking tobacco has consequences for many other people beyond those trapped by nicotine addiction.
Aged 16, I was woken by my younger brother, as our mum had overslept and we were late for school. I got up, but I could not wake her. She was just 53, and she never woke up. She was a heavy smoker and severely disabled. She died of hypertensive heart disease, and smoking was a significant contributory factor in her death. She did not choose to die that way; she was addicted. She did not choose for her children to become orphans and for us to lose our home—and becoming homeless at that time was not a “lifestyle choice”. So, yes, the issue is a personal one about the consequences of smoking: it is not a choice but an addiction, and one which the vast majority of smokers, having started in their youth, come to regret.
There was little in the gracious Speech to inspire anyone, including those on the Government Benches. Change is not change when little more is promised than bland slogans about a brighter future but with the same people and the same policies. But praise must be given where praise is due; and the latest in a lengthy line of successful measures to help reduce the prevalence of tobacco smoking is to be heartily welcomed. Lives will be saved; people will be healthier and wealthier, and the whole country will benefit.
This year, the cost to the public purse of early deaths due to smoking will be £31 billion. This year, the cost of lost productivity due to smoking will be £38 billion. This year, the cost due to smoking in terms of lost tax receipts, increased social security spending and extra costs to public services such as the NHS will be more than £9 billion, and that is after the tax receipts from tobacco are taken into account.
Meanwhile, the tobacco companies continue to make enormous profits. This year, the four biggest tobacco companies in the UK will make around £900 million in profits. It is no wonder that they spend so much money on desperate tactics to deceive people about every single measure that we have ever introduced to reduce the prevalence of tobacco smoking. We should listen instead to medical advice. Sir Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer for England, spoke recently about the plan to gradually raise the age at which you can be legally sold tobacco. He said:
“The overwhelming majority of the medical profession, the nursing profession and all the health charities support this”.
He described claims from the tobacco industry that the policy would not work as “bogus”. He told the BBC:
“As a doctor I’ve seen many people in hospital desperate to stop smoking because it’s killing them and yet they cannot—their choice has been removed”.
The Bill has support from the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, the Royal Society of Public Health, the UK Faculty of Public Health, Asthma + Lung UK, and Alzheimer’s Research UK, among all the many organisations putting public health above the vast private profits of the tobacco companies. However, using their well-funded front organisations, the tobacco companies are orchestrating their usual deceptive and devious techniques to try to protect those profits. They have a few champions, such as Liz Truss and the Institute of Economic Affairs, which helped her to crash our economy—and Boris Johnson, whose judgment and integrity are well known, who says that the plan is a ban.
The plan is not a ban on smoking, because no smoker will be banned from their habit. What will be made illegal is underage sale, in the same way that a few years ago we extended the minimum age for someone who can be sold cigarettes from 16 to 18. The plan will extend this further year by year. The measure offers great hope to everyone below the age of 14, for whom it will never be legal to be sold cigarettes. The evidence is that such measures will not increase the illicit market. When the age of sale increased from 16 to 18 in 2007, it had no negative impact on this market, which continues to fall.
The issue of moving to a more smoke-free Britain, and seeking to be smoke-free by 2030, does not involve a choice between restricting sales of tobacco and more public health activity to help smokers quit. We need both. Two-thirds of those people trying just one cigarette, usually as children, go on to become daily smokers, and daily smokers are addicted smokers. The plan to limit cigarette sales further has strong public support; it does not divide the Government and the Opposition Front Benches—and I hope that pressure from the tobacco lobbyists will be firmly resisted across both Houses, as it clearly has been in this House today.
Osteoporosis: Early Detection
Lord Rennard Excerpts(2 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Markham (Con)
I agree with my noble friend that prevention is always better than cure. The beauty of these processes is that I get to swot up, and I learned that the second largest bed-intake cause is actually a fractured femur from osteoporosis, so he is correct. We have a target that 95% of patients will get a check within six weeks by March 2025. It is good that musculoskeletal services are now part of the national improvement programme, but we clearly need to make sure we are on top of that.
Lord Rennard (LD)
My Lords, a year ago the Minister’s predecessor said to the House that he hoped NHS England would ensure that effective fracture services were universal. However, unlike in Scotland and Wales, that is not the case in England. Is not part of the problem with healthcare in this country that the Government struggle to resource treatment and pay for those who provide it while failing to invest in prevention and public health initiatives? What action are they taking to ensure that osteoporosis is given sufficient priority by recognising that it needs to be considered in parity with other long-term conditions?
Lord Markham (Con)
The noble Lord refers to the fracture liaison services. It is the responsibility of all ICBs to roll out those services or their equivalent. Regarding the numbers that he cited, I should say that 51% of ICBs have a fracture liaison service in that shape or form and the others have different versions of it, and they are all responsible for rolling those out. At the same time, they are also responsible for musculoskeletal services, to make sure that we have nationwide provision for it.