Health: Brain Tumours
Lord Taylor of Warwick Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Bethell (Con)
The noble Lord is right: it is extremely complex and one of the challenges we have is that the basic science needed to guide research is an unpredictable and difficult-to-manage process. That is why I have invited representatives of patient groups to try to guide the basic scientific research so that the talented cancer researchers who are available, who can do the more operational and applicable elements of the research, will have the material necessary to get on with their job.
Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-Afl) [V]
My Lords, it is arguable that, of all the human organs, the brain is the main. People from the black community are nearly three times more likely to develop pituitary tumours at the base of the brain than their white counterparts. The reasons for this disparity are still not clear. Will the Government commit to encouraging further research into this issue? Also, only 14% of UK spending on brain tumour research is from the Government; the remaining 86% is from the charity sector. Although more money is not the total answer, will the Government commit to more funding for this vital area of research?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, £40 million was announced in May 2018 for brain tumour research. To date, £9.3 million has been committed and £5.5 million will be committed from April 2018 to 2023. At this stage, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, alluded to, the allocation of budget is not the issue. Making sure that the pipeline of applicable research is in place is our challenge. That is why we have worked well with interested parties to put together a plan for trying to ginger along the basic science necessary to get those research projects activated.
Covid-19: Transparency and Accuracy of Statistics
Lord Taylor of Warwick Excerpts(4 years ago)
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Lord Bethell (Con)
I will take on board the comments of the noble Lord. We try to make our briefings as accessible as possible. The point he made is perfectly reasonable. Let me look into whether there is more we could be doing and talk to the stakeholders involved about whether we should be doing more.
Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-Afl)
Data should always make trust greater. Covid-19 appears to have more of an effect on BAME communities than their white counterparts. What further research are the Government carrying out in relation to the data to find out the reasons why?
Lord Bethell (Con)
The noble Lord is entirely right. The concerns we have for disadvantaged groups and those of an ethnic background are deep and sincere. That is why we have a large programme of work, sponsored by the NIHR, looking into a variety of different research projects to understand the behaviour of the virus and why it hits certain groups particularly hard.
Covid-19
Lord Taylor of Warwick Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, massive pressure is on the NHS from every level to get back to normal. Attendance rates are increasing dramatically in every area of the NHS. I pay tribute to those who have gone through enormous hoops to create safe and protected protocols to have people back in the system, but I cannot hide from my noble friend the fact that the health system will not be the same, going forward. We will have to change our approach to infection control and hygiene and have face-to-face contact in a completely different way. It makes no sense for lots of ill people to congregate in a GP surgery and to spread their disease among one another. We have to rethink the way we did our healthcare in the past in order to protect healthcare workers and patients from each other’s infections and to afford a sustainable healthcare system that can afford to look after everyone.
Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-Afl)
My Lords, one in five NHS staff is from black and ethnic-minority communities, yet six out of every 10 UK health workers killed by Covid-19 have been BAME. What progress are the Government making in urgently finding out why so many BAME health workers have been so vulnerable, even to the point of losing their lives in the cause of serving others?
Lord Bethell (Con)
The noble Lord is entirely right to raise the terrible statistics on BAME health workers. It is not conclusively understood why the numbers are as dramatic as he articulated. I am afraid we are still speculating, and a huge amount of work is being undertaken by PHE in this area to understand it better. Some of it is because BAME front-line workers selflessly put themselves in harm’s way in environments where there are higher risks, despite the extraordinary efforts of trusts and CCGs to protect them. Part of it is the living arrangements and part is the behavioural arrangements. These things are explicitly explained in the PHE report, but it is a matter of huge concern. Trusts and CCGs have been urged to put risk-management practices in place according to local needs and arrangements, and the numbers have changed as a result of these policies.
National Health Service
Lord Taylor of Warwick Excerpts(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, for securing this debate. He and other noble Lords have spoken with much wisdom, expertise and experience. My only qualification in this area may be that I was a board member of the North West Thames Regional Health Authority, a member of the Solihull Family Practitioner Committee and a board member of SCAR, the Sickle Cell Anaemia Relief charity.
As a schoolboy, I attended a university open day as a precursor to studying for a medical degree. I recall that we had to walk through a laboratory where some experiments were being carried out on dead bodies donated for research. It is still vivid in my memory. I passed one corpse that had been drained of all body fluids and dissected lengthways, so that I was looking at a half-body. I recalled that in the Bible Lazarus had been raised from the dead, but I thought to myself, “But that Lazarus was not cut in half; this guy is going nowhere”. I decided at that point that medicine is a special calling, and perhaps it was not calling me. So I have every admiration for members of the medical profession. I just hope that the BMA and the Government can reach an agreement. With the prospect of two further doctors’ strikes, it is surely the patients who will suffer.
It is said that some 40% of diseases are related to lifestyle. Smoking and alcohol abuse are major problems. As the saying goes, Bacchus has drowned more men than Neptune. We need an effective national plan for preventable illness, otherwise the impact of lifestyle-related diseases and longer lifespans will put even greater strain on resources. This may have to be a part of an open, independent inquiry or commission charting the way forward, as the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, stated. It could include an international comparison of the way that other countries deal with these issues, especially the means of funding the service. The inquiry needs to examine a more holistic approach to health, involving health promotion, sickness prevention, mental illness and social care. We have excellent health foundations, such as the Nuffield Trust and the King’s Fund, that can help with this.
The third Gospel was written by Luke, who was a doctor of medicine, but, as a Greek, he was a non-Jew, a foreigner. I mention that to highlight the tremendous contribution made by ethnic minorities to our NHS. Some 37% of doctors and 27% of nurses are from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. In London, 40% of the NHS workforce are from BME communities.
In my student days, my idea of a balanced meal was a biscuit in each hand. Since then, I have had to learn the value of healthy nutrition and exercise. There is nothing permanent in life except change, and there has to be change in our approach to the NHS in order for it to meet its present and future demands. As John F Kennedy once said, our task now is not to fix the blame for the past but to fix the course for the future.
Healthcare: Costs
Lord Taylor of Warwick Excerpts(14 years ago)
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Lord Taylor of Warwick
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what actions they are taking to control rises in health care costs.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)
My Lords, the Government have guaranteed that health spending will increase in real terms in each year of the Parliament. However, in order to meet rapidly rising demands while improving quality, substantial improvements in economy and efficiency will be required across all areas of health spending. This response is best led by the NHS locally, while the centre will focus on reforming the health service to create a long-term sustainable NHS.
Lord Taylor of Warwick
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply. Does he agree with me that putting more funding now into research into terrible conditions such as dementia, in which I include Alzheimer’s disease—for which there is no cure—will ultimately bring down healthcare costs? We must find a cure, and I ask the Minister to commit more research funding to the terrible condition of dementia.
Earl Howe
My Lords, my noble friend is quite right to identify dementia as a particular cost pressure over the next few years. The coalition Government signalled in their programme our intention to prioritise funding for dementia research. The spending review confirmed that and committed to real-terms increases in spending on health research. This investment is indeed essential if we are to increase the quality, productivity and cost-effectiveness of the NHS.