Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Tuesday 13th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I entirely agree that the vaccination programme has clearly been a huge UK success story and that is because of the UK working together: the NHS across the whole UK; the military working in support across the UK; and, of course, the UK Government working with the devolved authorities and local councils. It is a big team effort. To split and separate out this team effort for no good reason would, in my view, be counterproductive to improving the lives of people across the whole country. We should be working together, not pursuing separation.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to limit online junk food advertising to children.

[Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)]

What steps he plans to take to ensure a level playing field between online and mainstream broadcasters in the implementation of the proposed advertisement ban on foods high in fat, sugar and salt before 9 pm.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Jo Churchill)]

We have made clear our intention to end the advertising of high fat, salt and sugar products on television before 9 pm. We recently held a short consultation on how to introduce advertising restrictions for online and we will publish our response soon. A level playing field, however, is important. I want to make it easy for everyone to be healthy.

[Andrew Selous [V]]

Does the Minister agree that ending junk food marketing online is hardly an outrageous assault on our freedoms, would remove 12.5 billion calories a year from children’s diets, and would allow advertisers and food companies to make plenty of money from producing and marketing healthy food?

[Jo Churchill]

Indeed I do. We are not banning food. It is very important that we make the environment right to ensure that people can make the healthy choice as a default option and enjoy a healthy balanced diet where they have the full knowledge and understanding of what they are purchasing. I think this is actually a great opportunity for companies.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Hancock]

I am very glad to say that the numbers that the hon. Lady uses are out of date. We have seen a very significant increase in the number of nurses and other staff in the NHS. In fact, we have a record number of nurses in the NHS. For the very first time, we have more than 300,000 nurses in the NHS. We have seen over 10,000 more nurses over the last year alone. Of course, the mission to work caring for others and looking after the health of the nation in the NHS has never been more important, and I am delighted that so many people are rising to that, because we have record numbers of people in training too.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

While the NHS acted heroically when the pandemic first hit, what lessons have been learned about translating the learnings of junior doctors and experienced nurses into policy more quickly? For example, junior doctors knew that loss of taste and smell was a symptom, and that proning helped patients, quite some time before those became policy.

[Matt Hancock]

There is a huge amount that we can learn from the early response to the pandemic, and it is very important that we adopt the scientific understanding and learnings as quickly as is rigorously possible. We need the time for the rigour, but we need to adopt the policies. We have seen in the vaccine roll-out a huge amount of these lessons adopted, and the speed at which the scientific advice takes into account what we are learning on the ground in the vaccine roll-out is impressive. So we should keep going down this route—always open-minded, always asking the scientific questions and always then asking how quickly we can rigorously put those understandings into practice.