NHS: Long-term Sustainability

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Thursday 18th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this debate and, like everyone else, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Patel, for introducing it so brilliantly. I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsey, on a really good maiden speech.

This is an interesting week, in that we have decided to ban kids smoking. What we have not banned, and are in fact encouraging, is kids eating an appalling diet. We are flooded with unhealthy food, which is incredibly heavily advertised in all media. You only have to look at sport, and this year’s Olympics. The healthiest thing, everywhere, will be McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, yet we are worrying about our NHS. We must start having conversations with the food industry because if we do not, the NHS, which we all treasure and love, will creak under the strain.

I have lots of alarming statistics. I am not sure which ones to choose in the next four minutes, but here is one. Before the year 2000, there were no known cases of children in the UK with type 2 diabetes. There are now almost 10,000. All those children will be on the NHS books for the rest of their lives. They are also going to be ill. Let us look at it purely economically, rather than compassionately at what kind of life they will lead. They will not be working, not paying tax, not being good parents, not contributing to society. We can change this. I have been doing food politics for nearly two decades, and it amazes me that we have very little involvement with the NHS. We have very little involvement with doctors when talking about what people can do.

Do you know the main reason why most children under 10 go into hospital and have a general anaesthetic? It is to have all their teeth out because of the food they eat. We are also the lowest ranked country in the world for breastfeeding. My daughter, who has twins, managed to feed them for over a year. She had no help or support. I was astonished by the advertising she received from companies calling themselves “hungry baby” and stuff like that, absolutely trying to get under a mother’s skin and say, “Get off breastfeeding and get them on to formula foods”—foods which have higher sugar levels and set your sweet spot higher for the rest of your life. It is outrageous. There is almost no regulation. As for support with breastfeeding, for this young woman with twins, there was nothing. We paid for consultations to help her get through it and achieve that.

Is it any surprise that our kids are therefore growing up to be the most obese in Europe? As a country we are now the third most obese. No medical professional doubts what obesity does to our society, but they fail to connect it back to the food companies. Sticking with the baby food companies, all these little pouches they sell not only cost a lot of money but are extremely addictive to the kids because they are nice, they are handy and they convince mothers that they are doing the best for them, when in fact they are the root cause of them eating too much sugar.

The staggering profits made by the food companies every day are being paid for by the NHS. We are paying for it with our money and in the lack of care that nurses and doctors can give people. I am not saying that these people are not genuinely ill; they are, but from a preventable cause. The Government have had the balls to stand up to the tobacco companies this week. I know that this issue is more complicated than that—I can see the Minister looking at me—and of course we have to eat. However, there is a big difference between what we eat and how we eat it. We are just machines, like everything else. We need to put good stuff into the machine.

Unlike the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, I had an extraordinary experience with the NHS. I managed to scald my foot and had a blister the size of a tennis ball. I ended up getting sepsis and was in the burns unit in Bristol. It was impeccable. However, in the lobby there was Costa Coffee and the Friends Shop. In the Friends Shop there was not one piece of fruit. It was cakes and biscuits all the way.

I got transferred to the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for outpatient care. Again, the treatment was impeccable. Down in the lobby was bloody Costa Coffee—doughnuts and a long queue—and, in the Friends Shop, there was not even a grape. We have to start looking at this. As I say, no one would buy a Rolls-Royce, put Coca-Cola in the engine, and expect to go 100 miles down the motorway. We are not dissimilar, but we are even better than a Rolls-Royce. We deserve to put better stuff in. It is time the whole NHS and the country got this one straight.