Folic Acid

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

I agree with my noble friend; she is right that this is a priority. However, it is not within my gift to simply grant a decision on it; it needs to be worked through both industry and government. We are making progress on this. It is a huge national undertaking for us to put substances literally in the bread of the nation. The public deserve to feel confident that that decision has been made thoughtfully and responsibly, and it is entirely right that we take care to dot the “i”s and cross the “t”s.

[Baroness Hayman (CB) [V]]

My Lords, the Government have had an awfully long time to dot the “i”s and cross the “t”s. When the MRC research first came out, my children were the age that my grandchildren are now. Some 80 other countries have moved more speedily than the UK on the evidence provided by the UK-funded MRC research. As well as the noble Lord making progress on this before the Summer Recess, will the Government look at what the barriers were that made us as a country so slow to come to the decision to fortify flour?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, this Government’s progress on this really came to a head in the consultation in September 2019, and we have been on course to implement these measures since then. It is unfortunate that the Covid pandemic intervened at that point and we had to put work on this project on hold until April of this year. Since April, we have had to deal with the elections in the devolved Administrations. That, unfortunately, creates an insuperable barrier to taking the measures through all the necessary checks and alignments. I reassure the noble Baroness that we are totally committed to this policy, we are moving at pace and I look forward to further progress shortly.