Covid-19: Poverty

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I can certainly speak for the inequalities we have in health. The right reverend Prelate is entirely right—Covid has been a real reminder of the impact of deprivation and inequality on the population. Those who are disabled are two-and-a-half times more likely to have had some form of life issue with Covid. In terms of deprivation, mortality in the most-deprived neighbourhoods was more than double the rate than in less-deprived neighbourhoods. Those facts are chilling. They are a wake-up call, and we will be working through our levelling-up agenda.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, as the latest Marmot review made clear, damaging and heartbreaking levels of inequality and poverty, especially child and family poverty, weakened our resilience in the face of Covid. Apart from getting people into paid work, which increasingly is failing to protect from poverty, what is the Government’s anti-poverty strategy?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I can speak for the health dimension. I should emphasise the work of the office for health promotion. Under the Chief Medical Officer, the OHP will deliver proactive, predictive and personalised preventive strategies. We believe that there is a huge opportunity off the back of Covid to really change the health inequalities of the country, and that is what the OHP will be devoted to doing.