Health and Care Bill

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Report stage
Wednesday 16th March 2022 Lords Chamber

Is it the Minister’s understanding that the Prime Minister will chair the Health Promotion Taskforce? If so—and this is the most important point for all of us on the committee, many of whom have been in sports policy for some 40 years—unless you have accountability to Parliament, you do not have the catalyst for change. With accountability comes the catalyst for change, and I simply ask the Minister to confirm that the Health Promotion Taskforce, covering the areas that the Select Committee has set out, will have teeth, not because it will be chaired by the Prime Minister but because it will be accountable to Parliament, so that Parliament can consider in detail the process, programmes, policy and direction in which we need to make significant advances to achieve improvements in wellbeing, health and sport, and the way that all three can work effectively together. I would like clarity on the commitment from the Minister, and I hope we will receive it this evening. I look forward to hearing from him, and I beg to move.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. I do not want to repeat points that have been made at this late hour, but I wish to emphasise that the arguments about the importance of sport and well-being do not need to be made again. Everybody from all parties, right across the House, understand their importance and the consequences of not getting them right. The good will has been there for years, but the ability to transform it into effective action has not, and lots of well-intentioned efforts in the past have come to naught. That is what is driving the committee that met under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Willis, and I agree with the questions that have been asked.

For me, it is a case of not relying on a cross-departmental committee to run this project. It has not worked in the past, and there is no reason to think that it would work in the future. Is there seniority? Is there someone with clout who can bang heads together? Is there someone for whom it is a very important part of their job, and who knows they will be held accountable? I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, that the Health Promotion Taskforce does seem to offer hope. Clarity on that—letting us know about its leadership, and the presenting to Parliament of an annual report for discussion—would allay many of our concerns. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I draw your attention to my interests: I am chair of ukactive, and I have a number of interests in this area. I also sat on the Lords Select Committee.

I too am not going to rehearse the arguments we gave in Committee, but all the names added to this amendment have been involved in this space for many years. We have all been through various iterations of this, and we should be talking about physical literacy and physical activity, and slightly less about sport. That might be surprising considering my background, but as the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, said, we have an obesity crisis and a generation of young people who are more likely to die before their parents, and there are a number of conditions that can be treated. Frankly, we have been tinkering at the edges of this for way too long. There have been programmes and lots of initiatives that have had some success, but if we are serious about the NHS and the health of the nation, we have to do things in a different way. I feel like I have been talking about this for about the last 30 years—the noble Lord has had a slightly longer time in sport than I have—but I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response in order to understand how we can genuinely make a change and stop going round in circles on this important issue.