Lyme Disease

Baroness Parminter Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for calling this important debate. It is clear that cases of Lyme disease are increasing across Europe. As someone who, like the noble Lord, Lord Trees, is passionate about the countryside and encourages people to go out and enjoy it, I think we need to address the problems that this disease is causing but in a way that does not stop people going out and getting the health-giving benefits of being in the countryside. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is right to focus on the need for better understanding of the level of the disease, as many noble Lords have said, on the necessary improvements in diagnosis and testing, and on the critical importance of some speed in getting clear guidance for our health professionals.

I come to this debate today, with the short time allotted to us, to make one point, which was first raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Drake: the need for far better public awareness of this issue. In looking into the research for this debate over the weekend, I was at the same time packing my eldest daughter’s kitbag for her Duke of Edinburgh award. She was off to the South Downs. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, I was looking at the lists of where the most infected ticks are: it is not just North Yorkshire but also the South Downs. I asked my daughter, as we were packing an increasingly large amount of kit into her bag, what she would do if she encountered a tick. My daughter is a fairly intelligent 15 year-old but she had no idea what to do. I asked her whether they had talked about it in her D of E training but they had not. When I went back through the information that I had been sent—you get voluminous lists of kit that you as a parent need to provide—there was nothing about ticks. We were sending off these girls for two nights and three days on the South Downs, and not one of them would have known what to do.

The great thing about the Duke of Edinburgh scheme is that it gets our children out into the countryside and teaches them great skills of leadership; it is growing, which means more children are taking part, and that is to be encouraged. However, it is quite clear that it has no engagement with a fundamental problem that these young adults, who are going to be the young parents and young leaders of the future, might encounter. It strikes me that we need to address that, and I urgently ask the Minister to talk to Public Health England about what it is doing to encourage greater public awareness, looking particularly at organisations. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, mentioned organisations such as Ramblers; I would add the Duke of Edinburgh scheme, given the number of children going out into areas that might be affected.

It amazed me, when I was looking through the fantastic pack that the Library has provided, to find that there is the Big Tick campaign. I thought, “Fantastic! Someone is doing something”—and it is the vets. They have a high-profile celebrity, Chris Packham; they have a very good website; and they have resources going out to the veterinary profession that are then being cascaded down to pet owners, telling them all about the dangers. There is nothing with an equivalent status for parents. So while I applaud the work of LDA, which does a good job on very limited charitable resources, it is time, given the scale of this problem, that we did more on this subject and had far better public awareness.