Allergy Research and Treatments: Government Support

Debate between Gillian Keegan and Dan Poulter

Wednesday 9th March 2022 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Care and Mental Health (Gillian Keegan)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles. I thank the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) for securing this debate on this important issue and the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) for his comments. In my short few months in this role, we have already talked about this important topic on a number of occasions. I take it very seriously and I appreciate the tone in which this debate is taking place.

Allergies affect around 20 million people in the UK. Thankfully, most allergic reactions are mild and people can manage their symptoms effectively. However, for some people, as we heard from the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) when she spoke about her niece, management of allergies can be complex and reactions to allergens can be severe and cause much distress, and can even, sadly, be fatal on some occasions.

For people living with allergies, everyday activities can be challenging and navigating the world can be an anxious experience. The Government recognise the challenges faced by people with allergies and are committed to ensuring that all children and adults living with allergies are well supported.

As has been mentioned, investing in research is a key component in supporting people living with allergies. It plays a vital role in providing those working in the NHS, public health and social care with the evidence they need to better support parents and families, and supports access to pioneering treatment, diagnostics and services.

The Department of Health and Social Care funds research through the National Institute for Health Research. In the past five years we have provided the NIHR with over £14.1 million in funding for research into allergies. We would welcome funding applications for research into allergies, including potentially into more unusual types of allergies, as more funding is available but on an application basis. There has been a wide breadth of research across the life course on a range of allergic conditions, from hay fever, eczema and allergic or atopic asthma, to food and drug allergies, which can cause severe anaphylaxis, as has been mentioned.

In addition to directly funded projects into allergies, the NIHR clinical research network also supported the recruitment of participants into 79 studies of allergies over the past five years. In 2020-21 alone, the NIHR biomedical research centres had 56 active projects related to allergies, and those projects can make a real difference to people’s lives.

One trial of a new peanut oral immunotherapy treatment in children showed a high rate of desensitisation, with many of the participants able to consume a very small quantity of peanuts following the treatment. The families involved in the trial said that oral immunotherapy had transformed their lives, reducing anxiety and allowing them more freedom in terms of food choice.

Further research is being carried out into the effectiveness and safety of immunotherapy to see whether it can be used to help others. For example, there is a project looking at peanut oral immunotherapy in adults and another investigating cow’s milk oral immunotherapy in babies. I know those will be welcomed by many people. I am very much struck by the stories of Monty and Arlo, which I took to heart, and by the anxiety felt by the children having to deal with this on a daily basis. I am also struck by the maturity with which they both approached it.

In terms of new treatments, in December last year NHS England announced that children in England will be the first in Europe to receive Palforzia, a life-changing treatment for peanut allergies, after NHS England secured the first deal of its kind in Europe. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence published its final guidance on Palforzia in February 2022, so it is very recent. Up to 600 children aged four to 17 are expected to benefit from the treatment this year, with that number rising to as many as 2,000 in 2023.

It is important that, while we continue to look for treatments, we also consider how best we can support families living with allergies.

[Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the advances in allergy treatment. I congratulate the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) on securing this debate and the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) on his work in this area over a number of years.

May I push the Minister on one point? The key challenge for many families is access to diagnostics and the link between primary and secondary care. As well as highlighting many of the successes, will she outline what more can be done to improve timely access to diagnostics for families?

[Gillian Keegan]

I appreciate my hon. Friend’s intervention and will go directly to that point. General practitioners are responsible for ensuring that their own clinical knowledge remains up to date and for identifying learning needs as part of their continuing professional development. I am sure he is aware of that. That activity should include taking into account new research and developments in guidance. All doctors are expected to meet those standards, and the Royal College of General Practitioners has developed an allergy e-learning online resource to support continuing professional development and revalidation, which aims to educate GPs about the various presentations of allergic disease to aid with diagnosis. We appreciate that that has to go through a large number of GPs.

I was talking about families living with allergies. Other NIHR-funded research at the University of East Anglia is developing a psychological toolkit that aims to help parents to learn skills to manage their own anxiety around their child’s food allergy, as well as addressing children’s anxiety. We know that people with allergies are often advised to avoid the substance that they are allergic to, but we also know that that is not always easy or practical, and we have seen tragic examples of where that has not been the case—indeed, Natasha was mentioned. The Government are taking steps to protect those with allergies and intolerances. That includes the introduction of Natasha’s law, named after that sad case, which came into force on 1 October 2021, making it a legal requirement for all food retailers and operators to display full ingredient and allergen labelling information on every food item they sell that is pre-packed for direct sale.

Additionally, food hypersensitivity, which includes food allergies, is a strategic priority for the Food Standards Agency. As an evidence-based organisation, the FSA has been at the forefront of world-leading research, which has had a significant impact on our understanding of food. The FSA is currently undertaking a programme of work to improve the quality of life for people living with food hypersensitivity and provide support to make safe, informed food choices to effectively manage risk. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency is also planning next steps to support the wider availability of adrenalin auto-injectors in public spaces. We have had debates on that here as well. That is a medicine used for the emergency treatment of severe acute allergic reactions. We know there is more to consider about how we might protect people further.

I know that this issue matters to many Members, and to many constituents. I thank all hon. Members for the points they have made and the continued discussion we have had on this topic. I hope they will accept that real progress is being made. I hope I have been able to assure them that we will continue to support people living with allergies through NIHR research and exploring and investing in new treatments. With the engagement and involvement of patients and the public across the country, I hope we can improve the lives and outcomes for everyone living with allergies and their families.

Question put and agreed to.

NHS Efficiency

Debate between Gillian Keegan and Dan Poulter

Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Care and Mental Health (Gillian Keegan)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary.

I welcome the idea and the timeliness of this debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Paul Bristow) has raised an important issue, and I know many hon. Members present have great experience of various parts of the NHS, including my hon. Friends the Members for Watford (Dean Russell), for Bosworth (Dr Evans) and for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter). I thank them for their contributions to the debate.

We all have a responsibility to taxpayers to make sure that the NHS uses its resources as effectively as possible. To do that, we need to ensure that productivity grows every year, which is why the NHS long-term plan includes financial test 2:

“The NHS will achieve cash-releasing productivity growth of at least 1.1% per year.”

I make it clear that increasing productivity does not mean making staff work harder or making cuts. It means getting the most out of every £1 the NHS spends, and making sure that as much as possible is spent on frontline care. It means doctors and nurses doing the tasks they are trained to do and that nobody else can do. It means buying the right drugs at the right price. It means more patients getting the right treatment in the right place at the right time. That is good for patients, good for clinicians and good for the taxpayer.

Thanks to the hard work and innovative mindset of many NHS staff, the NHS is regularly recognised as one of the world’s most efficient health systems, although I take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Watford that there are different ways of measuring efficiency globally. In fact, in the decade before the pandemic, productivity growth in the NHS was faster than in the wider economy, as was independently verified by the Office for National Statistics.

Furthermore, the UK spends only around 2% of healthcare expenditure on administration—we spend a lot on the NHS, but only 2% of it on administration—and managers make up only 2.6% of the NHS workforce of 1.35 million. They might be an easy target for criticism, but good managers are of course essential to making services work, and many of us will have had experience of that throughout our various careers. If there were no managers, clinicians would have to manage their own workforce, logistics, finances and websites, and spend less time with patients. None the less, we want to improve the quality of management further, which is why we have asked General Sir Gordon Messenger to lead a review of leadership in health and social care.

[Dr Poulter]

I refer to my earlier declaration about my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as a practising NHS doctor. On the point that the Minister just made, of course we want to promote clinical leadership in the NHS in senior management positions, because we know that that benefits patients and leads to efficiencies, but we also need to consider the fact that although there are many good NHS managers, a lot of them have never had experience of life outside the NHS. I wonder whether my hon. Friend the Minister could briefly say how we can draw in better business experience and other experience, so that NHS managers have broader experience, and can bring that benefit to the NHS and drive efficiencies.