Oral Answers to Questions

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jane Ellison]

My hon. Friend raises an extremely important issue. I welcome the fact that she has so quickly got to grips with some of the key local health facts in her area. Hon. Members across the House can look at how their clinical commissioning group is performing in the national context. My hon. Friend is right to say that her CCG performs poorly when it comes to amputations. There is a huge opportunity for improving the outcomes for people if we can get the worst-performing CCGs in that context up to the standard of the best. The national diabetes prevention programme is very much about preventing people getting to the stage where those complications can cause such terrible problems.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

13. May I join the Minister in congratulating the hon. Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes) on her place in this House? She was a worthy opponent of mine in 2005 and I am glad she managed to get elected. On the national diabetes prevention programme, for those of us who have diabetes the issue is what is corporate Britain doing to work with the Government in order to reduce the amount of sugar and fat in food and drink? Unless we do that, we cannot tackle the diabetes crisis that we will face.

[Jane Ellison]

The right hon. Gentleman is quite right. Tackling obesity is one the great public health challenges of our age. Right across the developed world we are looking at all the things that are going on around the world—the new science and the new research. The right hon. Gentleman is right to say that industry has a role to play, as has every part of Government—national Government and local government—as well as families, GPs and the NHS. This will be a whole-nation approach to tackling obesity. We are working on our plans, which I look forward to discussing with him in due course.