Diabetes: Artificial Pancreas

Debate between Keith Vaz and Liz McInnes

Wednesday 12th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is an honour to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth), who has been an hon. Friend for almost 30 years and is a great champion for those with diabetes, in particular type 1 diabetes.

I declare an interest, as a type 2 bordering on type 1 diabetic. The usual suspects are here, including my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who has popped out but I know will be back. The Government Benches are empty, apart from the Minister and the Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty’s Treasury, the hon. Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), because Conservative Members are listening to the most famous type 1 diabetic in the world, if we discount Halle Berry and Mary Tyler Moore. I admire so much the way in which the Prime Minister does her job, with all the demands on her, as a type 1 diabetic—we do not even notice, and that is because of the technology that has been developed and the way in which she conducts herself.

[Liz McInnes]

Among the most famous type 1 diabetics, we must not forget Sir Steven Redgrave, the Olympic rower.

[Keith Vaz]

Indeed. Before anyone else jumps up with another name, I include all diabetics in what I am saying.

The Prime Minister and others such as myself talk about diabetes, and we are not cowering in corners; we are debating it openly. Because of technological advances, we are able to do our jobs and continue with our lives in a way that was not possible when diabetes was first discovered 100 years or so ago.

The first artificial pancreas, which was developed by Sir George Alberti through funding from Diabetes UK, was the size of a filing cabinet. Madam Deputy Speaker, can you imagine walking around with an artificial pancreas of that size? We should always acknowledge the research and innovation of which my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley spoke and the power of science to change people’s lives.

I want to give a few examples from my own city of Leicester of the work that has been done on diabetes. There is the work done by Professor Kamlesh Khunti and Melanie Davies of the University of Leicester; my own general practitioner, Professor Azhar Farooqi, who diagnosed me with diabetes—had I not been diagnosed, I might not be standing here today, because I did not know what the symptoms were—and Professor Joan Taylor from De Montfort University, who began developing her own version of the artificial pancreas.

It was very interesting to learn from my right hon. Friend’s speech about all the other clever people—probably much cleverer than all of us here—who have been able to develop their own artificial pancreas. Not all of them will be able to fly, so to speak, but it is amazing that people are putting their minds to it, and Professor Joan Taylor at De Montfort has done the same. There is also Professor Hovorka of Cambridge University who, like George Alberti, was funded by Diabetes UK in developing the artificial pancreas. These people deserve our respect and admiration for what they do, because they spend day after day trying to make the medical breakthrough that will help people and save so many lives. I want to thank them for what they have done, because their work has enabled us to get to the position we are in today.

There are also the private companies. Members do of course criticise, as we are entitled to do, the profits made by drugs companies. The Minister will know because she has to sign the cheques—perhaps she does not sign the cheques, but she sends them to the Treasury to get them signed—when the bills come through for the artificial pancreases and the metformins or Glucophages and all the other things that we take. The cost has gone up and there is no doubt that the drugs companies do make very big profits, but they should be commended for putting back so much of their profits into research and development. That is something that the Government cannot do, but it is something that those companies do every single day.

In acknowledging the huge cost of drugs, we also have to acknowledge what companies such as Novo Nordisk do. I declare an interest in relation to Novo Nordisk, because it has worked with the all-party group on diabetes, which I chair, for a number of years. Roche Diabetes Care is another such company, and there are many more. There are so many of them that I cannot name them all, but they have all been involved, and they will all invest and research until the breakthrough comes.

We know from FreeStyle Libre what Abbott has done. I remember the former Prime Minister—it is of course based in David Cameron’s old constituency—telling me five years ago about Abbott and the work it was doing on FreeStyle Libre. Now, thanks to the decision of Ministers, FreeStyle Libre is available, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley has said. That is why, when we have that breakthrough, it is vital that such a facility and such equipment is available to all, irrespective of where they live.

We did not have access to FreeStyle Libre in Leicester, even though we have so many experts at Leicester University and De Montfort, until the decision taken by the Government. Actually, we will not get access to it until next April, so my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) and others will have constituents who still want to get FreeStyle Libre, but cannot do so. We do not want that to happen for those who need pumps and artificial pancreases, because it is vital that they get such equipment straightaway. If they do not, it will affect their lives.

What my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley said about wellbeing or mental health and diabetes was interesting. That is something that people very rarely recognise, and I have only myself recognised it, having been a sufferer, in for the past two years or so. They do not actually know it because they think it is part of their condition. For type 1 diabetics, it is even worse. We can just have our pills—I take six in the morning and three at night; some people take more—but the fact is that they live with the injection of insulin for this condition for the rest of their lives.

The deputy leader of the Labour party, my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Tom Watson)—obviously, he is not in his place today, because he has other things to do—has reversed his type 2 diabetes. Anyone who sees him in the Division Lobbies will know that he looks a completely different man from the person I knew when I voted for him to be the deputy leader, because he has adopted the Pioppi diet and changed his lifestyle. He does all the things that I do not, because I do not manage my diabetes particularly well. However, people cannot do that with type 1—it is with them forever. The right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning), who obviously has gone to Committee Room 14, mentioned that there is that fundamental difference. Sometimes when we talk about the thousands —or the millions, now—who have type 2 diabetes as opposed to type 1, we talk about people changing their lifestyle, their diet or their wellbeing, but that does not apply to the type 1s.

Diabetes

Debate between Keith Vaz and Liz McInnes

Monday 26th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to talk about this very important health issue. I should first declare an interest as an active member of the all-party parliamentary group on diabetes, ably chaired and led by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz).

We have come a long way with the treatment of diabetes since 1921, when Banting and Best isolated insulin from dog pancreases, and then, working with Scottish physiologist J. J. R. MacLeod, purified a form of insulin that was suitable for human treatment from cows’ pancreases. This was at the time, and remains, a major scientific and Nobel-prize winning breakthrough. Before insulin therapy was discovered, diabetes was a deadly illness. The first medical success was with a boy with type 1 diabetes—14-year-old Leonard Thompson, who was successfully treated in 1922. Close to death before treatment, Leonard bounced back to life when treated with insulin.

Now, almost 100 years later, we understand a lot more about diabetes. We are able to explain the difference between type 1, an autoimmune disorder that is treatable by insulin; and type 2, insulin resistance or insufficiency, much more influenced by other health factors such as obesity and physical inactivity. We also know that a diagnosis of diabetes is no longer a death sentence. Nevertheless, diabetes remains a serious illness that affects 4.5 million people in the UK.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on all the excellent work she does as vice-chair of the all-party group on diabetes. She mentioned those who have diabetes, but there are still about half a million people who have type 2, as I do, but do not know that they have it. Does she agree that prevention is the most important thing that we can do to try to help those who have type 2 but are not aware that they have it?

[Liz McInnes]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. I think he must have read my speech, because I will be talking about the prevention of type 2 diabetes, and how important it is that we are aware of that and also make the population aware of the measures they can take.

There are more people living with diabetes in the UK than with any other serious health condition—more than dementia and cancer combined. The complications of diabetes are many. They include eye, foot and skin complications; anxiety and depression; hearing loss; gum disease; neuropathy; infections; slow wound healing; strokes; heart failure; heart attacks; lower limb amputations; renal problems; and early death.