Diabetes: Tailored Prevention Messaging

Debate between Keith Vaz and Paul Girvan

Thursday 24th October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Keith Vaz]

I say yes to the hon. Gentleman on all those points—I agree with them all. I will come to the sugar tax later, but I can take a chunk out of my speech by saying that I agree with all those six points. His shopping list is fine with me, and I will happily copy it.

However, campaigns are extremely important. Very soon, we will have World Diabetes Day. Diabetes UK writes to everyone, asking them to turn buildings in their constituency blue. That is in just 26 days’ time. As chair of the APPG, I have written to mayors across the country, asking them to turn their landmark buildings blue. I ask the Minister to turn the Department of Health and Social Care blue on the outside—it may well be blue on the inside—on World Diabetes Day. I say to the hon. Member for Strangford that he should turn the Castle Ward or the statue of St Patrick blue in his constituency to raise awareness. Of course, one day we will have a statue to the hon. Gentleman himself in Strangford, next to the one of Jamie Vardy, and we will turn them both blue.

We in the all-party parliamentary group, of which we have so many members here—one could call them the usual suspects, but I call them the all-stars—meet every month. We produce reports, one of the most important of which is on mental health and diabetes, something that diabetics are simply not aware of when they get diabetes. I certainly was not aware of it. Support for mental health and wellbeing is critically important to people who have type 2 diabetes. It is an ongoing thing; people do not know why they have depression or why their lifestyle has changed, but it is to do with diabetes. I pay tribute to Diabetes UK, to Chris Askew, and to Nycolle Diniz for the work she does for the APPG.

It is not only specialist nurses who can help us, but other professionals, such as pharmacists. Everyone knows that pharmacies and pharmacists have great expertise in diabetes. My mum—I go back to talking about my mum—could spend more time with her pharmacist in Evington in Leicester talking about her condition than she ever did with her doctor. Maybe the Government should run the awareness campaigns through the pharmacies. That would mean reducing the money going to the doctors a little, and they will quaff around and complain—but if we fund pharmacies to do the testing, we will save so much money in the end. Pharmacists such as our APPG ambassador, Jimmy Desai in Ilford, have done an amazing job. Let us empower them to do things.

The third pillar is prevention, which we have all talked about, and reversal if possible. The hon. Member for Strangford has changed in terms of his weight; we have heard from people such as Dr David Unwin, another of our ambassadors at the all-party parliamentary group, that around 60% of cases of type 2 diabetes can be delayed or prevented by making those lifestyle changes and having a healthy, balanced diet.

At the Health Hub in Doha, which I recommend the Minister visits—although obviously not if there is a crucial vote, as the Government will need her here; I am happy to pair with her and we can go together—if a doctor says, “You are borderline diabetic,” they do not give the patient tablets. Rather, they say, “Here is a prescription to go to the gym downstairs. Start doing your gym work, and don’t see me again until you get your lifestyle sorted out,” because lifestyle makes a great deal of difference. Some of us have our watches connected to our phones—I do not know whether my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Sir George Howarth) does—so we know about our steps. I very rarely hit 10,000, but at least there is a willingness to try to do more exercise, and walking round the Palace is a way to make sure we do that.

As we have heard, obesity is a killer. Obesity-related conditions cost the NHS—cost the Minister—£6.1 billion a year. I adopt as my own the shopping list of the hon. Member for Strangford: the six things he has asked for, from the watershed to multiple offers in supermarkets. We should all do that and say, “Let’s do it.” The private sector has done its bit. Kellogg’s has put traffic light labelling on most of its cereal packs sold in the United Kingdom since 2018—well done to it!

[Paul Girvan]

On food and how manufacturers can help, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that much of the focus is on sugar, and little is on carbs, which normally convert to sugar in the body? With the Dose Adjustment For Normal Eating—DAFNE—programme, instead of counting sugar, people count carbs. It is really only for type 1 diabetics, but it helps them administer their insulin according to the carbs they have eaten during the day.

[Keith Vaz]

That is extremely important. I support the DAFNE programme and the work being done on the conversion to sugar. That brings me on to the sugar tax—a great achievement of the previous Government. All praise to George Osborne for introducing it.