Health and Social Care: Malnutrition

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Aberdare]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the prevalence and impact of malnutrition among people in health and social care settings; and what steps they are taking to prevent it.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford) (Con)]

My Lords, malnutrition is a common clinical health problem affecting all ages and all health and care settings. The Government are committed to better screening for malnutrition and improved food standards in hospitals. Hospitals and care homes must screen people for malnutrition on admission and meet high standards of nutrition care. We have announced a root and branch review of hospital food to ensure that patients receive the right nutrition and hydration.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for that response. Even here in the UK, malnutrition is shockingly underrecognised and undertreated. Some 3 million people live with malnutrition, including one in 10 older people. One in six patients admitted to hospital, and about 40% of those entering care homes, are malnourished or at risk. Disease-related malnutrition is estimated to cost over £20 billion a year. What steps will the Government take to improve identification and treatment of malnutrition, not just by promoting screening in care homes and GP surgeries, which I very much welcome, but also by improving the training of GPs and other health professionals on this issue?

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

The noble Lord is absolutely right that this is an issue which is on the rise. The causes are complex and can be clinical, social or economic, but we are committed to improving this situation. That is why we have brought in the hospital food review, to ensure the safety of the food available for patients, visitors and staff, but also to look at how we can provide the highest level of care possible for patients, which includes the quality and nutritional value of the food served to them. The review will also look at the best possible methods of screening and training staff.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, when thinking about what to say today about last week’s gracious manifesto, I found myself facing two challenges. The first was how to address commitments that seem unlikely to be implemented before another Queen’s Speech following a general election. The second was that the Speech itself had little to say about two of the three issues I wish to cover. A third challenge is that most of what I want to say has already been said, more eloquently and better, by other noble Lords.

The first issue is education and skills. The Speech states that:

“Ministers will ensure that all young people have access to an excellent education, unlocking their full potential and preparing them for the world of work”.


It is hard to argue with that. The extra £400 million promised to further education is welcome, but it will hardly make up for years of underfunding. FE funding has declined by 30% over the past 10 years, at a time when colleges’ role in skills training is more important than ever, with the additional challenge of delivering T-levels.

The Education Secretary promised at the Conservative Party Conference,

“to give my all to make technical and vocational education the first choice for anybody with the aptitude, desire and interest to pursue it”.

T-levels should be central to that laudable aim, as should apprenticeships, which were not mentioned in the Speech. I hope that the Minister will be able to say rather more about exactly how the Government’s strategy will achieve this aim beyond providing extra funds and stating ambitious goals that no one could disagree with. For example, will they continue to support and extend the careers strategy led by the Careers & Enterprise Company and already showing encouraging results since its launch in 2017? What action will they take on the FE and technical education recommendations of the Augar review? How will they engage employers, including SMEs, both in expanding and improving apprenticeships and in meeting a greatly increased need for work experience?

My second topic concerns the creative sector. Your Lordships may be tired of being reminded that the creative industries make up one of the largest sectors in the UK economy, although perhaps not quite as large as tourism, as well as being the fastest growing, but the conditions that have made this success possible need to be safeguarded, including in relation to music, freedom of movement and a strong music education system, as powerfully argued by my noble friends Lady Bull and Lord Berkeley of Knighton. How will the Government ensure that UK musicians will still be able to travel, tour and perform abroad after Brexit without prohibitive costs and bureaucracy, while at the same time we can continue to attract top musical talent into the UK?

What are the Government’s plans for the future of the national plan for music education, launched in 2012 with the aims of giving all schoolchildren opportunities to experience and take part in music and singing? This was a notable achievement, but it needs to be refreshed. The current funding for music education hubs runs out next March. It should be renewed and increased to a more realistic level, and the effectiveness of the plan’s delivery should be reviewed to ensure that all children benefit, so that the risk of a two-tier music education culture, described by my noble friend Lord Berkeley, is avoided.

Last week, the Durham Commission on Creativity in Education published its report emphasising the urgent need for the teaching of creativity in schools to be prioritised, not just for the benefit of the arts but for all disciplines. I hope that the Minister and her colleagues will look closely at its recommendations, including for the establishment of a funded national plan for cultural education.

I will comment finally on broadband access. The Government promise to:

“Roll out gigabit capable broadband across the UK”,


and have pledged £5 billion to support this goal in the hardest to reach 20% of the country. But with a home on a hillside in rural Carmarthenshire, I count myself lucky to get broadband speeds of 10 megabits per second, if conditions are favourable and the oak trees across the valley are in the right alignment. I take the promise of 1,000 megabits with a pinch of salt and ask some questions. How much of the £5 billion will be used for developing new technologies to serve locations where a physical connection—for example, via fibre—is just not feasible? How will this UK-wide commitment apply to the devolved nations, including Wales, and how much of the funding will be allocated to them?

Thirdly, I am slightly puzzled by the lack of mention of mobile phone coverage. Will the Government look at enabling roaming in areas such as my own, where the number of providers with coverage is very limited? If you are not on the right network, you do not get any mobile phone coverage.

These issues may not have as much popular appeal as the NHS, crime and policing, social care, the environment and others addressed in the gracious Speech, but tackling all those requires resources. Skills, creativity and digital access are essential to generating those resources, so I hope they will be given due prominence in a Queen’s Speech from a Government able to implement their proposals.

Health: Cancer

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I absolutely recognise that it is a problem. As I said, we have increased the numbers of doctors in a range of specialties. Pathology has been a challenge, it must be said. There are two answers: the first is to continue to recruit more people, either domestically or internationally. The second refers to the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, made: we are determined to utterly transform this service through technology while also delivering better results.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest cancers. One in four sufferers survives for less than a month after diagnosis, and only 7% survive for five years. What is more, the outcomes have hardly improved in the last 40 years. Will the Minister join me in welcoming the Demand Faster Treatment campaign led by Pancreatic Cancer UK, whose ambition is that by 2024 people with pancreatic cancer will be treated within 20 days of diagnosis? Will he assure the House that the Government will play a leading part in helping to achieve that goal? I declare my interest as an officer of the Pancreatic Cancer All-Party Group.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The noble Lord is quite right. We have seen incredible improvements in outcomes for some cancers, whereas others, pancreatic cancer among them just, have not seen improved survival rates. We need to do a lot more, and part of that is early diagnosis. I understand that while pancreatic cancer becomes symptomatic in the last six months of a person’s life, it can be in the body for up to 14 years, so making that early diagnosis and using new technology such as liquid biopsies will help us achieve that noble goal.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, it is pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, especially as, unlike some of her colleagues, she has not pre-empted many of my own remarks.

I shall focus on skills and the creative industries. The success of Brexit will depend on the competitiveness of UK business in global markets, which in turn requires access to talent and skills and capitalising on our world-class strengths in sectors such as the creative industries.

I welcome the Government’s commitment to creating a world-class technical education system, building on the generally admirable Technical and Further Education Act passed in the last Session. It is high time for the disparity of esteem between academic and technical education to be finally laid to rest, so that teachers, parents and young people themselves recognise that technical education routes offer opportunities at least as rewarding and valuable as academic ones. That might also help to address the education divide, so thoughtfully described earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell.

The gracious Speech makes little mention of apprenticeships, but I was reassured by the Minister’s confirmation that the commitment to deliver 3 million new high-quality apprenticeship starts in England by 2020 has not changed, despite the rather surprising appointment of a new Skills Minister, Anne Milton MP, to replace Robert Halfon. I wish her success in progressing the new system for funding and managing apprenticeships, based on the apprenticeship levy, which was introduced in April, and the new Institute for Apprenticeships, and in ensuring that this actually delivers the enhanced skills that we need in terms of quality as well as quantity. I am particularly concerned that the vital role of independent training providers in delivering apprenticeships—over half of the total, I believe—should be properly recognised and supported.

The gracious Speech includes proposals for a new digital charter, aimed at making the UK the best place to start and run a digital business and the safest place in the world to be online. I hope that the first of these aims will include sufficient emphasis on enhancing digital skills. The Digital Skills Committee, on which I served, described this as a make or break issue for the UK and increasingly vital not just for digital businesses but in almost every field of activity. The noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, pointed out in a letter to the Times on Tuesday that the number of students taking GCSE computer science this year is still only 68,000, while a Commons report forecasts a shortfall of 750,000 digital technicians. I remain to be convinced that the scale of this challenge is adequately reflected in the measures outlined in the gracious Speech and supporting documents. I strongly endorse the call made by my noble friend Lord Kinnoull for improving the effectiveness of careers education.

One of the areas in which the UK has the potential to continue to excel is in the creative industries, which represent £87 billion of gross value added. It is one of the UK’s fastest growing sectors and accounts for almost 10% of our service exports. I share the view expressed by a number of noble Lords, including the noble Baronesses, Lady McIntosh and Lady Bonham-Carter, and the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, that the exclusion of creative subjects from the Government’s plans for the EBacc is perverse. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, mentioned the declining take-up of arts and creative subjects in schools, yet these subjects are included as a matter of course in the most successful schools, particularly in the independent sector, and businesses are crying out for skills in just these areas. There seems to be a real risk of pupils in disadvantaged areas missing out on arts and creative subjects, thereby reinforcing the concerns about the potential educational divide mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and others.

The creative sector, as we have heard, acts as a hub for global talent and depends significantly on overseas workers, not just to plug major skills gaps in the domestic workforce but to bring market insight into different territories where it competes. Twenty per cent of orchestral musicians in this country come from overseas. To support the continued success of the sector, a new immigration system should take account of issues such as the high proportion of freelancers in the creative industries workforce, the relatively low pay levels of many workers—below the current thresholds for entering and remaining in the UK—and the importance of touring for many arts organisations, such as orchestras.

For some creative sectors, such as broadcasting, market access is specifically dependent on membership of the EU single market, which enables it to offer services across the whole EU on the basis of just one licence from Ofcom. Some members of the EU Internal Market Committee went on a visit to Discovery Networks, which runs well over 100 broadcast channels from Chiswick, which may need to consider relocation from the UK, if it no longer has access to the market. It is not surprising that 96% of members of the Creative Industries Federation said that they wish to remain in the EU.

I hope the Government will succeed in retaining some degree of access to the EU single market, perhaps through membership of the EEA and/or EFTA, at least during a period of transition. Let me note also that it will be more important than ever after we leave the EU as a member to foster mutual understanding and partnerships with our closest neighbours through continuing to participate in EU programmes such as Creative Europe, Horizon 2020 and Erasmus+. Those issues are key to the Brexit aim of taking British values around the world and need to be at the forefront of the Government’s programme in this session, even during the ongoing process of negotiating Brexit.