Botulinum Toxin and Cosmetic Fillers (Children) Bill

Lord Addington Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, this is one of those debates where it is very difficult to find somebody who disagrees with the central thrust of what is proposed. The main thing we can say is, why on earth was this not done earlier? I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Wyld, will accept my congratulations and pass them on to everybody who worked on this Bill in the other place, and to all those who did the prior spadework. This should have happened already. We are patching up a hole here, not dealing with some new problem. The noble Baroness, Lady Bull, described very well—much better than I could—the pressure of social media.

This is not new. When I first came here all those years ago, we were talking about photoshopping images in magazines. However, it is more intense now. It is also not an exclusively female problem. The body image issue generally affects both sexes, but due to fashion, it affects girls predominantly. Can we please make sure that we keep this under review? The Government should be doing more of this—but they should be doing more of many things. I therefore hope that the House and indeed Parliament as a whole will keep an eye on what is going on here.

I had one or two other points to make but my noble friend Lady Walmsley—I am very glad to be on the same team as her—did an excellent job of saying everything I was going to say, and more succinctly.

I conclude by asking the Minister to make sure when he sums up that we get an idea of the Government’s overview of this subject. Can he confirm that where these procedures are needed for a medical problem, whether physical or psychological, they will still be available? Their unavailability is the only conceivable objection I can see to this measure being adopted.

I hope that we will all give this Bill a great round of applause—a metaphorical one—so that it gets through quickly, because it will make life a little bit safer and better for people. Even if such a botched procedure is only temporary, that still involves more trauma, which will add to any problems that made the person go there in the first place.