Diabetic Prevention Programme

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, further to my noble friend Lord Brooke’s Question about the drop-out rate and his suggestion of an independent review, what mechanism is there for assessing courses that clearly are not as successful as they might be if there is such a high drop-out rate?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The point is about what we learn. For example, some noble Lords will have seen stories about the impact of minimum alcohol pricing in Scotland. Clearly, it did not turn out as intended because the review found that people from poor communities were spending more on alcohol, rather than the alcoholism rate being affected. In this case, we have learned that the nine-month programme and some of the other processes behind it clearly lead to a drop-out rate. We are looking at other programmes. One of the great stories we have seen is the use of digital and other forms of access. If we can roll that out as well with community programmes, it might be a better way of doing things.