National Health Service

Lord Harrison Excerpts

Thursday 14th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harrison (Lab)]

My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, I too will concentrate on diabetes, which absorbs 10% of the national budget—some £10 billion—which will inevitably grow as we move from the current figure of 3.5 million diabetics to some 5 million in 2025. We have epidemics of type 1 and type 2 diabetes. I report from the front; as a high-risk foot person with diabetes I attend a monthly podiatric clinic. Those lists are now being slimmed, including for diabetics. The clinic tells me that it is as worried as anything because future problems, which inevitably arise from diabetics with poor feet, will not be identified. Similarly, I stand here today because I benefit from the shoes that are made for me in Liverpool to protect my feet because of the neuropathy I have—I have no feeling in my feet. That enables me to stand here today and enables other people to be economically active. We must not contract these services, as is now happening, with delays falling upon delays.

Diabetes UK has identified that four out of 10 diabetics do not get the necessary care processes. It has identified that some 135 amputations as a result of diabetes take place every week, when four out of five of those amputations are preventable. What are the Government doing about that startling statistic? The Diabetes Think Tank also recognises that 95% of diabetic care is self-administered, and we should concentrate on this area. However, in January two years ago for some reason the Government gave up the Patient Experience of Diabetes Services survey, which had been so useful in analysing what diabetics felt about the services they received. I therefore invite the Minister, as I did when he first came in, to attend the Diabetes Think Tank, and I hope that he will be able to attend it. I commend what my noble friend Lord Turnberg said in introducing this debate, that there are enormous opportunities in sharing best practice with our colleagues within the European Union which we are about to neglect.

I finish on an optimistic note. When I was declared a diabetic in 1969, they said, “You’ll get a medal after 40 years if you survive that period”. I can now report that I have long been past the 40-year mark, but an 88 year-old type 1 diabetic has recently received the HG Wells medal—he was a diabetic—for surviving for 80 years.