Health Promotion Bill [HL]

Lord Hayward Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 2nd December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to support the Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Addington. It encapsulates the work of the committee of which a number of members have spoken today. I will introduce an element of dissent with the noble Earl, Lord Devon; he said he introduced a Devonian voice—I got there first. With that minor correction, I agreed with everything else he said.

The message has come loud and clear from a host of speakers that we need to tackle the issue of sport and exercise, not at the top level but at the lower level. This is encapsulated in Clause 1(3)(a), to

“identify and address health disparities”.

These health disparities were covered well in the report and touched on very clearly by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson. She identified that there is, in effect, a marked difference between male and female participation and a difference in terms of class—higher class levels clearly participate to a level that lower class levels do not. There is a massive deficit among the ethnic communities. It is probably the failing of our report that we do not address that well enough or recommend any solutions, because we really need to turn our minds to that group of people—the ones who do not participate in physical activity of any form.

While we have been debating this Bill, I think I am right in saying that seven groups of schoolchildren have come to listen. I wonder how many of them participate in any physical activity at all and how many will continue to do so after they leave school. For me, that is the key issue in terms of overall societal health.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, commented on media coverage. She is absolutely right that the coverage of our sport, whatever event it is, before and after the actual event involves discussions of people at a high level—what they did and what they are doing at that high level. There is no attempt to look at how they got there or how they started at some community level. They do not go back and say, “This is the pitch I played on and these are the people I now want to encourage.”

The contrast in this country is stark. I am an avid fan of viewing US college football. In the four or five hours every Saturday before the matches, a substantial segment is allocated to looking at people who have come from severely deprived communities and what they are putting back into them. I ask the media to look very seriously at how they cover sport, because it should be so much more inclusive. It would be better for all of us and better for society in general.

HIV and AIDS

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Wednesday 1st December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The Government have made more money available for the funds, particularly in helping young girls and young ladies in different countries. At the same time, we must work out what we can do, as donors or as an international community, to help address some of the structural inequalities in particular countries. We can name it, we can draw awareness to it, but how much deeper can we go? Quite often, one of the best ways to do this is to support the NGOs who are right at the heart of the community, understanding these issues and understanding the structural inequalities on a daily basis.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, following on from the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Collins, but bringing it to this country, there is still a general perception that HIV/AIDS is a gay disease. There is a growing proportion of the population that are infected who are heterosexual. Can my noble friend ensure that the messaging is directed at heterosexuals as well as the gay community?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for making that very important point and for stressing that this should be seen not just as a gay disease but as a disease that heterosexual and other people also suffer from. One of the issues in the HIV plan has been to ensure that those communities which maybe have a macho approach to a number of these issues are addressed, particularly at the local community level. It is very difficult, and we have to tread carefully, particularly with some of the ethnic minority communities, so that we are not seen to be stigmatising that community or blaming them but getting the right balance. The fundamental point that my noble friend makes is very important and we should repeat it: HIV does not affect only gay people—it also affects heterosexual people and younger communities.

Covid-19 Update

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Patel, for his description of affairs, which, as ever, is as thoughtful as we would hope. However, I clarify and disagree with him in that correlation and causation are not the same things. I chose my words extremely carefully: there is a correlation with higher transmissibility, but there is no evidence that this is caused by the variant; I want to be crystal clear about that. I pay tribute to colleagues at the Sanger and at COG, the genomics collective that is doing the work on tracking down the science of the new variant. Their insight is profound and they will be playing into the decisions about whether any judgment on the variant should play a role in the decisions about any future restrictions.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister accept what I deem to be the position in relation to the younger generation: that they are suffering from lockdown fatigue and are not responding to government messages? I suggest that, rather than having government Ministers and some scientists conveying the message of the importance of acting responsibly, they consider along with Jonathan Van-Tam somebody like Marcus Rashford, Rio Ferdinand or Harry Kane to convey the message that we are failing to get across? In association with that and the comments that have been made elsewhere, can the Minister tell us whether he has any information, in light of the FDA’s announcement, as to whether the Moderna vaccine will be recognised in this country in the near future?

[Lord Bethell (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I feel the point that my noble friend makes extremely personally. I am currently isolating with a 14 year-old; like many 14 year-olds, he and his friends never demonstrate any symptoms of Covid whatever and yet it would seem that they are carriers and vectors of the infection. The recent explosion in transmission in London and the south-east was led and probably caused by the 14 to 18-year-old age group, even though almost all of them are completely asymptomatic. We have worked with celebrities and opinion leaders in the youth groups to try to get this message across, but I point my noble friend to the announcement today of a very large increase in the use of asymptomatic testing in schools in the new year, as an indication of our commitment to ensuring that transmission among asymptomatic young people is contained.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Wearing of Face Coverings in a Relevant Place) (England) Regulations 2020

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Friday 18th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I start by giving credit to Government Ministers who, despite all the difficulties, have faced an enormous, moving task throughout the last months. It is not something we know clearly about, and, as has just been indicated, the science changes. I have sympathy with what the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, said, but equally, in these difficult circumstances the guidance is changing on a daily basis from one part of the world to another, as has just been indicated. We are discovering information about this pandemic from wherever it may happen to come, largely from university and medical centre research from all over the world.

As the Minister said, the regulations impose a duty—all regulations do—but they also send a message. The problem, as the noble Earl just identified, is that some are avoiding that duty and others are not receiving the message. I was interested in my noble friend the Minister’s use of the figure that 96% have used masks in shops. We can all phrase questions to get the answer we want. I suggest that the people doing those surveys should go to any supermarket or get on any bus in London, because the figures are nowhere near that. A businessman texted me this morning to say that it was a 30% failure rate. I would say that it is probably slightly less than that, but when I was coming in this morning the only person on the upper deck of the bus with me was not wearing a mask.

That comes the question of where the duty lies to apply the regulations. At the moment, the police have that duty. One of my neighbours is a night-time bus driver. He says that he would not dare attempt to apply it for fear of being beaten up, which one can well understand in inner-city London. However, he does not have the backing of the law in relation to the application. I believe that large shops and bus operators should be told that they must implement it and that they have the responsibility themselves. We cannot just ask the police to impose the regulations. I therefore ask for strict implementation in some places.

On the other hand, I note that my noble friend Lord Robathan is due to speak. His wife is the leader of Westminster Council. I was in Soho the other day, which is absolutely moving and alive. I suggest that some of those who operate the regulations in this House should visit to see how they are applied in Westminster. Having said that, I make one concluding observation: another part of the regulations would be that, in stress areas, people should be required to wear masks when walking on the streets alongside restaurants.