NHS: Patients with Allergies

Lord Kamall Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsey of Wall Heath, for securing this important debate, as well as for having some discussions before the debate so that I could better understand the issue. I am also grateful to the House of Lords Library for its briefing and to others who have sent briefings.

The noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, spoke passionately about their personal experiences as parents, and especially about the care that patients with allergies receive during the transition from childhood to being considered adults. I myself know family members whose children decided to go to a local university rather than go elsewhere because they knew that their local hospital had the best treatment and were not sure what the treatment would be like if they moved to another university town. Other noble Lords have alluded to a postcode lottery.

The noble Lord, Lord Scriven, said that such stories bring the statistics to life, but it is really important for us to talk about numbers. I read one report, I think by ITN, which said that 44% of adults in the UK have at least one allergy, but that includes asthma; other noble Lords have said it is one in three. Whatever the figure, it is far too high. We have seen, as the medical journal the Lancet has found, that the rate of food allergies has increased over the past decade. The noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, also mentioned that.

Plenty of those with allergies can continue to live normal lives, but there are an ever-increasing number of people whose allergies are debilitating. They cannot eat certain foods, and they are unable to use certain medications. They must constantly scan the list of ingredients of the food they wish to eat, either by reading the small print on labels or accessing companies’ or third-party websites, or, as the noble Baroness, Lady Keeley, said, they have to pay more for gluten-free or other foods according to their dietary requirements.

This may seem obvious, but food is one of humankind’s basic needs. It is an integral part of our daily lives, and so it is only right that we take the necessary steps to help those with allergies. It was reassuring to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, about the advice that was in her hotel room should you encounter someone suffering a severe allergic reaction. The question is how we spread that from hotel rooms to schools and more places.

The noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, and the noble Baroness, Lady Keeley, spoke about the sad story of Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, who tragically died in 2019 due to anaphylactic shock. Her case led to the so-called Natasha’s law, requiring all foods to carry a list of ingredients. I am proud, and I am sure that noble Lords are grateful, that swift action was taken by the previous Government. Indeed, it is a measure that has since helped countless sufferers of allergies to understand the food that they are consuming and the harms that they may cause.

We know, however, that more needs to be done. It is therefore welcome that the new Government are developing an allergy strategy. But what of the National Health Service’s role? As noble Lords will be aware, before the general election, Allergy UK published a list of steps that it wanted the new Government to take. As the noble Baroness, Lady Healy, has said, one proposal was that there should be an allergen specialist or dietician at the primary care level—the rationale behind this being that it would allow those with allergies to access specialised care, no matter where they may live. This seems a common-sense proposal, since it would enable those living with serious allergies to seek help with managing their allergies early in the process of diagnosis so that they can have a better quality of life and are not unnecessarily constrained by their allergies.

Noble Lords will also understand that there are resource constraints and that the Government of the day have to consider carefully where they allocate taxpayers’ money, given competing demands. I want to reassure the Minister that I understand from my time as a Minister the difficulties due to resource constraints and, sometimes, the practicalities of implementation, but that does not stop noble Lords asking the questions. Is this a policy idea that has been discussed within her department and with the NHS to work out its feasibility? I would be grateful for her assurances.

Like other noble Lords, I too wonder what more can be done within existing NHS structures. Some of the information is there, but how do we spread it nationally from ICB to ICB? How do we get it into schools? How do we get it beyond the hotel rooms? How do we make more people aware, so that when it is announced on a flight that nuts will not be served on a flight because someone has an allergy we avoid the collective groan and hear more understanding of those who suffer from these conditions?

Can the Minister explain what plans there are for all clinicians, including in primary care, secondary care and accident and emergency departments, as well as for other hospital employees, to be suitably trained and made aware of how to deal with patients who have serious allergies, as the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, alluded to? Has any thought been given to an allergy tsar, as the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, mentioned? What safeguards are in place to ensure that no one with allergies slips through the net and is administered medication that contains ingredients they should not take? The noble Baroness, Lady Keeley, and the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, spoke about preventative strategies. What explicit preventative strategies are the Government and the NHS considering?

I know that all noble Lords are grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsey of Wall Heath, for securing this important debate and we look forward to the Minister’s responses.