Deprived Areas

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, clinical validation is, at its heart, about adapting to the need to manage larger and longer waiting lists and tackle those. Patients will be treated in order of clinical priority and then by length of wait to reduce the harm by waiting. But I reassure the noble Lord that his point is very well made and that, in the NHS recovery plan, there are eight actions to reduce inequalities in the restoration of services, including reporting on providing services to the poorest 20% of neighbourhoods and black and Asian patients.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

Was my noble friend rather surprised that she had to get to page 94 of the summary before there was any mention of obesity as a cause of inequalities in health, given that it is one of the major things that both undermines health over time and has exacerbated susceptibility to mortality from Covid?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, being somewhat familiar with Professor Marmot’s work, I know it is incredibly wide-ranging and looks at a huge number of the determinants of health. But my noble friend is absolutely right that obesity is a big part of our health agenda, which is why the Government have set out a number of areas where we will take further action to support people to reduce levels of obesity across the country.