Health: Red Cell Folate

Lord Prior of Brampton Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the remarks by Lord Prior of Brampton on 21 December 2015 (HL Deb, col 2308), whether the letter from the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition gave any indication of how many women aged 16 to 49 in the United Kingdom met the recommendations from the World Health Organisation regarding red cell folate concentration.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Prior of Brampton) (Con)]

The advisory committee’s letter indicates that 14.5% of UK women of childbearing age met the new threshold for red cell folate concentration that has been recommended by the World Health Organization since April 2015. Ministers are reviewing the contents of the letter carefully. They plan to come forward with their response to the committee’s latest advice in due course.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for that Answer but he has just told the House that 85% of women of childbearing age in the United Kingdom failed to meet a major World Health Organization target. The letter says that UK levels are the same as those in the United States of America before fortification with folic acid. Following fortification, US women are now above the World Health Organization target, there have been fewer avoidable abortions, there have been fewer babies with a serious lifelong disability, and the USA is saving half a billion dollars in healthcare costs. The same story is repeated from Canada to South Africa and from Chile to Australia. Worryingly, the same letter says that blood folate levels have gone down so low, it looks like there has been a 25% increase in terminations in England and Wales in the past few years as a result of the current policy of advice only rather than fortification. I say to the Minister: none of the figures in that letter was new. They were known on 20 March last year. The House recesses on 23 March this year. Will we have a decision before we recess?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, the letter that the noble Lord refers to was received on 20 October last year, so we have had it for a little over three months. It is very important to make the point that it is not that the red cell folate levels of British women have gone down but that the threshold used by the WHO has gone up, from 340 nanomoles per litre to 906 nanomoles per litre. Nevertheless, the noble Lord makes a very strong point. He has made it before, in December. There is a lot of medical and scientific evidence on his side of the argument. There are other arguments that the Government are taking into account.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that, as I was told this morning by three neural disease specialists, the danger of overmedication with folic acid by fortification is absolutely minuscule—you cannot measure it? In addition, they suggested to me that it is vital that we reduce the number of babies with neural tube defects because, due to our success in the past in reducing the numbers, the specialists and services for such babies are very thin on the ground. We really need to do something about this now.

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, the danger of overmedication with folic acid is small, I accept that. It is not non-existent but it is small. Just so that the House knows the numbers, the number of babies aborted because of neural tube defects is about 400 a year; the number who are born with neural tube defects, alive or not alive, is about 60 a year. It is a very serious issue and one that the Government are taking extremely seriously, but we have to weigh that against the other issues of medicating the entire population.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, some of us have long memories that go back to 1991, when the MRC study into this issue had to be stopped early because the results were so overwhelmingly in favour of folic supplementation. The lead researcher on that study was Sir Nicholas Wald. More than 80 countries have taken very seriously those results and have taken on board fortification of white flour. In 2015 Sir Nicholas published a paper about the lost opportunity in the UK. Is it not a matter of profound regret, verging on shame, that in this country, where the initial research was done, we are now being told that there will be a decision “in due course”? If I remember correctly, the last time the Minister spoke about this, he said that it would be very early in the new year.

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, I think we are still quite early in the new year. I do not go back to 1991 but the noble Baroness is right: for many years now there has been a large body of scientific opinion in favour of increasing the uptake of folic acid. There is no dispute about that—I do not think there is much science to dispute. The issue is one of balancing the scientific and medical arguments with issues around choice and whether or not it is right to medicate the entire population for the benefit of a fairly small part of it.

[Lord Hughes of Woodside (Lab)]

My Lords, when the Minister says that other views have been taken into account, will he lay to rest today and for ever the idea that the Government will be swayed by those who say, spuriously and nonsensically, that this is mass medication?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

The proposal is that bread should be fortified with folic acid. The point of doing it through bread is that most people eat bread and that it would reach the widest number of people. It would be fortifying a product that most people eat; that is the purpose of it.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, is the Minister really saying that adding a very small amount to flour is mass medication; is that not overdoing it? I say to him, as I said on 21 December: can Ministers not come to a decision, yes or no? I get the sense that it is no, because he is putting much more stress on the issue of mass medication now than he has ever done on previous questions. I also go back to the answers that his noble friend Earl Howe gave over the last two or three years. Can the Minister not make that decision? The last thing we need would be to refer it yet again to another expert committee for yet more research, when it is quite clear that it would be effective and safe.

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, I can only repeat what I said: we are in the process of making a decision and that decision will be made shortly.