Food: Regulation and Guidance

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Thursday 7th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, for giving me the opportunity to speak in the gap to raise two points. One is a cautionary tale of an organisation which tried to have guidance issued on improving the nutritional outcomes for adults and young offenders in institutions. The other is to plead with the Minister to do what he can to prevent that ever happening again.

I refer to an organisation now called the Institute for Food, Brain and Behaviour, which was called Natural Justice, and must declare an interest as vice-chairman of the board. About 20 years ago, the organisation started work trying to use the right mixture of vitamins, minerals and fatty acids with people on community sentences with the probation service in Cumbria. It was then developed and, in 1998, a random double-blind trial was conducted at the young offender establishment at Aylesbury, which proved that the right mixture reduced violence and anti-social behaviour by 40 per cent in those who were taking the right mixture, produced an enormously changed atmosphere in the young offenders’ institution and enabled the young to take part in things which they had previously rejected. That was noted not just by the measurement of crimes committed but by the very hard-bitten prison officers, who noticed the change.

The results were published. They were doubted by the Home Office, which sent in a professor from Warwick University to examine the data. He proved that they were 92 per cent statistically pure and said that he had never come across a trial of that kind conducted so well, which speaks volumes for Natural Justice and for the Oxford University department of physiology, which is where the work was based.

We then tried to get replication. The trial had been picked up in America, Scandinavia, Holland and France, where they were repeating the work. The Wellcome Foundation recognised its value and granted us £1.5 million to enable us to do it again. We were welcomed in Scotland, where they said, “Please come and do it here”, but we had a seven-year fight with the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice to be allowed to do it again, because successive Prison Ministers took an opposite view about the trial. The trial is now taking place, and the report will be published next year. The work has been picked up by Manchester probation service, which wants it looked at in connection with those on intense supervision orders.

The Robert Clack School in Dagenham is very interested in the application of the right mixture of vitamins, minerals and fatty acids to young children at school. In other words, there is an enormous amount of evidence about what the right mixture does. What worries me about this is that it is despite the fact that it has been officially evaluated and promoted. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rea, for including it in his report. Here, I hope, is an opportunity for the Department of Health, if it is really going to take responsibility in this area, to pick up the work that has been done and apply cross-government action rather than leaving it to separate ministries to do what they have been doing in isolation and not promoting it. The Institute for Food, Brain and Behaviour stands ready to help in any way it can.