Folic Acid

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Tuesday 18th June 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Rooker]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the responses by Baroness Manzoor on 9 January (HL Deb, col 2212) and Baroness Vere of Norbiton on 19 March (HL Deb, col 1357), when they will commence the consultation on the mandatory fortification of flour with folic acid to help prevent foetal abnormalities, as announced on 22 October 2018.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to confirm that, as announced by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health on 13 June 2019, the UK-wide consultation is now live and will run for 12 weeks. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, for his continued support on this important issue.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, in the current circumstances Ministers are to be congratulated on keeping to the commitment on the consultation. I will raise two brief points, neither of which is covered in the consultation or the impact assessment. First, during that consultation, will Ministers consider having discussions with some of the 80 other Governments around the world who do fortification? The diets may be different but some of the successes have been quite spectacular. Secondly, will Ministers point up one of the benefits of reducing neural tube defect pregnancies via fortification, which is the massive reduction in terminations? Since advice was first given in 2007, at 80% terminations for pregnancies, there have been 10,000 terminations and 2,400 live births of babies with a lifelong disability. These figures could be halved with fortification, so it is worth talking them up.

[Baroness Barran]

The noble Lord makes two very practical and helpful suggestions, for which I thank him. We have already taken into consideration the experiences of other countries which have existing folic acid fortification policies in place and, yes, we will consider extending those discussions internationally —bearing in mind, as he mentioned, that diets and behaviours differ significantly between regions. We clearly want to get this right, so why would we not talk to other countries? Increasing folic acid intake is likely to have a significant benefit by reducing the number of terminations, miscarriages and neonatal deaths as a result of neural tube defects, with all the trauma associated with that. He mentioned an 80% reduction; the numbers that I have been given suggest a 70% reduction but we can agree that it is a very major one. We have seen in the US a reduction of around 25%, but in Chile it has been closer to 50%. I thank him for his suggestions.