Folic Acid Fortification

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Wednesday 6th April 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Rooker]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they intend to introduce draft legislation to replace the Bread and Flour Regulations, following their decision to implement folic acid fortification announced in September 2021.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Kamall) (Con)]

I pay tribute to the noble Lord for his tireless advocacy of this important policy. Substantial progress has been made since September 2021, including working with the devolved Administrations to establish a cross-industry Bread and Flour Technical Working Group engaging stakeholders to move forward to the regulatory review. Proposed changes are being finalised and impacts assessed by a whole-UK working group for a consultation once the Northern Ireland Assembly elections have concluded.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

I thank the Minister. This is taking a long time. I have only one question for him. Given that it is now more than 30 years since the medical research councils connected up the difficulties of neural tube defects and that more than 80 countries have operated the policy, will he commit to using the best possible science? People have spent decades on this, and scientists tell me this can prevent up to 80% of neural tube defects. It has advanced since the original science 30 years ago.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right: our scientific knowledge increases as scientists challenge each other and come to other conclusions. We have to be aware that there is no off-the-shelf solution. For example, I am sure the noble Lord will be aware that in Australia they can divide the flour and fortify only flour used to make bread. That cannot be done in this country, which is why we are working with stakeholders including heritage millers, for example, to make sure that we have the right solution. It has all been delayed due to a number of elections.

Health and Care Bill

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 5th April 2022 Lords Chamber

In a letter today to Peers, the Minister says that we can have a review—a point he made earlier—but we have been offered reviews on countless occasions. The road to hell is paved with reviews and good intentions. The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, offers us something much better, and I hope that the House will vote for it, as Sir Iain has asked us to do, to give the House of Commons a chance to incorporate a measure that enjoys widespread support across all Benches and across both Houses.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, in our debate on 31 January, I made the point at some length that it was not possible to trust accreditation of products based on paper and supply chains. I assume that the Minister has been briefed on this. After that debate, on 3 March, he wrote a long letter to me and the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and towards the end of it raised my point about the supply of cotton-based products.

I had explained that it is possible, using the techniques of element analysis, to take a product and find out where the cotton was grown. You do not need paperwork to do that, or trusted supplier chains. The technique and the technology are there. You can find out whether it was grown in Xinjiang, another part of China, or another part of the world. The Minister said in his letter that bidders to the NHS supply chain will have to certify that they are better-cotton-initiative certified. That is the very thing that we need to avoid. You cannot trust paper-based systems of supply. You must use the technology to find out where the cotton is grown.

In the government amendment that has come from the Commons, paragraph 3 specifically refers to cotton-based products—so, given the final paragraph of the Minister’s letter, saying that the NHS supply chain does not have a contract to use the element-analysis services supplied by Oritain, what has happened since? Has there been any contact between the Department of Health and the NHS supply chain with the company that has the technology? I have no interest to declare here. I made it absolutely clear in the debate that this came out of a “long read” in the Guardian way back in September. The technology is there, not just in cotton but in other issues. Here I am just using it for cotton—the uniforms, the mattresses and the products. In subsection (3) of the new clause proposed by Amendment 48A, the Government are going to assess cotton. Have they done anything since our debate in Committee to make arrangements to use the technology, on the basis that you cannot trust paper-based supply chain accreditation? It is a simple question, and I would like an answer.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly to support Amendment D1, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. Last night I was part of a BMA web conference mounted by the Ethics Committee, of which I am an elected member, looking at the powerful evidence coming out of Xinjiang province in China. The concern is that, if we are purchasing products from there, we are complicit in the appalling human rights abuses that we were shown evidence of in this webinar. Therefore, I hope the House will support that amendment.

I return to the very important Amendment B1, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege. This is not just a static situation. It is worsening. All that we have done is not just more of the same; we are actually sliding downhill rapidly. I want to give a little bit of data to the House to support that statement. There are now 1,565 fewer GPs than in 2015, meaning that there is a shortfall of 2,157 against the target that was set by the Government in their manifesto promise, in terms of where we are tracking to date.

The number of fully qualified GPs by headcount has decreased by over 600, so there are now just 0.45 fully qualified GPs per 1,000 patients in England, down from 0.52 in 2015. This means that each GP is responsible for about 300 more patients than previously. In terms of physiotherapy—I declare an interest as president of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy—the model shows that 500 new physios are needed each year for multiple years to meet demand. There needs to be a trebling of the 6,000 NHS physio support workers. In nursing, the district nursing numbers have dropped from 7,055 in 2009 to 3,900 in 2021, which is a 45% drop. This is all going in the wrong direction. From the data that I could obtain, it looks as if three-quarters of nursing vacancies are filled by temporary staff.

This amendment, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, is crucially important. It would be a dereliction of our duty to ignore supporting that amendment, given all that we know and all the work that has gone on. That is not to be critical of the Minister and his team at all, because I am sure that it is not his personal wish that we do not have this in place—but we certainly do need a completely new approach to workforce planning.

Covid-19: Lockdowns

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The noble Lord makes important points. If we look at the history of the debate about the world being round, at one time scientists believed that the world was flat. Because of scepticism and contestability in science, we have been able to come to the conclusion that the world is round. That shows the importance of science being contestable and of having an open debate.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

On the issue of Covid and mortality, does the Minister have a view about the allegations made in the BBC2 documentary last night that there were hundreds of thousands of excess deaths because of the business and political attacks on the AstraZeneca vaccine in the early days? The fact is that its non-profit system did not suit the drug industry’s business plan. The massive allegation that, because of this failure, hundreds of thousands of extra people died, clearly ought to be investigated.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I apologise to the noble Lord. I did not see the programme last night. I was swatting up for the Health and Social Care Bill debate today and for this Question. The noble Lord refers to an important point. We should not forget not only the contribution that the research community made towards those vaccines, but also that AstraZeneca was prepared to supply, commercialise and distribute them on a not-for-profit basis. Sadly, it was attacked for doing so, not just for commercial reasons, but also by other countries that engaged in vaccine nationalism and disparaged the efficacy of the vaccine. Unfortunately, people in other countries have lost out. I hope that we do not see this in future.

Health and Care Bill

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Monday 31st January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak briefly in support of this amendment and, in doing so, I apologise that I was not here at the Second Reading, although I have followed the progress of the Bill carefully.

Last Thursday at Oral Questions, in response I think to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, the Minister spoke of the importance of examining the provenance of health equipment that comes to the UK. He said his department was working

“to ensure that it is not from regions where there is slave labour, or where the Muslim Uighurs are being persecuted by the Chinese Government.”—[Official Report, 27/1/22; col. 439.]

We must of course ensure that the products and equipment in our supply chain are ethically sourced. Last week, my noble friend acknowledged that we need to do more here, and this amendment gives us the opportunity to do just that. Noble Lords speaking before me clearly and comprehensively laid out why we should avoid procurement from such areas.

All UK government departments need to do more to look carefully at their supply chains, but we must start somewhere. The DHSC, with its scale of procurement, and the reports we have seen of the prevalence of Uighur forced labour in PPE and healthcare supply chains during the Covid-19 pandemic, seems to be the right place to start.

The issue of genocide has been subject to lengthy debate in your Lordships’ House, not least during the Trade Bill last year. While a form of compromise was reached, it is limited to countries with which we will be entering free trade agreements. That is not a solution for procurement for many of the countries with which the DHSC does business. Importantly, this amendment would create a process, a mechanism, through which the UK Government could be required to assess regions for “serious risk of genocide”, and indeed publish their assessment. That process is, so far, sadly lacking in this country.

The UK has a responsibility to do all it can to protect against human rights violations and genocide. We also have a responsibility to our NHS workers and those who use the health service to make sure that we give them ethically sourced products. As my noble friend Lord Blencathra said, UK taxpayers do not want to be part of genocide.

We need to see deeds, not words. This amendment will significantly reduce the likelihood that the Government will procure goods or services from regions where there is a serious risk of genocide. It will bring the UK a step closer to developing a comprehensive framework in responding to allegations of genocide, and will meaningfully engage its obligations to prohibit, prevent and punish perpetrators of genocide. It does so in a limited, proportionate, reasonable and modest way.

I hope the Government will properly consider this amendment, I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response, and I know that he will have heard support for it from all sides of your Lordships’ House.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government should embrace this amendment. I want to concentrate on the traceability argument of goods, and in particular cotton imports. Without good traceability, the genocide convention obligations cannot be met.

To date, I have had two very poor replies on cotton traceability from the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone of Boscobel, at Question Time on 21 October, and a Written Answer on 24 January. Of course, as has already been said, we are miles away from the policies of the United States Government, who have taken a proactive approach to imports from regions of China where we know human rights abuses take place. As has been said, on 23 December, President Biden signed the legislation into law.

It simply cannot be left to commercial companies to satisfy themselves. It is crucial to understand the geographic origins of products and conditions of production. The two things are intertwined and they both need to be dealt with. There has to be a robust methodology that is reliable even when working with partners that may be untrustworthy or unco-operative. The use of middlemen such as commodity traders and the practice of blending fibre from multiple sources create additional difficulty.

Traceability—both what is termed as upstream, starting at the farm, or downstream, to map products back to their origins—is currently used. However, full visibility of the supply chain using these methods is impossible, and especially so in restricted areas such as Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. It is just impossible to do in the normal way you would look at traceability. If the Minister is in doubt about this, his department should read the report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies of November last year entitled:

“New Approaches to Supply Chain Traceability (implications for Xinjiang and Beyond)”.


My conclusion from that is that paper-based traceability and supplier information is a non-starter for effective due diligence.

In addition, there is abundant evidence that the Chinese Communist Party, which owns China, actually launders Xinjiang cotton, either semi-finished or blended, into international supply chains. This is set out in considerable detail in the November 2021 paper by Laura T. Murphy of Sheffield Hallam University entitled:

“Laundering Cotton: How Xinjiang Cotton is Obscured in International Supply Chains”.


In 2019, it was established that 85% of Chinese cotton was from Xinjiang. That means that cotton from the Uyghur region of China accounts for 22%—a fifth—of cotton worldwide. What was once grown or reared retains details of its origins—in a way, this is the test. However, it takes more than a paper trail to identify as such. It requires forensic work; chemical, isotope and genetic tracing and other methods that I will not list here are all crucial.

I will give a good example. From 1,000 garment samples collected across the world in high-street fashion shops involving nearly 50 brands, Oritain Global Ltd detected that in Vietnam, Cambodia and Bangladesh, the cotton in the garments had a mixture from Xinjiang of between 6.5% and 25%. Chinese cotton was 41% consistent with Xinjiang. Some 10% of samples of products tested in the UK were consistent with Xinjiang cotton. The UK has a high rate of imports from Bangladesh, where 25% of the cotton was from Xinjiang. It is worth pointing out that India has zero consistency with Xinjiang; India has cleared out Chinese cotton fabrication.

As to the practicalities for the health service, in 2019, the UK imported furniture, bedding and mattresses from China to the tune of £2.3 billion and imported apparel and clothing accessories to the tune of £3.7 billion. Has the NHS used beds and mattresses containing cotton from China or from suppliers using connections with China or other countries known to have a mixture of Xinjiang cotton? Where did all the Nightingale equipment appear from so quickly? As I asked last week, without any warning, how much China cotton is involved in NHS uniforms and accessories? Others have mentioned face masks, but as I pointed out last Thursday, more nurses means more uniforms.

Has the NHS supply chain used Oritain’s element analysis to check, or is it just relying on suppliers’ paperwork to check what would be only part of the supply chain? Companies and Governments need a degree of independence in assessing traceability and to not rely on companies doing it themselves. Some of the supply chains are five or six levels removed, so they cannot possibly have faith in each level and know the details from manufacturers, middlemen, traders, and agents. With the best will in the world and good corporate responsibility, checking the paper trail of five, six or seven levels will not work.

As I said earlier, the way to do it is to work on the basis that a product that was once grown or reared holds signs of its origins, and today’s advanced technology can do it. The technology of element analysis used by Oritain claims that it can tell the difference between two tea estates with a dirt road between them—it is so good and effective. For those who want more, I suggest the long read in the Guardian of 16 September 2021, which is where I came across the use of the technology. I have since met with senior reps of Oritain Global Ltd to better brief myself. Modern forensic technologies must be used, as is now required in the USA. The United States is using these technologies. Why are they not being used in the UK? The NHS, as the largest employer in Europe, should have a leading role.

It is not normal for the origin of cotton to be stated on labels. Of those 1,000 products which I mentioned were checked by Oritain last year, only 3% had the information on the label and, as a warning, the higher quality a product which attracts higher prices is more likely to be consistent with Xinjiang than cheaper items, so you must be really careful what you are looking at. Non-disclosure is almost the norm and of those who do disclose there is a high percentage of non-compliance, so labels and paperwork are not the answer.

Technology is the answer, and the ball is in the Government’s court. The old-fashioned gentlemen’s agreements and systems we are used to will not work. Modern technology is thought to be 95% accurate in identifying where an item was grown or reared. Only with that degree of information can the NHS satisfy the convention obligations. Otherwise, it will not work. The Government ought to embrace the amendment and then the new technology.

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to my noble friends Lord Blencathra and Lady Hodgson, the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, for tabling this important amendment. My noble friend Lady Sugg referred to last Thursday. That was 27 January, when the world came together for Holocaust Memorial Day in memory of the millions murdered under Nazi persecution. Members in the other place stood up and pledged “Never forget, never again”, while we in your Lordships’ Chamber sadly did not find a way to mark the day. Today, I repeat that promise.

Since the start of the pandemic, it seems that millions of pounds-worth of healthcare equipment have been procured from Xinjiang, despite the reports of the appalling treatment of the Uighurs. Will the Minister tell us whether our pandemic response benefited from procured equipment exported from Xinjiang?

NHS: Nurse Recruitment

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I cannot comment on the exact numbers, but I will find the answer and write to the noble Baroness. I might add that I am the son of people who came from outside the UK or European Union, and I get slightly concerned with the tone when people say, “Let’s not have foreign nurses in our NHS.” It is important. Immigration plays a brilliant role in this country and always has. If you look at the post-war public services of this country, it was people from the Commonwealth who came and saved our public services.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

Can I say to the Minister that more nurses means more uniforms and more garments? The NHS boasts about being the largest employer in Europe, so what action does the National Health Service take to ensure that the cotton in any of the garments used for NHS nurses’ uniforms is not grown in Xinjiang in China? The technology is available to do that; paperwork is not required, and people tell lies. The use of technology would guarantee that we could play our part in making sure that slave labour is not part of the production of our nurses’ uniforms.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I hope the noble Lord will forgive me if I tell him that I have not examined nurses’ garments in detail. In terms of provenance, it is important at the moment—and we are doing this on lots of equipment that comes to the UK—to ensure that it is not from regions where there is slave labour, or where the Muslim Uighurs are being persecuted by the Chinese Government. We need to do more; indeed, I have had conversations in the department to find out how we can trace the sources of the products and equipment that we buy to make sure that they are ethically sourced.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Self-Isolation) (England) (Amendment) (No. 6) Regulations 2021

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fowler (CB)]

My Lords, perhaps I may intervene briefly as the last Secretary of State who had responsibility for a major epidemic, that of AIDS.

It is in no way exceptional that there should be profound differences in view among politicians and others of the way in which an epidemic or pandemic should be handled. In my day, we had chief constables openly attacking the patients and the Government. We had religious leaders, I regret to say, arguing that it was not a public health issue at all, but one of morality. We had Ministers, particularly Scottish Ministers, arguing that giving free needles to drug addicts was condoning crime, although there was absolutely no evidence that crime increased, and the example of our Government was followed worldwide. We had a Treasury which refused to provide extra resources for the pandemic.

Debate, controversy and difficulties on the way forward are absolutely nothing new in debates of this kind. The crucial question is: what advice do we follow? My view now, as then, is that we should follow the advice of the public health experts inside the Department of Health who work on these issues year after year, in particular the Chief Medical Officer. I pay particular tribute to my old CMO, Donald Acheson, and the new CMO, Chris Whitty. Chris Whitty and the Chief Scientific Adviser have done a remarkable job for this country over the last months and deserve full credit for that.

It is said that this is a question of freedom; obviously, I do not discount that argument, but surely the exercise of that freedom should not put others at risk. That seems to be a matter of common sense. It should not lead to infection being spread or hospitals having to prioritise which patients they treat because some have decided to remain unvaccinated and then become dangerously ill.

As is evident, after my spell on the Woolsack, I am now a Cross-Bencher, so I am not an automatic or whipped supporter of the Government—I am not whipped at all. My days as Conservative Party chairman are behind me—noble Lords might be very grateful for that—and no more than noble Lords in the Labour Party do I automatically follow the lead of the Government Front Bench. However, I must say that I think their case is totally overwhelming. The success of the national vaccination programme has moved us ahead in the race to get people vaccinated in this country and worldwide but, with the new omicron variant, we have to work even harder to stay ahead. That is the lesson of the whole thing.

Last week, we learned two things about this variant. The first is that no variant of Covid-19 has spread this fast—if you want a definition of an emergency or a need for action, surely that is not a bad one. We expect the numbers to increase dramatically in the days and weeks ahead. I do not think that is seriously disputed by anybody so, again, this is an argument for action. As the Prime Minister said—for once, his language is not over the top—

“there is a tidal wave of omicron coming”.

That seems to be the view of the public health experts as well. We know that a third or booster dose provides strong protection, with analysis from the UK Health Security Agency showing that a third dose is 70% effective at preventing symptomatic infection. We expect the booster to take effect more quickly than the second dose. Again, I would have thought that this should provide an incentive to us to do what is not just the best thing in terms of public health but the right thing, as I would term it—and action is the right thing.

What I really wished to say to this House in the few minutes that I have spoken is that we should do our utmost as a House and a Parliament to appear united. It seems it is not the best day to make that case or plea, after the rather dismal vote in the House of Commons yesterday, but I hope that the House of Lords will give support to this struggle. Parliament consists of two Houses—a fact that seems to be conveniently forgotten by much of the media and the press—and this House can give a real lead as far as the handling of this pandemic is concerned.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, whose speech I enjoyed, I hope that the noble Lord who has proposed a series of amendments will not persist with them. The Government have far more support than I think they realise. Far more people outside this confined area of Parliament are signing up to the case that they are putting. Ministers should persist in their case and fight for it as strongly as they can.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I make two preliminary points before my main point. First, it would be quite contrary to the way in which this House works and to the conventions under which we operate to throw out secondary legislation. This is just not on. We do not do it, and it would be quite wrong to attempt to do so. Secondly, I follow up on what the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, who spoke for the Liberal Democrats said. As many other people have done, I tried to order lateral flow tests this morning. They are not available; you cannot order them. Every week for the past two months, I have succeeded in ordering them and the pack has arrived within a couple of days. The Minister must have an answer to this fundamental issue. Now, you cannot just walk into the chemist and collect them, or order them via a QR code, as you could do months ago—at 8.30 am today, it was not possible.

The Minister said that we are doing all this to protect people—which is true—and also to protect the NHS. I make no apology for asking why is it that we need to protect the NHS? It seems self-evident: we need to protect the NHS because it is incredibly vulnerable compared with how it was. In recent years, we have lost 17,000 beds, systematically and deliberately. Why?

I cite two or three examples from the recent NAO report on NHS backlogs pre pandemic. The OECD is the rich countries—or rather, the richer countries— of the world. In the context of the health systems within the OECD, the UK has fewer resources than many of the other rich countries. The UK has 2.4 hospital beds per 1,000 of the population. France has 5.8 and Belgium 5.5—and they are not the highest. Sweden has 2.1, which is less than the UK but, at 2.4, we are way down the list. With 8.5 nurses per 1,000 of the population, the UK is 11th on that list, whichever way you look at it. Ireland has 12.9; Germany 14; and France 11.1. This is all before the pandemic. The UK has three doctors per 1,000 of the population. Sweden has 4.3 and Spain has 4.4. They are not the highest; the highest is much greater. Finally, in 2019, we did 175 CT, MRI and PET examinations per 1,000 of the population. France did 332; Austria 349, and Belgium 313. In other words, the NHS has been deliberately run down since 2010. The other thing that has happened since 2010 is that life expectancy has stalled—read the Marmot reports. Why has life expectancy stalled since 2010? More people are dying earlier as a result of life expectancy stalling. There is something systematically wrong.

Of course, we need to carry these orders for public health reasons. I have no problem with that. I am 100% with the noble Lord, Lord Fowler. When it comes to protecting the NHS, we have to ask ourselves why it is so vulnerable. It is because we have lost out on doctors and nurses and because of the other issues that I have raised. It has been done systematically. I do not know why—a national policy has never been announced on that. We always talk about protecting the NHS. We need to ask why.

I hope that the noble Lord will not push this to a vote. He would be breaching the conventions of the way in which this House is run. I presume he is only pushing for a vote because he wants to win—you do not push for a vote if you do not want to win. Throwing out the regulations would breach the conventions and the elected House would be after us pretty damn quick—and rightly so.

Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) (Amendment) (Coronavirus) (No. 2) Regulations 2021

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2021 Lords Chamber

My amendment is, at its core, a plea for the Department of Health and Social Care to stop taking Parliament for fools. The department must respect the role of Parliament by facilitating rather than evading effective parliamentary scrutiny. That means full impact assessments for all significant policy interventions, whether of long or short duration; and, of course, it means they must be timely. At the very least, I hope the Government and, in particular, the Department of Health and Social Care will reflect on their duty to ensure that Parliament can do its job of oversight of the Executive. I beg to move.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I did not intend to contribute, but I just want to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, for that speech. I shall get Hansard tomorrow, make my little checklist and wait for what is coming from the other place—the borders Bill; the human rights Bill; the electoral reform Bill—and I will check off her claims about parliamentary scrutiny and believing in the House to see how sincere that speech really was.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I would not doubt for half a second that my noble friend was entirely sincere. I also believe that she made some extremely powerful points which apply right across the legislative pattern, and which apply equally to both Houses. I hate to say this of a Conservative Government, but they behave as if they treat Parliament with contempt. Whether one is talking about Christmas tree Bills, Henry VIII clauses or the lack of impact assessments—a point made so very powerfully by my noble friend—the Government are found wanting. If we were marking in Greek letters the performance of the Government, I would, as an old schoolmaster, give them “gamma double-minus.”

It really is sad that we have a Government who are treating Parliament in this manner. I sincerely hope that, when he comes to reply, my noble friend the Minister will give a firm undertaking to draw the attention of his parliamentary masters in government to this debate and to the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, in particular. They should read, mark, learn and inwardly digest it—to quote the collect for the second Sunday in Advent.

When it comes to the substance, I always deplore anything that smacks of retrospective legislation, because that again is treating Parliament with studied contempt. I know how difficult it has been during these last 18 months or more. We all know that—and we all know that mistakes have been made, sometimes with the very best of intentions. But it is deeply disturbing that there has not been a recognition that retrospective legislation is the very antithesis of democratic parliamentary government.

I have suggested many times, including very recently, that there should be a continuing committee of both Houses looking at Covid legislation and being able to pronounce on it quickly. I made this point only recently to my noble friend. He completely, I am afraid, misunderstood it and told me quite inaccurately that this was a matter for the Lord Speaker—but anybody who knows what the Lord Speaker is able to do and not able to do knows that that is fundamentally wrong.

I know that he is new to Parliament and is serving his apprenticeship with great distinction—we all appreciate that—but it is important that the powers that be realise that in an unprecedented situation unprecedented measures are sometimes needed. They have shown that by issuing diktats; they have not shown it by creating a vehicle for continuous parliamentary monitoring—and they should.

On the subject of compulsory vaccination, my noble friend Lord Bethell knows very well that I have been on about this almost from the very beginning, urging that care home workers should receive compulsory vaccination, and I believe that it is entirely logical to extend that to those who work, because people who come into close proximity to patients at their most fragile and their most vulnerable should not themselves be a potential risk to those patients. We know that in some care homes during the early months—I appreciate that it is much better now—you could find that 30%, 40% or even 50% of care home workers, looking after the most fragile and physically feeble of people, themselves not vaccinated.

How do you solve this? It is, of course, a combination of persuasion and cajoling, but at the end there has to be a point where you say that we cannot allow this to continue indefinitely. Therefore, I think on that point the Government are right and I am grateful for it.

However, we are a Parliament and therefore I come back, as I began, to the admirable speech from my noble friend Lady Noakes. She pointed out—as many others have over the past two or three years, particularly the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, who I think must go to bed with an image of Henry VIII by his bedside—how cavalier has been the treatment of both Houses of Parliament by the Government. We are approaching a new year. Let it be a resolution of the Prime Minister and all his Ministers that they are accountable to Parliament; they are not the masters of Parliament.

Health and Care Bill

Lord Rooker Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham, particularly on his robust defence of fluoridation in Birmingham. I am going to concentrate on one clause, one schedule and one issue: Clause 144, Schedule 17 and part of the Government’s plan for tackling childhood obesity.

I have lost count of the reports from Select Committees and the National Audit Office on this vital issue, which, irrespective of the damage to health, is on course to bankrupt the National Health Service. I am informed that, since the early 1990s, there have been 14 reports containing 700 recommendations. No Government have done enough. When the coalition came in in 2010, there was a flurry of activity. The outcome, a serious plan, was effectively squashed by Theresa May in 2016 under pressure from the food industry. I was at a meeting of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee when I heard officials—I shall not name them as I had worked with one of them before—spell out what was planned, but it did not come about.

So, it is better late than never that the Government are acting. There is increased political will to act; this is to be welcomed and actively supported. We have moved on from the “nanny state” arguments nurtured by the food industry. Besides this Bill, though, I would like to know what the Government have been doing since September 2020, when the National Audit Office published HC 726, its report on childhood obesity. Its key findings were worrying, and the five recommendations were a serious plan of action. I have looked but, to be honest, I have not been able to get the detail.

The figures on childhood obesity are startling and on the move. They are not static—we are getting fatter. The National Audit Office’s report pointed out that 20.2% of 10 to 11 year-old children were obese in 2018-19. That figure rose to 26.9% for children in the most deprived areas. The brief from the Obesity Health Alliance gives more up-to-date figures. The last year has shown the fastest increase in child obesity on record. More than 40% of children are obese by the time they leave primary school; for year 6 children, the figure is up from 21% in 2019-20 to 25.5%. It will be really difficult to reverse this trend.

I am about to make my only politically incorrect point. I could not help but notice, in recent years, the astronomical size of some teachers in primary schools. Emerging evidence shows that, besides a 1% year-on-year growth in obesity, the Covid pandemic’s impact is likely to have accelerated the pace of increase in childhood obesity, so there is even more reason to be concerned.

I will support the Government’s action and spur them to do more. They could do a lot worse than adopt the 10-year Healthy Weight Strategy published by the Obesity Health Alliance in September this year. “Healthy weight” is a good way of describing the desired outcome. It does not conjure up too much negativity. I will be watching to ensure that there is no watering down of the modest proposals by the men who made us fat. In this respect, I prefer the evidence from the National Audit Office to that from the food industry on the effects of advertising.

Talking of the men who made us fat, the BBC should show again the 2012 BBC Two documentary “The Men Who Made Us Fat”. The science and methods, both physical and behavioural, that the food industry uses to get us to eat more are eye-watering in their lack of concern for the consequences to public health. I commend the Government and urge them to do more, and I will oppose any watering down.

As an aside, exactly two years ago this week I lost two weeks of my life without warning, with clots, sepsis, pneumonia and a lump. The staff at Hereford County Hospital stopped me going over to the dark side. So far, so good, and I am very pleased to say that I am part of a clinical trial to check the effect of the booster on those who have had leukaemia and lymphoma —a trial called “Prosecco”.

NHS: Elective and Cancer Care Backlog

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Tuesday 7th December 2021 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Rooker]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the reasons for the backlog of NHS elective and cancer care work that pre-dated the COVID-19 pandemic.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Kamall) (Con)]

The backlog in elective and cancer care before Covid-19 was caused by a range of factors including a mismatch in demand and activity, which drove waiting lists’ growth. To address this, the Government have provided additional investment of £33.9 billion by 2023-24 for the NHS long-term plan to grow the amount of planned surgery, cut long waits and reduce the waiting list.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

That answer comes nowhere near responding to the NAO report on the NHS backlog published last week. When will we be able to return to Labour’s legal legacy of 92% of patients getting treatment in 18 weeks, instead of the miserable figure under the Tories of 83% because they are running down the NHS, which has led to hundreds of thousands extra on the waiting list?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for this Question on an otherwise quiet day for me. There was growing demand on the NHS before the Covid-19 pandemic, with growing referrals across elective and cancer care. This is driven by an ageing, more affluent population. On what we do about it, we set out our ambitions in the NHS long-term plan. I do not call a £33.9 billion budget increase by 2023-24 an abandonment of the principles. We are looking at the waiting lists and are looking to get them down.

Covid-19: Plan B

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his question. I do not have the detailed data and I will write to him. But in terms of the link between cases, hospitalisations and deaths, it is quite clear that the vaccine has been working to break the link between the number of cases, hospitalisations and deaths.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

Would the Minister accept that one of the unfair criticisms, in some ways, over the last 18 months, has been “too little, too late”? That cannot happen again. We need to set good examples. At Prime Minister’s Questions today, there was not a single Conservative MP wearing a mask in a crowded Chamber. What on earth is that as an example to the people on the Tube and everywhere else? Clearly, some small measures now will save the big measures later.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I agree with the noble Lord that it is important that we take as many measures as possible to make sure that we do not have to move to plan B. I assure the noble Lord that I do wear my mask to, hopefully, set an example, and I hope others will too—but it is really important that we understand what factors are driving this rise in numbers and the most effective way of tackling it.