Diabetes

Debate between Philip Dunne and John Hayes

Wednesday 9th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Sir John Hayes]

I was going to refer to the achievements of the deputy leader of the Labour party, the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Tom Watson), later in my speech, but my hon. Friend obliges me to highlight them earlier than I had planned. He is a model example of someone who, having contracted type 2 diabetes, adjusted their lifestyle and diet, lost large amounts of weight, and fought back against—indeed, fought off—type 2 diabetes, exactly as my hon. Friend suggests. Many other hon. Members, including some in the Chamber today, are living with diabetes. Remarkably, our Prime Minister not only manages to hold down her job with immense dedication and determination, but manages type 1 diabetes simultaneously. I spoke about every family and every constituency, but many Members of this House have personal experience of dealing with both type 1 and type 2 diabetes.

During the debate, I will focus on three areas in which we can make real progress: the human and financial cost of diabetes; how education and technology can enable self-management and improve outcomes for both type 1 and type 2; and how, in the case of type 2 diabetes, intervention on societal and individual levels can prevent the onset and mitigate the effects of such a serious problem.

To prevent just a fraction of the complications arising from diabetes would have a big impact on the national health service, generating significant savings as well as fundamentally reducing pain and distress for individuals. Every week in England, over 160 lower-limb amputations result directly from the effects of diabetes, so the ability to provide high-quality diabetic foot care is of particular concern. The recently published NHS long-term plan makes a renewed commitment to the diabetes transformation fund, and I know that that will be welcomed by the whole diabetes community.

I hope that the Minister will set out what steps the Government are taking to encourage the use of education and technology to better support people in self-managing their diabetes, as that will reduce the burden of diabetes both on the individual and on the NHS. A few years ago, a family came to my constituency surgery, with a tiny, wonderful little girl. She was just about to start school. She had already been diagnosed as a type 1 diabetic. That little girl, Faith Robinson, was wearing technology that allowed her glucose to be monitored and insulin to be administered to her—that was absolutely necessary because she was so young. The family came to me with a request, which I will pass on to the Minister so that he can work with colleagues across Government to ensure that this happens routinely for all constituents who need it. They asked that Faith receive one-to-one support at school to manage that technology. The little girl was under five, and needed people at the school she was about to attend to understand the condition and how to deal with the challenges that she faced.

I estimate that there are constituents across the country in similar circumstances, with very young sufferers who need that kind of care and support. I invite the Minister not necessarily to comment today—I do not want to catch him out; that is not my intention—but to reflect on that and to say more about what can be done for that little girl, who I was able to help in that circumstance, and for many others like her.

[Mr Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

I not only congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing the debate but thank him for allowing me to intervene on that point. My second daughter was two and a half when she was diagnosed as an insulin-dependent type 1 diabetic. I very much empathise with the story that he has just told us about his constituent. My daughter was barely able to describe her feelings because she was only just talking at the time, which was really quite challenging for the clinicians treating her, as she was unable to describe the impact of treatment and how she felt.

I agree with my right hon. Friend that the introduction of technology—both a result and part of the significant research efforts in this country by charities and the Medical Research Council—is leading to opportunities in treatment provision, in particular the flash glucose monitoring device, which I know the Government will introduce across the country in a more even way than in the past. That is very welcome, but it remains subject to clinical guidance. I urge the Minister to look at that guidance and the attributes required for people to have access to those devices, because they remain quite restricted.

[Sir John Hayes]

With the insight and acumen that characterised my right hon. Friend’s ministerial career, he has identified a point that I was going to make later. With his permission, I will amplify that in my speech. I was aware of his personal circumstances and of his expertise as a result of having a daughter with diabetes. He will recognise that the average sufferer spends about three hours a year with a healthcare professional. Self-management is therefore critical and, in turn, technology is essential to such self-management. We cannot expect a healthcare professional to be on call every time someone needs support or the kind of treatment that is routine for someone such as my right hon. Friend’s young daughter. I entirely endorse his remarks. The Minister will have heard them and will respond accordingly.

In essence, I want a world in which all people with diabetes have access to the right information, advice and training, not just at the point of diagnosis but throughout their lives. People will say, “Well, of course, we all want the very best, and we all want the ideal,” but if we do not aim for the very best, we will get something very much less than that, so I make no apologies for being definitive in my determination to aim for that ideal. It is critical that we as parliamentarians should look to more distant horizons than sometimes the prevailing powers in Government—as I know from my long experience of that—would encourage us to do. Such debates as this allow us to do that in a cross-party way, for this is not about party political knockabout but about something much more fundamental.

Only if we can achieve the ideal will people be well placed to gain confidence and to cope as the Prime Minister does—as I have described—and as the deputy leader of the Labour party does. They can manage their condition and do not have their lives inhibited by it, and so believe that their opportunities are unaffected by the condition.

To ensure the early uptake of education, it must be provided in a useful format: digitally and through every kind of agency, whether that is schools working with health professionals, or local authorities, which have a responsibility for public health following the Health and Social Care Act 2012, stepping up to the mark too. I shall say a little more about the co-ordination of that, although the Minister is already aware of my concerns. It is about ensuring that our public health effort on diabetes is co-ordinated, consistent and collaborative. That is vital, for reasons already mentioned by colleagues in interventions.

I welcome the commitment in the NHS long-term plan, as I said, to expand the support on offer for people with type 1 and type 2 diabetes, including through the provision of structured education.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Hayes]

I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend. In the modern idiom, we need to be technology-neutral about that, because the field is changing rapidly. As new technology comes on stream and improves, we need to be sufficiently responsive to and flexible about those changes to ensure that people get the very best, latest technology available to them, for the reasons he gave.

The limits on self-management by the restrictions on technology inhibit people’s wellbeing, confidence and, thereby, opportunities. I want to ensure that the provision of technology is consistent throughout the country. There are suggestions that such provision is patchy, that some places are better than others and that some of our constituencies are not getting all that they deserve. The Minister will not want that, because he is an extremely diligent and resourceful Minister—I know that from previous experience—and I want him to tell us how he will ensure that the technology is appraised properly, is delivered consistently and, accordingly, will change lives beneficially.

[Mr Dunne]

My right hon. Friend is being generous with his time. May I elaborate a little more on that specific point to give an indication to the Minister of the specifics that might cause difficulty between different clinical commissioning group areas? In my experience, those who are allowed to have clinical access to a glucose monitoring device already need to have their blood sugar levels under control—in single digits, below nine. For many people, however, the monitoring device is the one thing that gives them the ability to get better control of their blood sugar glucose levels. Therefore, if they do not get access to it until they are under control, it does not have the immediate benefit to their lifestyles that it would if the regime were slightly more permissive in the allocation of the devices.

[Sir John Hayes]

My right hon. Friend makes a very shrewd point about cause and effect. In Scotland, for example, both the processes leading to allocation and the actual allocation of technology are much more routine, as he suggests should be the case. I hope the Minister will tell us today or subsequently how he will ensure that that becomes true for the whole of our kingdom—that the very principles set out by my right hon. Friend become embedded in the way in which we approach technology, ensuring that it is allocated according to need.

We all agree that the resources should be targeted to secure optimal outcomes for the 4.6 million people who have been diagnosed with the condition. In addition to those diagnosed, however, one in three adults in the UK has pre-diabetes and might be at risk of developing type 2 diabetes if they do not change their lifestyle—a point made by a number of Members in interventions. About three in five cases of type 2 diabetes can be prevented or delayed. A focus on preventing the onset of diabetes should be of paramount importance. G. K. Chesterton said:

“It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.”

By seeing the problem, the solution will be implicit, because many more people will never develop type 2 diabetes if they make those adjustments to their lifestyle.

There is a dilemma, though: is it better that 50,000 people get a perfect solution and are prevented from having diabetes, or that 5 million people reduce their risk marginally? Let me set that out more clearly. Is it better that a small number of people achieve what the deputy leader of the Labour party, the hon. Member for West Bromwich East, has done—losing immense amounts of weight, changing their lifestyle and completely revising their diet? Or is it better that a very much larger number of people make a smaller change, lose less weight and change their lifestyle more marginally, but by so doing significantly reduce their risk of developing type 2 diabetes?

That is a challenge in health education; it affects many aspects of the health service’s work. It probably means that, rather than seeing this issue purely from a clinical perspective, we have to democratise the diabetes debate, spread the word much more widely and get many more people to lose a couple of inches off their waist, to lose a stone or half a stone. That effect would be immense in reducing the risk of diabetes, not for tens of thousands but for millions of people.

If the figures I have brought forward are so—I have cited them only because I have learnt them from Diabetes UK and others who have helped me to prepare for this debate—we would change the lives of very large numbers of constituents in a way they would be able to manage, understand, comprehend and act upon reasonably quickly. I want the Minister to reflect on the dilemma I have described; it may not be quite so much of an either/or as I have painted it, but we need a democratic debate about that, which is part of the reason I have brought this debate to the House. Certainly we need an open and grown-up conversation about some of those measures and how we go about tackling what I have described as a crisis.

I do not want to speak forever, Mr Robertson—I know you and others in the Chamber will be disappointed to hear me say that. That will cause disappointment and even alarm among some, but I want others to contribute the debate. However, I have a couple of other points to make so I will move on—having taken a number of interventions already, I hope colleagues will bear with me.

I have been fascinated to read about research funded by Diabetes UK that proves that remission is possible. I would like to take the time to congratulate the hon. Member for West Bromwich East once again and to say that I hope many more people will recognise that remission is a real possibility for them by making changes in what they do.

Part of the issue is how lives more generally have changed. My father cycled five miles to work and five miles home every day, but now most people do not do that. Once many more people worked in manual jobs—my father had a physique like Charles Atlas, but the nearest I have come to Charles Atlas is reading an atlas. Part of the problem is the way we live now; far fewer people exercise implicitly in the way he did, and it seems that junk food is more appealing to many people than eating fresh, healthy produce—indeed, that has been recognised by successive Governments as significant for health outcomes.

Evidence shows the best way to reduce the risk of diabetes is through a healthy diet, being physically active and reducing weight. That can be facilitated through societal approaches and targeted individual interventions. Technology, including digital services to support lifestyle changes, is increasingly critical in diabetes prevention. To be sustainable, methods to prevent type 2 diabetes should focus on individual behaviour change, not just short-term activity levels.

We recently learned that, by their 10th birthday, the average child in the UK has consumed 18 years’ worth of sugar. That means they consume 2,800 more sugar cubes per year than recommended levels. The current food chain has become badly distorted. Basic knowledge that my parents’ generation took for granted about how to buy, cook, prepare and store food has steadily but alarming declined.

We have allowed soulless supermarkets to drive needless overconsumption of packaged, processed, passive, perturbing products, and it is time that the greed and carelessness of corporate multinational food retailers gave way to a better model. It is not a coincidence, it is something considerably more than that; as local food retailers have declined—people knew from whom they were buying, understood what they were buying and where it came from—the consumption of processed, packaged ready meals has grown. We need to rebalance the food chain in favour of locally produced, healthy produce and to re-educate people about how to buy, cook, eat and enjoy it.