Eating Disorders: Prevention of Deaths

Richard Foord Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Mr Richard Quigley (Isle of Wight West) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of the prevention of deaths from eating disorders.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I thank all hon. Members for attending this debate on a topic extremely close to my heart. As hon. Members may know by now, I am the very proud Member for Isle of Wight West and do my utmost to champion the island in this place, but I have brought forward this debate not only as an MP, but as a father who for some years was genuinely fearful as to whether I would see my child reach their 18th birthday.

From the moment someone becomes a parent, their instinct is to protect and nurture their children—often, admittedly, much easier said than done—yet nothing can truly prepare anyone for the overwhelming sense of powerlessness that comes when their child develops an eating disorder. Eating disorders, in all their destructive forms, are one of the few types of illness where the person affected does not want to recover and they actively work against you. Watching your child struggle not only with the illness but with the very treatments meant to help them is truly something I would not wish on any parent, yet it is the reality faced by thousands of parents, families and friends up and down the country.

We all know by now that the pandemic has taken a wrecking ball to children and young people’s mental health, but we cannot pretend that these issues do not predate 2020. Since the mid-1990s, eating disorders have been found to carry the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness. However, in the UK, we are unable even to quantify the true havoc that eating disorders cause, because of the lack of a national register for eating disorder deaths. The most recent year with confirmed data from the Office for National Statistics is 2019, when 36 deaths were recorded. However, a US study suggests that the real figure in the UK could be closer to 1,860 deaths, which I am sure people in this room would more than agree with.

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

A constituent got in touch with me because sadly his daughter did not see her 30th birthday owing to an eating disorder. The point that my constituent made was that that was in part because of a lack of adequate services for those affected by these life-threatening conditions. Does the hon. Member agree?

[Mr Quigley]

I agree entirely. We are fully aware of the political situation and the condition that the NHS was left in under the previous Government, but the point of today’s debate is not to make cheap political attacks; it is to focus on the matter in hand, which is eating disorders, so I thank the hon. Member for his intervention.

With widespread under-reporting, misclassification and inconsistencies across the country, many of these deaths are wrongly recorded as organ failure, masking the true role of eating disorders and preventing us from fully grasping the scale of the crisis, especially among otherwise healthy young people.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Foord Excerpts

Tuesday 17th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I am really grateful to my hon. Friend for her question. She is right to highlight the importance of funding following inequalities to redress that imbalance. I think she will be pleased with where we are with the 10-year plan for health, and I would be delighted to meet her to discuss it.

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

People in East Devon have been told that they must now travel to Exeter for audiology services that they previously received at their local community hospital. What steps are the Government taking to encourage new providers to restore accessible audiology services?

[Wes Streeting]

That has been a running theme this morning, which will not be lost on Ministers. We will ensure, as we deliver neighbourhood health services, that people can receive care closer to home, wherever they live. We have heard that message loud and clear today, and I think the hon. Member will see that priority reflected in our 10-year plan for health.

Covid: Fifth Anniversary

Richard Foord Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for West Ham and Beckton (James Asser) for securing the debate, which takes place five years after covid-19 swept across the country. It is right that we take a moment to reflect not only on what we have lost, but the duty we have to those who continue to carry the burden of the pandemic. Today I speak for some of the families who caught covid and never recovered. For them, the pandemic is not history, a chapter from their past; it is still very much with them today. I speak particularly for those in my constituency who did the right thing, followed the rules, took the vaccine and were harmed.

In particular, I want to share the story of Adam Bounds, who came from Axminster. He was 41 years old. He was a devoted father, a hard-working man and deeply loved by his family. On 20 May 2021, he received his first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, and 11 days later he died of vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombo- cytopenia, which is a rare but now medically recognised side effect—essentially, blood clots. My constituent—Adam’s father Leslie—has fought a dignified and determined campaign to get compensation for Adam’s son, his grandson, through the vaccine damage payment scheme. It has taken two years and considerable stress and anxiety. The family has now received the £120,000 payment, and Leslie has dealt with it all, causing him an enormous amount of trauma, frankly—two years of form filling, chasing departments and reliving that awful historic period.

If we want people to have faith in vaccines, and I do, we must ensure that we have a proper, functioning compensation system that is swift, supportive and responsive to the needs of grieving families. Justice is about not only those who died, but those who live with the aftershocks. In Devon, 20,000 people are reported to have long covid.

[Victoria Collins (Harpenden and Berkhamsted) (LD)]

My hon. Friend speaks passionately about an issue that also affects constituents of mine, such as Anna in Harpenden, a 12-year-old who lives with long covid. She has headaches and stomach issues day in, day out. Does he agree that we need to have a covid register and care pathway to ensure that those living with the consequences of covid are properly looked after?

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Foord]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. A covid register makes good sense. She mentioned symptoms, and those can also include tiredness, struggling for breath, memory problems and heart palpitations. We should remember that many of the people affected by long covid are the very people who took the brave decision to expose themselves right at the beginning. They are the people we pay tribute to, such as care workers, shop assistants, health staff and teachers—those who kept society going while others were isolating.

Last month, I was speaking with residents in Sidmouth and met a constituent who shared the impact that long covid continues to have on his daughter. She was somebody who was hard-working and determined but now finds that her energy has almost vanished. She is unable to work and is often confined to her bed, and her social life has disappeared. Like thousands of others across the UK, she faces the potential hammer blow of the Government’s proposed welfare reforms. Most people with fluctuating invisible conditions like long covid or ME will not be eligible, as we understand, for personal independence payments under the new assessment.

According to the Office for National Statistics, 3.6% of adults say they have experienced long covid at some point. If we want a society that is prepared for the next crisis, we must learn the lessons of the last one. We owe it to Leslie Bounds and others in Sidmouth and to everyone across the country who suffered from covid.

NHS Funding: South-west

Richard Foord Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Alison Bennett]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point about rurality, which is obviously a big issue in the south-west. It is also a serious issue in Sussex where we have things in common with the south-west, such as having an older than average population and all the challenges that come with that, as hon. Members have mentioned.

Hospitals want to be able to sort those issues out, but they are left juggling priorities, barely scraping by with the current levels of funding. Things do not work if we do not look after them, and if we do not look after our health system, it will not be able to look after us or our loved ones. Although I am sure that the Minister will make the point about capital investment in the NHS, which is welcome, the future looks very uncertain and precarious for our ICBs, as a number of hon. Members have said.

Soon after ICBs were first created, they had to cut their budgets by 30%. They have now been asked to cut their budgets by 50% on average. Indeed, for Sussex, the cut is more than 50%—it is 53%. It is no surprise that Sussex and Surrey have formally proposed merging their ICBs, which, by running at the same time as local government reorganisation and the creation of a mayoralty, means we will end up with an ICB that does not have the same footprint as the new incoming mayor.

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

What does my hon. Friend think about how ICB funding is weighted? I contend that the formula overemphasises the size of each ICB and the size of the registered population, but does not account sufficiently for age, given that older people require more funding spent on them.

[Alison Bennett]

My hon. Friend makes a really good point. It is vital that when we look at per head of population funding, we think about the different factors that actually drive up the true cost of delivering healthcare across the country, which obviously varies by region.

On ICBs, I will press the Minister on three points. First, on the timescale for cuts to be delivered by ICBs, they have to be completed by the end of 2025. The Sussex ICB had about three weeks to make that initial submission to the Department. Does the Minister think that those timescales are realistic and achievable? Secondly, what will the cost of the redundancies be for ICBs? Has that calculation been done? For Sussex, we are looking at more than half the workforce losing their jobs. Thirdly, what is the impact assessment for patients and the service that they will receive as a result of cuts to ICBs?

For too long, social care has been treated like the back door of our public services. It has been overlooked, underfunded and taken for granted. That must change. That is why we must once again ask for more urgency on social care reform. I believe that personal care should be free at the point of use, just like the NHS—

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I thank the hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling) for securing the debate. We could have had more time, as this is an important issue for us all across the whole south-west. I thank colleagues for taking part.

The hon. Gentleman is right that the system has real challenges receiving deficit funding in our part of the NHS recovery support programme. He will rightly be following that closely. In the autumn Budget, which I think virtually everyone in this room disagreed with, the Chancellor took the necessary decisions to put our NHS on the road to recovery, with a more than £22.5 billion increase in day-to-day health spending and over £3 billion more in the capital budget over this year and the last. Today, the Chancellor has announced the conclusion of the spending review, with £29 billion more day-to-day funding in real terms than in 2023-24. There is a £2.3 billion real-terms increase in capital spending over the spending review period—something I hope everyone welcomes.

The SR puts the NHS on a sustainable footing by cutting waiting lists so that by the end of this Parliament 92% of patients will start consultant-led treatment for non-urgent health conditions at 18 weeks, delivering on the Prime Minister’s plan for change commitment and prioritising people’s health. To respond to the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), we do encourage use of the independent sector for capacity, and that is a decision for ICBs to make sure they achieve those standards. The settlement also supports the shift from analogue to digital, with a total investment of up to £10 billion in NHS technology and transformation between ’26-27 and ’28-29, and an almost 50% increase from ’25-26. I agree with the right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen) that technology offers huge opportunities in geographies like ours.

Thanks to the Chancellor, we are taking the necessary steps towards fixing the foundations of our NHS and making it fit for the future. Since coming into office, the Government have published our urgent and emergency care plan, which will support the NHS across England to improve the timeliness and delivery of care to patients requiring urgent and emergency care over the next year, including for next winter. We are delivering on our plan for change through the accelerated roll-out of the NHS app. We will create an NHS fit for the future and continue to invest in the latest technology, shifting healthcare from analogue to digital.

Our investment and reform in general practice, to fix the front door to the NHS and bring back the family doctor, includes an additional investment of £889 million. We have published our elective reform plan, which will cut waiting times from 18 months to 18 weeks. We have exceeded our pledge to deliver an additional 2 million appointments, tests and operations—we have delivered over 3 million more. Waiting lists have fallen for the sixth month in a row and have now been cut by over 219,000 since we came to office. The Government have committed to a10-year health plan that will lead the NHS to meet the challenges set out in the plan for change to build the NHS for the future, and it will be coming very soon.

I know that hon. Members across the House share the concerns of the hon. Member for Torbay about the crumbling NHS estate after years of neglect. I wish to assure Members that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has given us the funding to begin reversing the trend of decline in the south-west and nationwide, with health capital spending rising to £13.6 billion this year.

In the south-west region, allocations have been made totalling £448 million in operational capital, empowering systems to allocate funding to local priorities; over £238 million from our constitutional standards recovery fund to support NHS performance across secondary and emergency care; and £83 million from the £750 million estates safety fund to deliver vital safety improvements, enhance patient and staff environments and support NHS productivity. This includes £7.3 million for Torbay hospital in the constituency of the hon. Member for Torbay; £10 million from our primary care utilisation fund for improvements in the primary care estate; and almost £5 million to help to reduce inappropriate out-of-area placements for mental health patients in the south-west.

ICB allocations have been talked about a lot today. For the south-west, they have been confirmed as totalling £11.5 billion out of a total of £116.7 billion allocated for England. The regional allocation per capita for the south-west is above the national average. We heard from my hon. Friends the Members for South Dorset (Lloyd Hatton) and for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) that the signs are being seen in their constituencies.

[Richard Foord]

Will the Minister give way?

[Karin Smyth]

I am going to just complete these points, so that I can try to address as many points as possible.

In the constituency of the hon. Member for Torbay, the local ICB, NHS Devon, receives £2.5 billion of the £11.5 billion for the south-west. The allocation per capita for Devon is higher still, and above the south-west regional average. Likewise, NHS Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly ICB received just over £1.2 billion of that £11.5 billion total. The allocation per capita for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly is above the south-west regional average and national average.

To respond to the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George), I understand from NHS England that the ICB has had the debt written off, so that might be something he wants to follow up. My hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham) and others talked about funding allocations—we could talk about this for a very long time. They are difficult things to get right, and are controversial, but the funding formulation does account for older people and for rural populations.

The latest financial performance position publicly available is for quarter three of last year. It showed an overall deficit position of £51.7 million against the year-to-date plans, of which Dorset ICS had the largest variance of £27.7 million. Final end-of-year positions are still being finalised and will be made publicly available in due course. For ’25-26, NHS systems overall have received £2.2 billion of deficit support funding in their allocations. All systems in the south-west have now agreed a balanced plan for ’25-26. The position on deficit support for ’26-27 will follow the spending review settlement for individual organisations agreed as part of the planning guidance process.

NHS England will continue to support all organisations to deliver financially sustainable healthcare through a range of improvement measures, some of which we have heard about today. Devon integrated care board, and three trusts within the ICB, are currently part of the recovery support programme, which provides intensive support to challenged organisations. Where organisations are struggling significantly, the Department of Health and Social Care provides cash support to support the continuity of patient services—obviously, that is critically important. So that colleagues are aware, I am personally meeting with finance colleagues from NHS England and the Department of Health every week to support that work. We are clear as a Government that we need to be certain that every pound of taxpayers’ money is used to best effect, and that best practice is followed in this region and across the entire NHS.

The hon. Member for Torbay asked about coronary services, and that is a local decision. NHS Devon and Torbay Foundation Trust have proposed undertaking a test-and-learn process for out-of-hours primary percutaneous coronary intervention. That service will be provided in Torbay and Exeter, which would involve a temporary change to provide out-of-hours services at Exeter only. Members will be aware that the ICB was due to make a decision on the pilot at its board meeting in May. However, following significant local feedback, the ICB has decided to reflect on those issues raised, and I am sure the hon. Member for Torbay will be following up on that. The ICB will be providing an update at its board meeting in July.

In conclusion, the Government are taking the necessary steps to fix the NHS, and the Chancellor’s spending review settlement puts the NHS further on the road to recovery. I assure Members that we will write back to them on any other individual points raised.

UK Health Security Agency: Porton Down

Richard Foord Excerpts

Wednesday 21st May 2025 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

I thank the hon. Gentleman who is very gracious in the way he puts over his point. It would be helpful for everyone in both our constituencies and for the country as a whole to know what is happening.

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

In addition to the HSA, the right hon. Gentleman’s constituency is home to the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, and both do vital work on antimicrobial resistance. Does he know of any work that has been done by the Government to consider the implications for the UK’s AMR research of moving the two institutions apart?

[John Glen]

I am extremely grateful for that very helpful intervention, because the hon. Gentleman points out the co-location of DSTL and the UKHSA at Porton, and that is a really important fact. The possibility of sharing category 4 facilities—something that has been resisted sometimes by one party or the other—is a material consideration when trying to mitigate excessive costs.

Last year’s NAO report set out that in February 2022, the programme had a staff team of 92 full-time equivalents based across multiple sites including Porton Down, London and other regional UKHSA centres, working across programme operations, management, delivery and capability, in addition to construction, finance and commercial and leadership teams. In November 2023, there were 69 FTE staff on the programme. The programme team is made up of civil servants and service providers, and has input from colleagues from other parts of the UKHSA.

It is very ironic to me that as I read over about 13 mentions of Porton Down that I have made in this Chamber over the last 15 years, so many of the Ministers who responded are now either retired, deposed or in the other place. I am concerned that the civil service people, for whom I have great respect having worked closely with lots of civil servants, have been blissfully unaccountable to any enduring authority or direction on this, while all of this work has been going on in the background. That just cannot be right.

Access to Dentistry: Somerset

Richard Foord Excerpts

Tuesday 1st April 2025 Westminster Hall

[Anna Sabine (Frome and East Somerset) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered access to dentistry in Somerset.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. My grandfather might not have been a toolmaker, but he was dentist. He worked near Slough, and as a child I loved visits to the dentist because we got to play in the electric chair and dissolve bright pink mouthwash tablets in plastic cups, and we always got a Lambrusco and lemonade afterwards, which was of course entirely appropriate.

That regularity of dental treatment means that, at 45, I am lucky enough to have no fillings at all, and I am not particularly scared of dentists. Many children growing up today in my constituency of Frome and East Somerset are not so lucky: one in five children in Somerset has tooth decay by the time they are five. Although we know that difficulty in accessing an NHS dentist is a nationwide challenge, data reveals that the south-west is particularly neglected. The most recent Office for National Statistics data shows that it has the worst access problems of all regions in England, with 99% of people without a dentist failing to secure the NHS treatment they needed in the last month.

Furthermore, only 32% of adults in Somerset saw an NHS dentist in the two years to June 2024, which is much lower than the national average of 40%. The picture for children in Somerset is equally shocking: only 42% were seen by a dentist in the year to June 2024, well below the national average of 55%, and way below pre-covid averages.

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

My hon. Friend’s point about the south-west is absolutely right. Some 217 visits per 100,000 to accident and emergency are for dental-related issues, compared with 154 for the next highest region. So the south-west is a real outlier, and not in a good way. Does my hon. Friend think that that is having a detrimental effect on hospitals and A&E?

[Anna Sabine]

Yes, I absolutely agree, and I will talk later about how poor access to dentistry impacts other parts of the health sector.

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to visit a local primary school in Frome, along with a friend who is a dentist. We started with an assembly about the many superpowers the mouth has, in which I was delighted to be given the leading role of saliva. Then we moved on to taking two reception classes through a supervised toothbrushing session. The school is part of the Government’s supervised toothbrushing scheme, an initiative I welcome. Sadly, of the 30 children in the room, 10 did not have consent for the toothbrushing—some because forms had not been returned, and some because there was a parental objection to the activity or to the use of fluoride. To ensure that they did not feel left out, my dentist friend played a game where they counted their teeth instead. She said that, based on what she could see from that game, that group of 10 children had 50 obviously decayed teeth, and one child had at least 10 teeth that would need to be removed under general anaesthetic. Those children were four and five years old. Although the scheme overall is to be welcomed, I hope consideration will be given to having an opt-out rather than an opt-in, to ensure that the children who most need the scheme are actually benefiting.

Somerset used to be well above the national average on access to dentistry. As recently as 2018, 55% of adults were seen by an NHS dentist in a two-year period, compared with 50% nationally.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Kinnock]

I absolutely agree. Two big things need to happen. First, the General Dental Council needs to do more to get more exams in place for those very well-qualified dentists. Of course, they have to pass the British exam. We cannot have people practising in Britain who have not passed that exam, but the availability of the exam has been too limited and that needs to change. The other thing is provisional registration. Some work can be done to expedite the registration of an international dentist, but more needs to be done on that as well. I will meet the head of the General Dental Council shortly, and I will convey those messages to him.

Recruitment and retention issues are not limited to dentists; there are difficulties across the whole dental team, including dental nurses, hygienists, therapists and technicians. In the past five years, there has been a 15% reduction in courses of dental treatment being delivered across England, and 28% of adults in England—a staggering 13 million people—have an unmet need for NHS dentistry. As a result, we hear too many stories about people who are unable to access the care they need, and some horrific accounts of DIY dentistry that nobody should have to resort to.

Dentistry rightly receives a lot of attention because of its dismal state, and I am grateful to the National Audit Office and Public Accounts Committee for their interest in the previous Government’s dentistry recovery plan. It is evident that the plan did not go far enough.

[Richard Foord]

The Minister talks about the previous Government’s dental recovery plan, and part of that was to impose a firmer ringfence on dentistry spending so that there was not an underspend that was reallocated elsewhere. The previous Government tasked NHS England with collecting monthly returns from ICBs to establish spending as against the allocation. Now that NHS England is being scrapped, will we still see that monitoring of ICBs to ensure that the spending matches the allocation?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I take the hon. Gentleman’s point about the ringfence, but in a way, ringfencing addresses the symptoms, rather than the cause, of the problem. The fundamental cause of the problem is the amateurish way in which the previous Government set up the NHS dentistry contract so that it does not incentivise dentists to do NHS work. That is what leads them to drift off. In a sense, we can do all the ringfencing we like, but if the workforce that we need is not incentivised to do the work that we need them to do, we are going to have that problem, because they vote with their feet. That is why the radical overhaul of the dentistry contract is the key point. However, I agree with the hon. Gentleman that once we have got a contract that works, we must ensure that every penny that is committed to NHS dentistry is spent on NHS dentistry, rather than the absurd situation that we have now, in which we constantly have underspends in the NHS dentistry contract while demand for NHS dentistry goes through the roof. It is a truly bizarre situation.

I return to the subject of the dentistry recovery plan. The new patient premium, introduced by the previous Government, aimed to increase the number of new patients seen, but that has not happened. In reality, since the introduction of the previous Government’s plan, there has been a 3% reduction in the number of treatments delivered to new patients. It is clear to this Government that stronger action is needed, and we are prepared to act to stop the decay.

Obesity: Food and Diet

Richard Foord Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

I commend the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Opher) for securing the debate and for putting himself out there by calling for a sugar and salt reformulation tax. I will add that it is not just through penalties that we will tackle diets in this country; it is also through incentives. Today I want to talk about some incentives being used in East Devon, where I represent Honiton and Sidmouth.

It was recognised a long time ago that ultra-processed foods were not only linked to obesity, but were contributing to malnutrition and poor dental health. I want to highlight the brilliant work of the charity Project Food, which is dedicated to improving diets, promoting healthier lifestyles and reducing the burden of preventable disease in the community. Project Food is linked slightly to a restaurant called River Cottage. One of the trustees, Stewart Dodd, invited me to see Project Food in October. It operates out of Axminster’s community hospital, and that is entirely fitting because the work it does is very much around public health.

Project Food is a shining example of grassroots public health action. Through free cooking demonstrations, hands-on sessions, one-to-one support and online classes, it empowers people to move away from ultra-processed food. Yet it finds it very difficult to keep up with the growing demand for its services in Devon. More families than ever are turning to Project Food for help because of the high cost of nutritious food, contrasted with the relative affordability of foods packed with sugar and palm oil.

Alarmingly, a report by the Food Foundation revealed that low-income households now need to spend up to 50% of their disposable income on food if they are to meet Government recommendations on what is a healthy diet. Over 11% of UK households experience food insecurity and, as we all know, millions are turning to food banks, as well as to ultra-processed foods, just to survive.

While the debate is principally about diet and food, we should think about some of the co-benefits of reducing sugar intake. I will point to dentistry. Fewer than half of the children in Devon saw a dentist last year. Promoting healthy eating habits could reduce the strain not only on the wider NHS and secondary care, but on dentistry. We know that tooth decay is the leading cause of hospital admissions for children aged between five and nine, so this is plainly an area where working on the reformulation of food could help save money on dentistry too.

The hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Ben Coleman) referred earlier to Natasha’s law, which was about how allergens are illustrated on food packaging. That was extended through the calorie labelling regulations that came into effect in 2022. Those regulations have helped to prevent obesity by ensuring that when people go into a café or restaurant, they can see what it is they are eating and the calories associated with the meal they might choose.

We should also recognise that this can have a negative effect. I had a constituent come to me to talk about the calorie labelling regulations in 2022 and the effect they had had on her daughter, who suffers from anorexia. The requirement on large businesses to put calorie counts on menus had made it extremely difficult for her to go out to eat with her daughter. Her daughter would take one look at the menu and simply refuse to eat anything, and it led to the family simply not going out to eat at all. One way the Minister might consider building on those calorie labelling regulations is by requiring those same restaurants and cafés to have menus with no calorie counts on them, so that families can dine out without the fear of stressing out somebody who has an eating disorder.

To return to Project Food and how we can better support some of the community assets we have to help tackle obesity and improve diet, we should be thinking about the use of community hospitals. We have spare space in community hospitals at Axminster and Ottery Saint Mary, from where Project Food operates. I suggest that the work being carried out by Project Food would be suitable for social prescribing. It is definitely having a positive effect on the people I saw who are working with that charity. It has done some excellent work, and I suggest that its work could be scaled and implemented across the country. With that spare capacity, we could see hubs for nutrition programmes and other public health measures that support healthier communities, which would be very much in line with what the Government have been talking about in response to the Darzi report. By addressing poor nutrition head-on in the community, we can reduce inequality, improve lives and alleviate the immense pressure on our health service.

Hospice and Palliative Care

Richard Foord Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

Hospices in Devon were already struggling before the Government’s Budget last autumn, which introduced a hike in employers’ national insurance. To talk first about the national picture, we have heard that a third of funding for hospices tends to come from the state, through the NHS. However, in Devon, it is less than a fifth. For Hospicare, a charity based in Exeter, the figure is 18%, while for Seton Hospice at Home and Sidmouth Hospice at Home, the figure is 0%; they do not receive any funding at all from NHS Devon.

Last year, I got together with Ben Bradshaw and Simon Jupp, the former MPs for Exeter and for East Devon. We put aside our political differences—Simon Jupp and I were contesting the seat of Honiton and Sidmouth at the time—wrote to the chair of NHS Devon, the brilliant Sarah Wollaston, and secured an extra £500,000 for hospice care in Devon. None the less, the charity Hospicare still has a deficit of £2.5 million per year.

Following the national insurance announcement last autumn, The Guardian reported in mid-November that Whitehall was considering options to relieve the financial pressure on hospices. It suggested that civil servants were weighing up the possibilities of offsetting the NI rise, funding hospice nursing staff directly, or setting up a “direct funding pot” for hospices. Following the announcement on 19 December and the Christmas gift of capital funding for hospices, it seems that the Government chose the direct funding pot for hospices. The problem with the additional capital funding is that a lot of hospices do not have physical buildings. They do not have infrastructure. They provide nursing services and hospice at home, so they cannot simply offset day-to-day spending with that capital spending. They are completely missing out, and that is the experience for Seaton hospice at home and Sidmouth hospice at home services in my east Devon constituency.

In conclusion, these charities step in where the NHS does not. Providing care is central to the Government’s vision of shifting treatment from hospitals to communities, yet the current trajectory seems to be forcing patients back into overstretched, acute hospitals.

Community Pharmacies: Devon and the South-west

Richard Foord Excerpts

Tuesday 17th December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Betts. Growing up, people used to talk about going to the chemist, and at the time I saw that alongside going to the butcher or shoe shop—it was where we went to buy stuff. What I did not realise was how crucial pharmacies are to prescriptions and thus to people’s health and wellbeing, and I am ever so aware of that now that I represent a constituency in Devon.

Under the previous Government, in the last two years alone, Devon has seen the closure of nine pharmacies, leaving the county with just 133. For the people I represent in Honiton and Sidmouth, that translates to just 16 pharmacies per 100,000 people—even fewer than in West Dorset. That is partly because income for pharmacies has stagnated, particularly what they receive from the NHS, and that is combined with rising costs, including energy bills and wages, as well as the cost of medication. Altogether, it makes for an unsustainable financial model. Yet pharmacies provide over 1.3 million consultations each week for people’s health concerns, which is keeping people out of the NHS and saving 38 million GP appointments every year. Just last month, a pharmacist in Devon noted that his team spends over two hours per day providing free, unfunded clinical consultations, and those prevent health conditions from deteriorating, and prevent hospital visits and additional strain on the NHS.

[Edward Morello]

My hon. Friend raises a very important point: under the current funding model, pharmacists are reimbursed only if the consultation results in a prescription being issued. That results in a medicalisation of the process, which means that pharmacists are less likely to provide other sorts of solutions, such as community care. Does my hon. Friend agree that the model is fundamentally flawed and creates a medicalisation issue?

[Richard Foord]

It is flawed, particularly for those parts of the country that are rural and coastal, such as those represented by my hon. Friend and myself. In Honiton and Sidmouth, the average age of my constituents is 56. I went to a meeting of the all-party parliamentary group on ageing and older people last week, and we hosted Sir Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England. He described how, while in some societies people move away from the coast and rural areas to seek comfort and care in towns and cities, in England we do quite the reverse. That makes it even more crucial that we maintain our pharmacies in those rural and coastal communities.

In short, we are calling for the Government to provide funding to halt the closures and stabilise the sector, ensuring that rural communities such as those in Devon are not left behind. We want to see the role of pharmacists expanded to give them greater prescribing rights and allow them to take on bigger public health responsibilities.

[Lloyd Hatton (South Dorset) (Lab)]

It is really important that we widen the discussion to talk about not only stemming the loss of pharmacies, but how we can put pharmacies back. In the south-west, community hospitals would act as an excellent venue for them. Does the hon. Member agree that we should be looking at community hospitals as a potential venue for new pharmacies, so that they are a bit of a one-stop shop where people can access healthcare and advice?

[Richard Foord]

I think the hon. Gentleman has come up with an absolutely brilliant idea. Community hospitals are potentially hubs where pharmacies might sit in the future. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) for securing this debate; she has done a great thing by doing so.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

We now move on to the Front Benchers. The two Opposition spokespeople have no more than five minutes, and then the Minister will probably have about 10 minutes left.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Foord Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend raises a real issue about how we join up the whole of the patient journey. Once diagnosed, patients need appropriate treatment and wraparound care. I am more than happy to meet him and his constituent.

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

At the weekend in Devon, I met a psychiatric nurse who previously worked in London and has been recruited to the south-west. She does not have a start date, and is still subject to routine checks after waiting months. Can the Secretary of State expedite these routine checks, given waiting lists for mental health?

[Wes Streeting]

Absolutely. That is a good example of why investment needs to be matched with reform to speed things up, improve productivity and get staff to the frontline, where they want to be.