Vaccinations

Lord Suri Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The noble Baroness raises a very important point. We have to recognise that the UK has one of the most comprehensive childhood and adolescent immunisation programmes in the world. We have seven national childhood immunisation programmes, three adolescent programmes and two elderly programmes. Vaccine uptake in the UK remains high overall, but there has been some decline in routine childhood vaccines—so we have been looking at school-based immunisation programmes, some of which were clearly interrupted due to Covid. At the same time, from October to December 2021, the coverage of childhood vaccination programmes actually increased.

[Lord Suri (Con)]

My Lords, it is vital that primary carers help increase the delivery of a structured mass vaccination programme to deal with conditions such as shingles and influenza. Are the Government going to act promptly, given that the fundamentals are in place since Covid-19 has been dealt with?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that question. There is a lot of innovation in vaccines. Over the years, we have seen combined vaccinations, and some places have moved away from vaccinations to orals or to not necessarily needing vaccinations at all. I am aware of that, and I would be very happy to write to my noble friend with more details.

Sugar Reduction Programme: Bread

Lord Suri Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

On the direct question that the noble Baroness asked, I will have to go back to find out more and will write to her. The Government are very keen on some campaigns that she will be aware of, such as the Better Health campaign, launched in July 2020. In January 2022 it took over from Change4Life. We now have the NHS Food Scanner app; with a quick scan of a barcode, families can see how much sugar, saturated fat and salt is in their everyday food and drink. There is also a campaign on on-demand video, as well as on YouTube, and we encourage people to download the app from the App Store or Google Play. More campaign resources are available, and I am sure that noble Lords would like to help promote them.

[Lord Suri (Con)]

My Lords, the staple food of many people’s day is bread. The sugar content in the average slice of processed bread varies but can be up to 3 grams. Sugar is formed naturally in the baking process, but it is often added into it. The benefits of adding sugar are favourable for the bread-making process but not for the people consuming it. Bread can be baked without adding sugar and, yes, that will indeed alter its texture, taste, freshness and the speed of its rise. If we look at the ancient history of bread, we see that making it uses grain and wheat flour; chapatis, naans and numerous Middle Eastern flatbreads usually do not have sugar added. These recipes are healthy and are still being consumed today. Health is wealth; take care of it.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

Right. I begin by thanking my noble friend for that very comprehensive question. As I said earlier, some sugar is needed in the process, but he makes an important point about how we reduce the unneeded additional sugar that is added. I have already given the reasons why there is some sugar, and no doubt the chemical processes will be improved over time: as mankind’s innovation and ingenuity increase, we will see more substitutes for sugar. I was also interested in the point made by the noble Lord about chapatis; next time I go to a restaurant I will ask about their sugar content.

Long Covid

Lord Suri Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The NHS is working with the wider scientific community to better understand both Covid-19 and its long-term health impacts. The £50 million in research is to understand, first, the actual condition—and, as I said earlier, it is not necessarily a medical condition—and how we map and treat it. In addition, we have had 22 research studies to examine the cause of long Covid, to diagnose the condition and to optimise the design of healthcare systems. A lot of this has been done by the National Institute for Health and Care Research, which continues to welcome applications for further research.

[Lord Suri (Con)]

My Lords, long Covid must be taken seriously, as it is a sickness that has different degrees of symptoms for everyone recovering from coronavirus. Although most people recover quickly, there are those who have symptoms which last weeks or months after the infection has gone. There is also a burden on the people who must look after, and take care of, those suffering from long Covid, as it impacts people across all age groups. I request that Her Majesty’s Government take the necessary steps for research into long Covid so that people do not continue to suffer for such lengthy periods following the infection stage.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right that we must take this seriously. This is why, first, we have tried to map it to the three medical conditions I mentioned earlier: acute Covid-19, ongoing symptomatic Covid-19 and post-Covid-19 syndrome. We are also looking at the WHO definition, which defines post-Covid-19 condition as the condition that

“occurs in people who have a history of probable or confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection; usually within three months from the onset of COVID-19, with symptoms … that last for at least two months”

and which

“cannot be explained by an alternative diagnosis.”

In my meetings with other Health Ministers from across the world, they want to learn from us what we are doing on long Covid and how we can co-operate better.

St George’s Hospital: Patient Deaths

Lord Suri Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The noble Baroness clearly draws on her own experience of this. First, we have to wait for all the coroners’ inquests to finish; I think 36 have been completed at the moment. There will then be reviews, to which there is a statutory guideline on when they have to be responded to. However, it is also important to recognise the differences between the coroners’ inquests and the work of the independent mortality review, which was not undertaken to determine the cause of death in individual cases or attribute blame to individual clinicians—it was looking at a number of procedures.

[Lord Suri (Con)]

My Lords, it is nice of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, to put this Question to the House. It is a very serious matter that patient deaths at St George’s Hospital were unnecessary. Having digested the comments, we must take the appropriate steps so that such negligence is not repeated. Hospitals are meant to save the lives of patients, not end them. Human life is very important.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My noble friend makes very important points which I am sure many noble Lords will agree with. It is about understanding what went wrong in places and learning from that. NHS England and Improvement is committed to improving the standard of patient safety investigations. It set up a new patient safety investigations team; as many noble Lords will know, HSSIB and a number of other panels and investigations are also looking to learn. In addition, NHS England and Improvement will have to respond to the coroners’ reports.

NHS: Targets

Lord Suri Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Suri (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for this opportunity to consider opportunities to improve the NHS and get waiting times down. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for securing the time for us to discuss these issues.

There is little doubt that outcomes in the NHS have been slipping. In particular, NHS England has under- performed on the four-hour accident and emergency waiting time target for some time and November saw the worst performance since records began. Some of the issues driving this are essentially secular and will not simply dissipate. This is in no way due to the NHS staff, who always impress me with their attention and care.

There is a general understanding that the greatest pressure on the NHS is the increased care burden of an ageing society. This comes across in higher numbers of operations, but nowhere more so than in adult social care. Without better social care provision, the elderly will continue to recover in hospital rather than in the community and waiting lists will increase. Adult social care has become a lingering issue that previous Governments have been unwilling or unable to address. When a new funding system was proposed in 2017, the policy had to be walked back within a few days. This underlines the weakness of creating a lasting settlement without some sense of cross-party approach. Indeed, to create institutions that last there needs to be an understanding by all parties that the need must be met, as occurred at the founding of the NHS itself.

It is for this reason that I welcome the second of the Government’s points for the forthcoming social care proposals, to

“urgently seek a cross-party consensus in order to bring forward the necessary proposals and legislation”.

I hope that all English opposition parties will recognise that this is an existential issue and play a constructive role in shaping a lasting consensus. For many in opposition, this is a real chance to leave a legacy not normally achievable for parties out of power.

The real issue to resolve will be funding a more extensive care system. The sums involved are substantial but the gains must be remembered. Shorter waiting lists, more available beds and fewer unpaid carers will make a large combined contribution and free up some capacity in the public and private sectors. The Government have committed to making sure that nobody will have to sell their home to afford care. This is a sensible first step, but there must be an equitable element to the system.

The Barker commission gave serious thought to making those above pension age pay national insurance contributions and Sir Andrew Dilnot suggested to the Economic Affairs Committee of this House that the current exemption was a “major distortion” in the tax system. The exemption should be reviewed, alongside the current range of pension benefits, which may need to be means tested to deliver additional savings, including the winter fuel allowance.

Ultimately, without increased contributions from the elderly, any new system will be doomed to unsustainability as the proportion of working-age citizens to retirees increases. Other forms of wealth taxation will also need to be explored, including higher capital gains taxes on transfers of wealth. It will not be easy, but I am convinced that with a collegiate attitude and a real effort, a path forward is possible.