Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-03-16
Topic: Health
Colin Moynihan (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I thank the Minister for meeting yesterday with the noble Baronesses, Lady Morris of Yardley and Lady Grey-Thompson, the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and me to discuss this important amendment. We were all grateful for the sympathetic hearing we had. We are also grateful to the Bill team and particularly to Jamie Blackshaw, the lead of the physical activity team at OHID The Government immediately raised a number of concerns about our amendment. We readily accept the wishes of Ministers in the department that, instead of the office for health promotion, it should be called the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities. We completely understand the motivation behind that and totally accept it I will also respond to the second concern that the amendment could be read as if we were taking away the mandate of OHID, when we were talking about focusing on a national plan for sport and recreation and calling it the office for health promotion. That was never our intention, and it was good to have the opportunity to clarify that yesterday. The intention is that OHID should continue to undertake all its admirable functions in full. I hope it succeeds in that objective. Importantly, it should add to that accountability to Parliament for a national plan for sport, health and well-being The noble Lord, Lord Willis, chaired the National Plan for Sport and Recreation Committee, which recently reported on a national plan for sport, health and well-being. There was a good response to that from the Government and we were pleased when, yesterday, the Minister underlined his commitment to many of the recommendations we made. We certainly will not raise them again this evening We simply focus on the importance of hearing from the Minister about the health promotion task force. It may not be inaccurate to say that we have had, or appear to have had, a first win, as a result of the work of the Select Committee, in recognising that there needs to be a co-ordinating activity within government for sport, health and well-being to come together to tackle obesity, low levels of activity and the problems that so many children face coming out of Covid. We believe the health promotion task force may be able to achieve many of the objectives that we set out in the committee and that, ideally, should have ministerial responsibility. There should be somebody driving that Sport tends to be on the touchline of Whitehall when it comes to policy co-ordination. We must ensure that we have somebody of the calibre of, say, Tracey Crouch, who has done so much good work in bringing together sport, health and well-being, as New Zealand does with its Deputy Prime Minister. It would be an admirable benefit to Government if they considered somebody of her ability, experience and respect to draw the work of the health promotion taskforce together It is important tonight not to rehearse any of the arguments we made in earlier deliberations on this Bill. High levels of inactivity, especially among women, ethnic minorities and disabled people, is of epidemic proportions in the UK. Nobody believes we can avoid the importance of cross-departmental policy co-ordination. Virtually every department of state now has an interest in sport, health and well-being. Unlike when I was a Minister when it was on the fringes of government, 30 years ago, today it is central to government policy. It needs the full weight of government behind it and that push must include education—we need to enhance the value of PE and teacher training time devoted to PE—as well as health, in addressing the obesity epidemic. It has to back up the outstanding work of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, in delivering a serious and robust approach to duty of care and safeguarding in sport I end by asking the Minister a number of questions. It looks as if the health promotion task force that is due to be established can achieve many of the objectives that the Select Committee and the four of us set out in earlier deliberations on the Bill. Is that the case? Does the Minister believe that the health promotion task force has the strength and remit to achieve those objectives?