King Annette: Health (Protection) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKing Annette: Health (Protection) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 27 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:4075. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): Labour supports this bill the Health (Protection) Amendment Bill. We support this bill. The amendments come from the Public Health Bill which was introduced by me quite a number of years ago. When the Minister of Health said that he had an unwavering commitment to good health well I can say that 7 or 8 years ago so did we. Unfortunately we have had to wait some time for this to become a big enough priority for the Government to bring into this House. I am very pleased we are now on the second reading because there has been concern that the current legislation does not fully support public health practices. That has been articulated by those who work in public health and those who have worked in public health agencies over a very sustained period of time. We realise these concerns. In fact there are many more amendments that do need to be made that are in the Public Health Bill which still sits on the Order Paper and perhaps the Government may like to lift a few more things out of that bill and proceed with them.This bill does give effect to the Government’s decision in October 2013 to improve the range of measures available to protect the public from the harm associated with infectious diseases and with artificial UV tanning. I think the Minister probably pretty clearly set out the aim of the bill and just briefly it is to increase the range of infectious diseases that are notifiable to the medical officer of health without identifying the information of the patient or the diseased person. As the Minister said this includes HIV gonorrhoea and syphilis. It also improves the management of persons with infectious diseases by providing new management options including directions issued by the medical officer of health court orders urgent health risk orders and interventions. It strengthens legislative provisions for contact tracing of people who may have an infectious disease and this bill introduces a ban on the provision of commercial artificial UV tanning services to people under 18 years of age.I just do want to correct the Minister—maybe he had not been informed—it was not a unanimous decision of the Health Committee that we would only ban commercial UV tanning services for people under 18. In fact there is a minority report provided from Labour the Greens and New Zealand First and I will get to that in a moment. I do want to say however that I am really pleased at the way the Health Committee is working under the chairmanship of Mr Simon O’Connor. I thought that we had a very good chair in Dr Paul Hutchison and we worked very well together. I have to say that Mr O’Connor is shaping up to be a very good and open chair.The work that was done on this bill I think is commendable because when you look at the number of amendments that have been made they were made—with the exception of UV tanning services—through listening to the submissions that came from the public. Also I think a very good contribution was made by Kevin Hague who because of his background and the work that he had done in many different spheres but particularly working for the AIDS Foundation was very helpful in helping us make some of these amendments.I do not want to go through all the amendments we made. Anyone reading the bill would see that the select committee improved the bill by the amendments we made. But I do want to look at the amendment relating to privacy and identifications of persons. We have recommended that the changes here will ensure that the information collected by the new Part 3A “Management of infectious diseases” is to be used or disclosedonly under the provision of the Health Act. This is to encourage individuals to provide private information without fear of inappropriate disclosure. I think it is really important that the fear that something about a person could somehow be made public is recognised. I think that we have amended that so we make that a lot stronger. Also with regard to identifying information it does allow the sex date of birth and the National Health Index number of a person with a notifiable disease to be disclosed. That will assist medical officers of health with disease surveillance.The only other point I want to mention is in the whole area of appeals. I want to pay credit to Kevin Hague for raising this issue and getting an amendment up which would never have happened in the way it did if we had the previous Minister of Health Tony Ryall. Although Dr Coleman is not here to hear this little bit of praise I may give him—and this will be a very rare occasion—Dr Coleman was sent the suggested amendment that was made within the committee as we were deliberating. It was an amendment made by Kevin Hague that enabled a person to be able to make an appeal to the High Court about a District Court’s decision on an order part of an order a variation of an order or an extension of an order. It gave a proper appeal process which was not in the original bill. When we came to an agreement on it it was sent to the Minister of Health and the Minister of Health responded within a very short time and accepted the amendment. I say sincerely that I do not believe that we would have got the same response having been through a number of bills under the previous Minister.However I do want to express my real disappointment—and I actually even think that most members on the committee share this disappointment—that we could not get the Government to agree to ban commercial UV tanning services in New Zealand. You see we are a Health Committee and we do like to base our decisions on good evidence. That is what we must do. We must look at the evidence and we must then say: “What is the best we can do for the public health of New Zealand?”. The Minister said: “These changes we’re making are proportionate to risk.” Well that does not apply I have to say to the banning of UV tanning services which applies only to those under 18.I would like to say why. The World Health Organization classified sunbeds as a carcinogenic in 2009. It estimates that sunbed use before the age of 35—not 18 but before the age of 35—increases the risk of melanoma by 75 percent. Can I repeat that: sunbed use before the age of 35 increases the risk of melanoma by 75 percent. Skin cancer is one of the most common forms of cancer affecting New Zealanders. Each year over 2000 new melanoma cases are identified and on average 325 New Zealanders die from melanoma every year.Sunbed operators at the Health Committee—and we hadonly one submission I think that we heard; only one came along to support it—claimed that artificial UV tanning beds are an important source of vitamin D. Well the Ministry of Health the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research the World Health Organization senior dermatologists and the Commerce Commission argued that short-wave UVB rays which are rays that reach the outer layer of your skin from commercial use pose a cancer risk that far outweighs any minor vitamin D benefits. The overwhelming majority of submitters were opposed to the commercial use of these sunbed services.In fact Australia which does not often beat us in terms of public health in many health measures has banned them. It can see that they are of no benefit. We are now going to rely on some sort of code. Unfortunately there was very recently on 8 May an undercover surveillance of tanning salons undertaken by Consumer New Zealand and it uncovered that more than 40 percent of the 60 sunbed operators it visited failed to implement safety checks such as checking the customer’s age asking them to sign a consent form and providing information on the dangers of UV exposure. One operator allowed a 14-year-old to use a sunbed.We do not believe this bill has gone far enough. This was the opportunity for us to ban the commercial use. We cannot stop what people do in their own homes; that is up to them. But there is absolutely no benefit from the commercial use of sunbeds. There is high risk presented to New Zealanders. I just feel that many members on the committee felt the same way as we did but were unable to do anything about it. So although we support the bill we want to strongly stress that during the Committee stage we will be introducing a Supplementary Order Paper to ban the commercial use of sunbeds.