Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on his appointment to the Front Bench and the noble Lord, Lord Trees, on his very comprehensive introduction to the debate. I also welcome to the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, back to good health and to the Chamber; she made a very important speech today. When we were a member of the European Union, we benefited from sharing with other members measures to...
Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, I will be brief. I will start by thanking my noble friend Lord Goddard for his excellent introduction to this debate, and I support his call for an integrated review of fire services. I also add my name to the tributes to David Amess and to all the very brave firefighters; luckily for me I have never had to call on their services and I hope it never happens, but it is a great...
Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, for her “canter around the issues”, as she put it to me the other day. I have always believed that there are very many ways of being human and that we should bear that in mind when dealing with anyone who travels a different path from our own and treat all with equal respect. This applies to gender identity and sexuality as well as every...
Baroness Walmsley: As to why it takes so long, is it because the UK is insisting on new field trials and new trials and tests, rather than accepting the ones that were deemed adequate when the products were first authorised?
Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing these regulations. They seem to me to be another last-minute sticking plaster to protect farmers and our food security from the damage done by the UK’s botched exit from the European Union. As we have heard, the instrument allows seeds treated with plant protection products, which have been authorised in at least one EEA member state before 31...
Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, on his excellent introductory speech. He hit all the nails very firmly on the head. As the NHS reaches its 75th year, it is a very different and much larger beast than when it started out. The challenges are not just greater but different. On the upside, to a great extent we have conquered infectious diseases through...
Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, I will follow on the Minister’s answer to the question from the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. Given that we already have houses built on flood plains and that there will probably be more, what are the Government doing to mandate resilient design—he hinted that other countries have done that—and to retrofit houses that have already been built there? Things can be...
Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, the Minister will be aware of the good work being done by Gavi on vaccination across the world. However, is he aware that Gavi is now aware of the link between vaccination effectiveness and nutrition in children? Undernourished children do not have as beneficial a response to the vaccination as they should. That is why Gavi has now linked the two things in its campaigning. Will the...
Baroness Walmsley: To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the conclusion of the recent editorial by over 200 global health journals in The Lancet of 25 October, that the climate and nature crisis is “a global health emergency”; and what plans they have to address this.
Baroness Walmsley: As the Minister has indicated, the relationship between climate change and health is complex. I ask him, however, about action on heat stress here in the UK. The Lancet’s latest report on the issue indicated that heat stress deaths are predicted to increase by 370%. Here in the UK last year, heat stress deaths increased by 42%. Can the Minister say what action the Government are taking to...
Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, I too thank the Minister for the tone of his introduction to this debate, but a King’s Speech is an opportunity for a Government to take stock of progress towards their objectives. One might therefore have expected that this Government would have looked at their earlier manifesto promises when drafting the gracious Speech and considering whether their 13-year tenure had in fact...
Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, I agree with every word of the noble Baroness’s excellent speech, as noble Lords will hear. We humans have evolved, along with our diets and our gut microbiome, over millennia. Ultra-processed foods, however, are the new kids on the block, and their availability and ubiquity in our diets correspond exactly to the increase in diet-related diseases. Figures show that 60% of the UK...
Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, the Minister has clearly noticed the care taken by both players and officials during the Rugby World Cup to avoid head injury. However, there is no referee on behalf of women suffering brain injury during domestic violence. Will the Government support training programmes, such as those run by Headway, for professionals dealing with survivors and victims, and ensure that that...
Baroness Walmsley: To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the abandonment of mandatory food waste reporting on the cost of living.
Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, food is wasted and yet people go hungry. The Government’s target to reduce food waste by 50% by 2030 cannot be achieved without data. Despite 80% of respondents to the consultation being in favour of mandatory reporting, the Government have decided to scrap it, saying it would add cost, as the Minister has just said. But 99% of companies that invest in reducing food waste...
Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, mentioned the attrition rate among student nurses, but I understand that the attrition rate among student mental health nurses is even greater. That is a particularly challenging specialist course, and one of the problems is that very often the clinical placements are a long way from where the student nurse lives. Is there any programme of support...
Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, for the 4 million children in food poverty, the quality of their school lunch is crucial to their health and development. But the school food standard has not been reviewed since 2014, and nobody checks whether schools are adhering to it anyway. With so many children going hungry, is it not time that the standard of school food was brought up to date with the latest research on the...
Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, what assessment have the Government made of the increase in potential of both productivity and profitability for wind power companies to fit turbines to the base of their installations, where conditions allow, to take advantage of tidal energy, which provides a baseload. What support are the Government giving companies prepared to do that?