Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe: My Lords—
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe: Is the Minister aware from his previous experience that there are 12-step recovery programmes available for both overeaters and undereaters? Is he aware that there is an all-party parliamentary group advocating and pressing for these to be extended over a wider area? This is particularly because they are free. If so, would he be prepared to meet the group and talk about what such programmes...
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Allan, for his Motion to Regret and for the excellent way in which he presented it, and to all other speakers who have contributed. I feel sorry for the Minister. He is one of several Ministers we have seen since 2015, since the Conservatives have been totally in charge of government, and, during that period, of course, we have seen obesity...
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe: To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to use more trained therapists to ease the backlog of NHS patients with mental health problems.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe: To ask His Majesty's Government whether they will revise school meal food standards to ensure that guidelines on children's recommended maximum daily sugar intake are displayed.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe: My Lords, I welcome the plan and hope that the Government can keep to the targets they have set. I had experience of being in a major London hospital recently, spending five hours in A&E. It was the first time I had been in A&E for a long time. I was surprised at the number of young people there. When eventually I was seen by a nurse, I asked why so many young people were there. She said,...
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe: My Lords, I generally welcome the Bill and I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for the great work she has done. In the Bill, I particularly welcome the movement towards greater protection for children than we have had hitherto. I share the concern of the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, that there may be difficulties, including the age-verification system, which was raised by the...
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe: Does the Minister agree that one of our problems is that the current council tax structure is well past its sell-by date and needs changing? In those circumstances, and building on the noble Lord’s suggestion about a referendum, would they permit a council to run a referendum for a restructuring of its council tax?
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe: To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the establishment by the Times of the Times Health Commission on 15 January.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that quite positive reply but, first, given our long history of political failure to tackle the increasingly serious care and health problems facing the country, will the Government set out in more detail what support they will give to this initiative? Secondly—this is perhaps more difficult for the Minister—will he seek support from his...
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe: To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they have any plans to increase the top rate of the new alcohol duty bands, forecasted to take effect from August 2023.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her reply but she seems to have missed the Question; the Question is about the top band, and she made no mention at all of that. The reality is that a new system is coming in, which I generally welcome, that will actually yield less tax to the Government—which is a surprise, given that we cannot pay nurses enough but are not taking the taxes that...
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe: My Lords, I regret that we are having the strikes; I speak with some background in the trade union movement. I urge the Government to be careful. They have had great difficulties in dealing with climate change demonstrators—it is extraordinarily easy these days to disrupt the operation of business in this country. I do not know what the Government would do if they set their minimum levels...
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe: My Lords, I am grateful to the House for allowing me to nip in quickly. I just want to express a few words of thanks. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for introducing the debate and, as usual, for being provocative on what is needed much more from the Government these days and which seems to be absent—some attention to common sense. So many of our policies seem to go awry and we...
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe: To ask His Majesty's Government when they will publish the fourth and final report from their Sugar Reduction Programme.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe: To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Home Office Introducing Public Health Measures Impact Assessment 2019, published on 4 July 2019, which found that the Cardiff Model for violence reduction would cut the costs of violence by £858 million over 10 years if five per cent of Community Service Partnerships implemented it, what plans they have to extend its use throughout (1)...
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe: To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have (1) to review the proposed new alcohol duty bands, and (2) to increase the top band, so that the reforms will increase the yield to the Exchequer rather than reduce it, as presently forecast.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe: Given that we now have the world-leading position of having the earliest onset of type 2 diabetes among our children, leading all countries in the world, whether you are having a free meal or not, what is the Government going to do about the quality of the meals being served, which are abysmal?