Daniel Francis

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, as ever, Ms Lewell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Chris Bloore) for securing this debate and for his advocacy and hard work to ensure that children with allergies are kept safe at school. He has outlined the work required to assist them in their education. I have close friends in my constituency who have experienced with their children what my hon. Friends the Members for Redditch and for Clwyd East (Becky Gittins) described, so I thank them for their advocacy. I pay tribute to Allergy UK for its dedication in this area. In February, I visited its headquarters in Crayford in my constituency, in the deepest eastern part of south-east London. During my visit, I heard from an Allergy UK supporter who had benefited from its dietitian service for her young baby. I welcome Allergy UK’s campaign to introduce access to allergy dietitians through GP surgeries in each health region. I am pleased to be an Allergy UK champion, and I support it in its work to keep every person with an allergy across the UK safe. Keeping children safe at school is vital. Allergy UK estimates that 40% of children have been diagnosed with an allergy, and that one in 12 young children suffer from a food allergy. As we are all aware, food allergies can be devastating and, in the worst cases, deadly. It is therefore crucial that we ensure that teachers and training staff have the correct training and allergen awareness. For the worst-case scenarios, it is crucial that every staff member knows how to provide life-saving care and administer life-saving medication. We have all heard about and read heartbreaking stories of entirely avoidable deaths. I am sure that, with the correct training and equipment, many such situations could have ended entirely differently. I therefore welcome the ten-minute rule Bill that my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch will introduce next week, on 9 July, which would ensure that schools are required to maintain an allergy management policy, and would require allergy training for staff in schools. I believe those are vital measures to ensure that children are safeguarded and protected at school. If we implement those measures, parents will be able to send their children to school in the knowledge that their allergies will not hold them back from accessing a well-rounded and fulfilling education. Parents should not have to worry about their child receiving proper care and safeguarding when they send them off to school every morning, but too many parents of children with allergies worry every day that there may be traces of allergens in food and the school environment. As we know, children share food or could use someone else’s water bottle by mistake. It is therefore vital that the safety and medical risks are decreased by allergy awareness management and emergency response training provided to all education staff. I pay tribute to Allergy UK’s partnership with the Allergy Team, which has created essential allergy training for schools to help them confidently manage allergies and anaphylaxis to ensure a safer environment for all students and staff. Teachers need to be given the tools and skills they need to deal with medical emergencies quickly and calmly. Through that partnership, I hope schools will be safer for children with allergies. I once again thank my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch for securing this important debate. We have heard some truly tragic stories about too many children falling ill due to a lack of training or proper equipment on allergen control. I hope that, through this debate and my hon. Friend’s ten-minute rule Bill, we can ensure that the additional safeguarding that children with allergies require in schools is introduced.