Ashley Dalton

Ashley Dalton

Labour — West Lancashire

Speaking in the House of Commons on 15 May 2025

Debate

World Asthma Day

Contribution

Yes, I will come to many of those issues. As I was saying, NHS England is piloting a digital annual asthma check, which, if successful, will mean that fewer people miss that valuable check and will keep the monitoring of their asthma up to date. The Lib Dem spokesperson, the hon. Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller), asked about the public health grant. The grant has been increased and local directors of public health are best placed to identify where to target resources in their communities. As I have said, the 10-year health plan will be published next month. It will cover all conditions and will consider lung health. I have talked about the stakeholder engagement that was really important in that, and I can guarantee that, with the 10-year strategic plan for the NHS, we will look right across the board at how we can make sure that all conditions get due consideration. During our short interruption, I was able to get a little more information for the shadow Minister on FeNO. Wessex Academic Health Science Network has created a FeNO rapid uptake product delivery toolkit, which is providing downloadable tools and resources to support NHS organisations with the adoption and implementation of FeNO testing to improve outcomes. Anyone can access that toolkit, which contains case studies of best practice identified through the programme. I hope that is helpful. On the changes to NHS England, we are abolishing NHS England in itself, but none of its functions is disappearing. We are working really closely across the Department and NHS England, as well as with our ICB colleagues, to ensure that all services are transferred in an appropriate way. The purpose of the changes is to make things as efficient and targeted as possible and to ensure that they get to the people who need them the most. Ensuring that community diagnostic centres are supported is really important to the Government, as it is very much part of one of our three shifts: from hospital to community. Those shifts—the other two are from sickness to prevention and from analogue to digital—are at the very heart of the 10-year plan. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford for bringing forward the debate. I am sure that he would agree that World Asthma Day is not just for raising awareness; it should also be a celebration of the great things that people with asthma have accomplished. I did not know this until I saw the research for this debate, but past asthmatics have included Dickens, Disraeli and Beethoven. If those examples seem archaic, I can also point to Harry Styles, Jessica Alba and David Beckham, as well as to many prominent Olympic medallists. People with asthma achieve great things. It is our job in this place to help them to reach their full potential, with a particular focus on addressing how respiratory conditions affect people in deprived communities.

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