Julia Buckley

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec. It is incredible to see that more than 121,000 people signed John Story’s powerful petition, which has enabled today’s debate. I am here to give two clear messages. My first message is to apologise to local campaigners, particularly Mandy Hudson, who wrote to me about the need for this testing. I wrote back to indicate my support for the campaign, but I also gave information about the Government’s investment in both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. That caused unnecessary hurt to families and sufferers of type 1 diabetes. Such is the divergence between the two conditions—their causes, symptoms and treatments—that some campaigners told me that they wished it had been given a completely different name. The stigma and lifestyle cause of type 2 is irrelevant to the sufferer of type 1 diabetes. Following my correspondence with the families, I wrote to the Secretary of State for Health personally to reiterate my support for simple testing, but also to lodge a plea for separate messaging and communication plans for each disease. My second message is the story of yet another family who fell victim to the lack of testing for and knowledge of type 1 diabetes in children. I met Jack Harvey, dad to little Albie Harvey, who is now a 20-month old toddler in Shrewsbury. A few months ago, he became very unwell and was diagnosed by the GP with tonsillitis, but did not respond to antibiotics. His parents met three GPs and spoke twice to 111 over the course of 10 days, before taking Albie to A&E, where he finally got his blood sugar test. His sugars were 39.9 and his ketones were 6.9. Luckily, he was blue-lighted to Telford, his life was saved and he is now receiving excellent care under the diabetic team at Shrewsbury. I hope that the campaigners who have come all the way to London know that our Ministers are listening to the debate. Our new NHS plan is all about prevention and primary care. I am hopeful that we will listen to their message.