Member

Almost 20 years ago in the other place, I led a very lonely campaign—in fact, I was the only Member of Parliament who was interested in it—for the fortification of basic foodstuffs with folic acid, to prevent the almost entirely preventable tragedy of hydrocephalus and spina bifida. I did that with the support of my local charity, then called the Association for Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus, or ASBAH, which subsequently became the charity called Shine. I got an enormous amount of support from that charity—and, lo and behold, through many public health Ministers, many different Governments and many different spending rounds, 17 years later or thereabouts we actually achieved our aim to have those foodstuffs fortified to prevent those tragedies.