L

Lord Cryer (Lab)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 18 November 2024

Debate

NHS: Anti-obesity Medication

Contribution

I am grateful to the noble Lord, who makes a number of good points. He is mainly talking about the MHRA and NICE. The MHRA continuously works with national and international partners and agencies to monitor drugs and make sure that they are prescribed properly. He also touched on the problem of obesity, which I probably should have mentioned before. A majority of people in this country, certainly adults, are overweight, and 30% of adults live with obesity, leading to illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease and bladder problems—a whole range of problems that are perfectly preventable. But trying to persuade people to eat more healthily has not worked in the past, which is why we are going down the path that we are at the moment, with weight-management services and, in certain cases only, the prescription of drugs that are very closely monitored. The process that the drugs go through before they are available to the public is extremely rigorous.

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