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Diabetics

Volume 118: debated on Tuesday 30 June 1987

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2.

asked the Secretary of State for Social Services when free needles and syringes will be available to diabetics.

Re-usable syringes and needles are already available on prescription. As I announced on 14 May, disposable syringes and needles will be available on prescription from 1 September. Since diabetics who need insulin are exempt from all prescription charges, they will be free for adults as well as for children.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on making available the resources to bring about an improvement which will be of considerable benefit to many diabetics. Is he satisfied that by September sufficient supplies of the disposable equivalent will be available and that satisfactory arrangements will be made for the safe disposal of used needles?

Yes. It is because I wished to be sure on those two points that the system is being introduced a little later than I had originally hoped, but we have made arrangements which I am confident will be satisfactory.

Doubtless the Minister is aware that many thousands of carers now have to pay for syringes for those loved ones for whom they care. The carers tend to be poor women who cannot afford to pay. Was it not a mean act by the Government to announce at one and the same time the increase in prescription charges and the availability, albeit later, of free syringes? Was not the availability of the free syringes put in as a sweetener, as it were, to disguise the increase in prescription charges?

I am a bit puzzled by what the hon. Lady says. Syringes and needles are already free on prescription, but they are re-usable syringes and needles. We are substituting free provision of the more convenient and comfortable disposable syringes and needles. The hon. Lady's approach is typical of the mean-minded, nitpicking that we have heard from the Opposition recently.