House of Lords

Questions
Asked by Earl Baldwin of Bewdley

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they intend to follow the recommendations by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics in its 2007 report Public Health: Ethical Issues that "Water fluoridation policy should be objectively reviewed by the UK health departments on a regular basis in light of the findings of ongoing monitoring and further research studies. Furthermore, the conclusions and their basis should routinely be published" [7.42]; and, if so, what mechanisms have been or are being set up to achieve those aims. [HL6998]

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Hunt of Kings Heath on 30 January 2001 (WA 55) and in respect of the guidance letter about water fluoridation from the Chief Dental Officer to Strategic Health Authorities and others (Gateway 9361) in February 2008, why (a) no reference was made under "Benefits of fluoridation" or in Appendix 1 to the York report's explicit criticisms of the quality of evidence relating to all aspects of fluoridation, and (b) there was no corresponding section "Harms of fluoridation" to address the incidence of dental fluorosis in children found by York.[HL6999]



28 Feb 2011 : Column WA229


The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe): We will be reviewing policy in the light of the recent High Court judgment, which upheld the decision of the South Central Strategic Health Authority to fluoridate Southampton and parts of south-west Hampshire. In our review we will also consider any relevant research published since the letter that the Chief Dental Officer published in February 2008 and the comments that the noble Earl has made on the letter.

Asked by Earl Baldwin of Bewdley

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the statements on the website of the National Fluoride Information Centre that naturally and artificially fluoridated water have "exactly the same" effect upon the teeth and body, and in the February 2008 letter about water fluoridation from the Chief Dental Officer to Strategic Health Authorities and others (Gateway 9361) that "no evidence for any differences" in effect were found, take account of the article Bioavailability of Fluoride in Drinking Water: a Human Experimental Study by Maguire et al in the Journal of Dental Research (84 (11): 989-993, 2005), and the criticisms of that study by Professors Sheldon and Holgate in the same journal in January 2008 (87(1):8).[HL7000]

Earl Howe: This a complex area of research on which all well informed contributions are welcome, but we accept the conclusion reached by Dr Maguire and colleagues that "there was no statistically significant difference between artificially fluoridated and naturally fluoridated water".

They would accept Dr Maguire's conclusion when anybody looking at can see it's based on a few short months with a few students and even then they had one student with such a different result they ignored it.