Health Council, 8 June (Hansard, 16 June 1999)

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Baroness Hayman)

My right honourable friend the Minister of State for Public Health attended the Health Council on 8 June in Luxembourg, on behalf of the United Kingdom.

The Council reached political agreement on the draft recommendation on limitation of exposure of the general public to electromagnetic fields. This will be adopted at a future Council, subject to the lifting of the UK's parliamentary scrutiny reserve. The Council also adopted resolutions on antibiotic resistance and on future Community action in the field of public health and held an initial exchange of views on priorities and resources for the latter. It also adopted Conclusions on health protection requirements in Community policies. The Commission reported on the progress of the European Union/United States Task Force on Communicable Diseases and on the Community's own communicable diseases surveillance network. The Commission also presented a paper on health and enlargement, following which the Council went into an informal session to which Health Ministers from the accession candidate countries had been invited. They identified common health problems, particularly increased levels of communicable diseases, smoking, and drug and alcohol misuse. In formal session again, the Commission said that publication of its report on the state of migrants' health in the Community would be delayed to include the health needs of refugees in the 25WA light of the Kosovo crisis. Both the Commission and Belgium gave an oral update on the current situation following the contamination of food with dioxins in Belgium. After an oral report from the Commission on Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies in the Community, the UK updated the Council on the number of cases of variant Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease in the UK. The Council also stated its support for the World Health Organisation's "Tobacco Free Initiative".