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Public Health (England)

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his achievement. It is nice to know that we agree on that anyway. I wonder what the reaction of other people has been to the hon. Gentleman’s weight loss. People did not come up to me and say, ““Well done. Great.”” They gave me a funny look and said, ““Are you all right?”” They thought I was ill with a wasting disease or something. Everyone wants to lose weight, but when somebody does, people think that the person is ill. It is strange. I have shown that I was not ill, and I am not ill now. I am so much more active, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman feels the same. I am fitter, and I do not have the tiredness and aches and pains that I used to have. I have been able to pursue my hobby of walking up mountains and managed to reach the highest peak in north Africa. In the summer, I finally achieved my goal of getting to a 20,000 ft peak in the Andes. I put the picture of myself standing on Mount Toubkal on my last election address to show my electorate that I was fit and not dying. People talk about exercise, but I just walk. I always walk up escalators. If we want to see the problem in the country, we need only look at the people who stand on escalators when they could walk up them, or who use lifts instead of stairs. Exercise is good, but I am told that to burn off a cheeseburger, fries and a shake one must walk nine miles. I was lucky: I had someone who helped me to focus on my aim to lose weight; not everyone is that lucky. Today, I want to focus on the food that we eat. We need to change the food that we eat and the amount that we eat. The food industry and retailers have a huge role to play. They are not doing enough, and I question the commitment of some of them to helping us solve the obesity problem. Why do I say that? Every year, for many years, I have gone along to Tesco’s computers for schools presentations. Last year, it occurred to me that collecting computers for schools tokens was an incentive to buy more food, so I suggested to Tesco that perhaps it should build in an additional incentive by giving extra vouchers if people bought fruit and vegetables. I also put the idea to the Minister of State, Department of Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) in a parliamentary question. There was a little publicity, and Tesco’s initial response was that it did not believe in straitjacketing its customers, which was not very helpful. When I eventually received Sir Terry Leahy’s response in a letter, it was full of what I call healthy food-speak waffle; it did not say anything at all. Tesco refused to take up that sensible and reasonable idea. In the meantime, I received a letter from Sainsbury’s saying that it operated precisely such a scheme for its sports equipment vouchers. I therefore congratulate Sainsbury’s, and say, ““Shame on Tesco”” in that respect. I began to suspect whether some companies were serious about tackling obesity. My suspicions have increased since the recent debacle over food labelling. It is important to be able to see the label on food. I used to look at the percentage of fat per 100 g. That helped me, but the information is not prominent; it is in small print and not easy to follow. I was delighted when the Food Standards Agency brought out the traffic light system. It sends a simple, clear and strong message because it gives fat, sugar and salt the red light, and we need to do that if we are to change what we eat, which we must do. One can go into small convenience stores on the way home in the evening and find that all they have are things such as crisps and Munchies. There is no fresh food. The people in them say, ““That’s what our customers want””, but customers will react to the red traffic lights and want different things. On the same day as the traffic light system was launched, the Food and Drink Federation launched its guideline daily amounts. It is a recipe for confusion. Sadly, I think that it was deliberately planned by certain food companies and food retailers as an attempt to undermine the Food Standards Agency scheme. The GDA boxes require quite a high level of intelligence to understand. Having been a teacher, I have a good idea of what can generally be understood and it takes very good mental arithmetic to keep a tally of all the percentages of fat, salt and sugar. It probably needs a calculator and one would have to write it down in a book. That will not achieve anything. In addition, there are different guideline daily amounts for men and women and different types of people. When people from the Food and Drink Federation came to the House, they made a slick and hard-selling presentation. They held up a bottle of ketchup and said that the problem with the red traffic light system is that it is all based on percentage per 100 g, but people never put 100 g of ketchup on their food, so it is rubbish. But people do eventually eat 100 g of ketchup; it does not matter whether they put it on all at once or over a week. That is where the federation is wrong. It brought its range of produce along with it. We need to change that produce. If people see red traffic lights and change what they ask for, customers will give food manufacturers a different message and we will end up with better food in our shops.