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Obesity

My Lords, with permission, I should like to repeat a Statement on obesity made in the other place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health. The Statement is as follows: ““The Chief Scientific Adviser and his Foresight team have today published the report, Tackling Obesities: Future Choices, which pulls together the latest evidence and expertise on this vital issue and seeks to answer the question: how can we deliver a sustainable response to obesity over the next 40 years? Foresight exists to challenge existing policy and this report is nothing if not challenging. The report predicts that, on current trends, by 2050, 60 per cent of men, 50 per cent of women and 26 per cent of children and young people will be obese. Incidents of type 2 diabetes are set to rise by 70 per cent; attacks of stroke by 30 per cent; and cases of coronary heart disease by 20 per cent. Obesity-related diseases will cost the nation an extra £45.5 billion a year. ““The implications for those individuals who are directly affected are profound. An obese young man who remains obese, as most are likely to do, will, on average, die 13 years younger than his peer group. However, this report is based on current trends. Our destiny need not be pre-ordained, and we can buck these trends provided that we are all prepared to take the necessary steps. Indeed, the work assembled for this project gives the UK a platform to become a global leader in tackling a problem that is challenging policy-makers across the world. ““In recent years, we have focused on child obesity. Sure Start children’s centres provide parents with high quality health advice in the crucial pre-school years. We now intend to start earlier still with the proposed nutritional grants for pregnant mothers. Over the past three years, the share of children on the school fruit and vegetable scheme who are eating five a day has increased from just over a quarter to just under a half. We have introduced tough new nutritional standards, are investing almost £100 million a year to improve school food and have added an entitlement to cooking lessons on the national curriculum. We have established the National Child Measurement Programme, which will provide the largest database of its kind in the world on children’s weight. ““In 2004, only half of all pupils did two hours of high quality PE and sport every week; today it is 86 per cent. We are now raising our sights so that every child has the chance of five hours of sport every week, backed by a further £100 million of additional investment. Working with the Food Standards Agency and the food industry, we have introduced front of pack labelling. We have worked with Ofcom to prohibit during children’s programmes television advertising of foods which are high in fat, salt and sugar. This was a bold measure, but we are determined to go further if the evidence supports the need to do so. We will therefore be reviewing the impact of the restrictions on the nature and balance of food promotion to all children, across all media. ““The Foresight report endorses interventions such as these, but argues for an even bolder approach. The report says that although personal responsibility is a crucial determinant of our body weight, our environment also plays a vital role. The chilling reality is that modern life makes us overweight. As Sir David King: "““We evolved in a world of relative food scarcity and hard physical work—now energy dense food is abundant and labour saving technologies abound””." Modern transport systems, sedentary jobs and convenience food make life more comfortable, but also lie at the heart of this dilemma. In a sense, we are victims of our economic success. The pace of technological revolution outstrips human evolution. Tackling this problem calls for a fundamental shift in approach. Although the report projects us forward 50 years, it does of course require action today. And many of the areas identified in the report cannot be tackled successfully by the Government alone. I hope this report will trigger the national debate that is essential if we are to rise to the challenge. ““The report highlights the responsibilities of employers to look after their employees’ health, which is not just in the interests of their staff, but is also in the interests of the business: enhancing performance and improving productivity. The report also shows how small changes to everyday routines can make a real difference. Employers might look at providing loans for bikes, not just season tickets; subsidising gym membership, not just canteens—even putting out fruit at meetings, rather than biscuits. But the report also points to more substantial measures; for instance, with the built environment. Local authorities must ensure that healthy living is built into the infrastructure of our towns and cities so that planning systems improve our health and well-being. ““The report examines the availability of and exposure to obesogenic food and drinks. Front of pack labelling is now increasingly prevalent, but industry has yet fully to embrace the colour coding system. There is emerging evidence that the FSA’s labelling system is more effective at informing consumers and I want to work with the industry to see this adopted, but this report underlines the expectation for change. I have also asked the Food Standards Agency to conduct an immediate investigation into the use of trans-fats to examine whether there is more we should ask the food industry to do in this area. ““The report talks about the importance of targeted public health interventions. There are regional disparities in the prevalence of obesity and I hope that primary care trusts will look at what more can be done to help obese people to achieve sustainable reductions in their weight through advice and training in health consumption and activity. Underpinning all of this is an acknowledgment that the Government must do more. We will develop a comprehensive cross-government strategy on obesity to respond to the evidence in this report. Because of the need for concerted action on a number of fronts, I will convene a cross-government ministerial group to guide our approach. We will continue to focus particularly on children. Over 80 per cent of obese 10 to 14 year-olds remain obese into adulthood. As part of the spending review, we have already set our ambition to reverse the growth in obesity so that by 2020 we reduce the proportion of overweight and obese children to the levels of 2000. ““Ensuring that our health service is as focused on prevention as it is on treatment is already a priority, and obesity epitomises the need for that change. In the past, tackling obesity has always been regarded as a matter of personal willpower but, as this report starkly demonstrates, people in the UK are not more gluttonous than previous generations and individual action alone will not be sufficient. ““Obesity is a consequence of abundance, convenience and underlying biology. Solutions will not be found in exhortations for greater individual responsibility or in what the report calls the futility of isolated initiatives. Let us begin the national debate here in Parliament today and let us use this report to forge the consensus that will allow the UK to pioneer the new long-term integrated approach that this issue requires. I commend this Statement to the House””. My Lords, that concludes the Statement.