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Combating Obesity

I listened carefully to the Minister of State, and I suppose that there was very little that I, or indeed anyone in the House, could disagree with. However, I am disappointed by the degree of seriousness that the Government attach to the subject. Those of us who become Members of Parliament do not, presumably, come here just to time-serve but to try to achieve something. For instance, when I was proud to pilot through the House the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act 2000, which tasked the Government with eliminating fuel poverty, I thought: ““Fantastic! Everyone is going to be warm in their homes and fuel poverty will be eliminated.”” I then found out—although there has been no publicity for this—that the Government took the definition of ““eradicate”” in the Act to a court of law, where its terms have been overturned despite our discussions and arguments in Committee. Throughout my time as a member of the Select Committee on Health, the finest report that we produced followed our inquiry into obesity. Of course, I would say that, because it was my idea to have the inquiry. We worked as a team under our excellent then-Chairman, David Hinchliffe, together with the current Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, who was then a member of the Committee, and my hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns), who was one of the leading lights in our inquiries. The reality is that the Health Committee triggered the national and international debate on obesity. I say that I am disappointed with the Government’s response so far because, as a Conservative, I am not into gesture politics. I said to my colleagues at the time that, as a nation, we need to be serious about obesity. Perhaps we are not serious and we want to fatten everyone up—if so, we are succeeding. As my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) said, the excellent briefing from the Library shows that of the OECD countries, Britain is second to America in the extent of obesity, and rapidly catching up. It is costing this nation £3.7 billion a year to treat people with ailments caused by obesity. Following its superb inquiry, the Health Committee produced a report, and I want the Minister to tell the House precisely how many of its recommendations the Government have implemented. When I participated in our questioning of the then Minister for Public Health, Melanie Johnson, her responses suggested that the Government were not going to do anything terribly tangible. I said:"““I am thinking about advertising, labelling calories on bottles of alcohol.””" Yes, there are calories in alcohol; I saw the Minister nodding when that was mentioned earlier. I went on:"““Is the Government really saying that it is an individual’s responsibility and no to legislation?””" Miss Johnson replied:"““We are not saying either of those things. What we are saying is that there needs to be a balance””." Later, I said to her:"““You have told the Chairman that obesity is at the top of the agenda in terms of public health.””" So where do we stand now? The Government have recently made two announcements, which, as ever, caught the headlines. The first concerned tackling childhood obesity. We had a great opportunity to do that when our report was published four years ago. Much as I applaud the fact that the four supermarkets are going to work together to tackle childhood obesity, I want to hear a little more from the Minister to convince me that this is not gesture politics and that there will be a sustained follow-up to that announcement. Then we had the healthy towns initiative. Will the Minister explain how those towns were chosen? Were they invited to bid? Do I need to tell off my own town of Southend for failing to put in a bid? It is a great idea, but are these pilot schemes, and how will the Minister decide whether they have been a success? We drew a number of conclusions in our report, saying finally:"““While we have tried wherever possible to take the food industry at its word, and seen it as ‘part of the solution’, we recommend that the Government reviews the situation in three years””—" it was published in 2004, so we were recommending that it be reviewed last year—"““and then decides if more direct regulation is required.””" On one of the Committee’s trips, we went to America, where we met people from all the big names in the food and drink industry. McDonald’s, Nestlé, Coca Cola—you name it, we met them. To a woman and to a man, they were in total denial that the responsibility was theirs. All they wanted to emphasise was physical activity. I do not want any of my colleagues to boo from a sedentary position, but I am an unashamed enthusiast for the Olympic games. The Minister for the Olympics is reported to have said at a dinner earlier this week that if we had known then what we know now, perhaps we would not have bid for them, but I am delighted that we are going to have them, because there will be a sustained focus on physical activity. We debated the legacy a couple of weeks ago. I hope that the physical activity will not end with the closing ceremony and that people will continue to run, jump, swim, dance and all the rest of it. That is splendid. We do not die if we do not take physical exercise, but we do if we do not drink and eat. The nature of the human beast is that we are all sinners. We all like to drink and we all like food. We like our taste buds to be triggered in some way or other. The key is to get the food and drink industry to take seriously the fat, salt and sugar content of the things that we eat and drink. In trying to get the supermarkets to agree on what we recommended in terms of traffic light labelling, we have ended with a shambles. It is no good having two systems—we are all very busy, and when we go round the supermarket the additives have to be clearly identified. I go back to what I said to Melanie Johnson during the inquiry. We now have a Labour Government who say that they do not want to have a nanny state nor do they want to tell people what to do. However, a general review has not worked—I am not even convinced that that is happening—and having targets has not worked. We need action and leadership from the Government. I want them to assure me that obesity is at the top of their health agenda, because I am not convinced that it is. There are no quick fixes, but what we have are all the gestures that the Government participate in, seemingly every six months or in a year. When the Select Committee visited a town in Europe, however, we saw a fantastic project—no motor vehicles were allowed in the town, and everyone was riding a bike. I suppose that it was a little bit like Cambridge. Since the publication of our report, I see no evidence that the Government have set any sustained target for wider involvement of the public. We had the BBC’s ““Fat Nation”” for a while, but we seem to be going in and out of the process of involvement. I applaud the latest two initiatives, but I want tangible leadership from the Government. If they had accepted every one of the Health Committee’s recommendations, the Minister of State would be able to stand at the Dispatch Box and say, ““We are actually treating this problem seriously and we are determined to defeat obesity.””