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Health: Obesity

My Lords, I am grateful for this opportunity to contribute to this debate by speaking in the gap. I participated in a debate earlier in the week, but it was somewhat curtailed by the weather and I was unable to pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Pendry. His contribution to young people and, above all, to sport and recreation, through a long and distinguished political career is, without doubt, outstanding, as was his contribution to the debate this afternoon. His assessment of the subject of obesity characteristically focused with equal weight on diet and medical treatment on the one hand, and on activity levels through sport and recreation on the other. As he knows, I firmly believe that an Olympics sports legacy from London 2012 must reach far wider than the confines of the Olympic park and the satellite venues. I declare an interest as chairman of the British Olympic Association, a director of the organising committee for the Games and a member of the International Olympic Committee’s international relations committee. I shall confine my brief comments to London. To tackle obesity in London, we must transform the landscape for Londoners by improving access to improved sport and recreational faculties at an affordable cost. As a starting point, what is required is for government to introduce a much needed statutory requirement to ensure adequate provision of facilities for sport and recreation in England and Wales. In Scotland, where such legislation exists, the per capita funding for sport is £46; in England, where local authorities are under no such obligation and are struggling to meet their statutory requirements, it is no surprise that the per capita spend is £19. Working with Kate Hoey and her London Community Sports Board, of which I declare membership, we are seeking to make a small difference by delivering a genuine grass-roots legacy for sport in London. The facts provided by the Government’s Active People Survey make disturbing reading for Londoners. Only one-fifth of Londoners regularly take part in sport and while the most recent results, published last month, show a slight increase on the previous year, participation in sport still remains significantly lower than it was on the day that London was awarded the 2012 Games. We have, I believe, only one 50-metre swimming pool in operation. Almost half of London's adult population does no activity at all. Participation rates for disabled people are less than 10 per cent. One in six Londoners is obese. On current trends and without a major increase in facilities, 50 per cent of Londoners are predicted to be obese by 2050. More seriously, in many respects, one of five London children is obese, and one in three is in the category of obese or overweight, which is significantly higher than in England as a whole. In short, we need action. We need to build a London-wide programme to deliver on the four goals identified by the mayor in his 2008 plan for increasing participation. They are: get more people active; transform the sporting infrastructure; build capacity and skills; and maximise the benefits of sport to our society by recognising its immense value as a tool for tackling crime and promoting community cohesion, as well as improving health and contributing towards tackling obesity. These are key objectives in the challenge to deliver a true Olympic sports legacy for the country.