Being active can help prevent and manage chronic conditions and diseases, including coronary heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, obesity, cancer, depression, and musculoskeletal conditions. It is also important for a range of other things, including energy balance, to maintain a healthy body weight, cognitive functioning, and sleep.

Our current focus is supporting people who are the most inactive to become more active, as this is where the greatest health gains can be achieved. This includes promoting easy and fun ways to get active through the Better Health social marketing campaign, including Couch to 5k, and Active 10 apps.

The National Health Service has published exercise guidelines for cancer patients and patients may access to local exercise facilities through social prescribing measures by their healthcare team. Advice on appropriate exercise and how to stay active during treatment forms part of any personalised care protocol, such as the personalised stratified follow up pathways deployed for a number of cancers.

Social prescribing link workers in primary care can support cancer patients to connect with local exercise opportunities. The Primary Care Directed Enhanced Services contract states that all Primary Care Networks (PCNs) must have access to social prescribing services. This is usually through the PCN commissioning social prescribing link workers using the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme.

I refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon on 25 March 2022 to Question 142442.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence is working with the National Health Service to support the implementation of its guidance. While the guidance describes best practice and should be taken into account in the treatment of patients, it is not mandatory and does not override a medical practitioner’s clinical judgement.

The Government recognises the health benefits of regular exercise. The Chief Medical Officer has commissioned an evidence based review of physical activity and health which will be published later this year. The ‘One You’ Campaign developed by Public Health England and the National Health Service provides information around a range of topics and provides the tools to encourage people to make better choices today that can have a huge influence on their health, and could prevent diseases such as type 2 diabetes, cancer and heart disease, and reduce the risk of suffering a stroke or living with dementia, disability and frailty in later life.

There have been recent discussions with Ministerial colleagues in the Department for Transport and Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on increasing physical activity, including cycling and walking. Increasing the number of people cycling and walking has public health benefits as well as being good for the transport system as a whole, local economies and social inclusion. To this end, the Government is making significant investments through the cycling and walking investment strategy. The strategy acknowledges that there is good anecdotal evidence that people would be most encouraged to cycle by being able to ride completely away from motor traffic using routes such as greenways. We have also set an aim to double cycling activity, and increase the percentage of children aged five to 10 that usually walk to school to 55% by 2025.

Sporting Future - Second Annual Report published in January confirmed that government is establishing an Inter-Ministerial Group on Healthy Living, to be co-chaired by the Secretaries of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and Health and Social Care, which will bring together a range of departments to consider how sport and physical activity could be made more widely accessible, so that they benefit everyone. The Group will be meeting for the first time in early 2018. Although the initial focus of the Group will be on sport and physical activity over time we expect this to broaden to explore how it can add value to the health inequalities agenda more widely.

The government’s sport strategy Sporting Future published in December 2015 recognised the impact that sport and physical activity has on mental health. We are continuing to work with sport and mental health organisations to promote the benefits of physical activity on mental health to people of all ages and backgrounds.

Public Health England uses a range of approaches to encourage people to be more physically active through its social marketing campaigns Change4Life and One You. The recent Active 10 physical activity campaign was supported by a mobile phone app to encourage ten minute bouts of walking and has been downloaded over 400,000 times.

The NHS England Healthy New Towns programme, one of the ‘Five Year Forward View’ innovation programmes, launched in July 2015, is working with ten new housing developments across England to deliver a range of innovative interventions and implement best practice to co-create with local communities new places which promote health and wellbeing.

Public Health England uses a range of approaches to encourage people to be more physically active. Its social marketing campaigns Change4Life and Active 10, the recent One You physical activity campaign, was supported by a mobile phone app to encourage 10 minute bouts of walking and has been downloaded over 400,000 times.

The NHS England Healthy New Towns programme, one of the ‘Five Year Forward View’ innovation programmes, launched in July 2015, is working with 10 new housing developments across England to deliver a range of innovative interventions and implement best practice to co-create with local communities new places which promote health and wellbeing.

In 2007 the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) produced the best practice clinical guideline, Chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (or encephalopathy): Diagnosis and management of CFS/ME in adults and children. The guideline, last reviewed in 2013, sets out best practice on the diagnosis, treatment care and support of children and adults with CFS/ME and supports local National Health Service commissioners and clinicians in the delivery of services.

The NICE guideline makes recommendations on the use of Graded Exercise Therapy (GET) in patients mildly or moderately affected by CFS/ME. GET is a structured exercise programme designed to gradually increase how long someone can carry out a physical activity. It should be tailored to a person's current level of activities and should be delivered only by a suitably trained GET therapist with experience in CFS/ME under appropriate clinical supervision. The guideline also acknowledges that there is no one form of treatment to suit every patient and that treatment and care should take into account the personal needs and preferences of the patient. The guideline can be found at the following link:

www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg53/resources/chronic-fatigue-syndromemyalgic-encephalomyelitis-or-encephalopathy-diagnosis-and-management-pdf-975505810885

To ensure its recommendations reflect the latest available evidence, NICE is currently reviewing its guidance to see if an update is required. A decision is expected shortly.

Public Health England launched One You, the new campaign for adult health, on 7 March 2016. The campaign was developed to energise and engage millions of adults - including 45 to 55 year olds - to make and sustain changes to improve their own health.

The campaign focuses on promoting eating well, quitting smoking, physical activity and reducing alcohol consumption as well as sleeping better and reducing stress.

One You provides information, advice and online tools, including the ‘How Are You’ health quiz, One You website, email programme, and a suite of mobile apps. The overarching aim of One You is to reduce unhealthy behaviours as well as prompt uptake of healthier behaviours.

The Department has not conducted or commissioned specific research on this topic.

The Department’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) is investing £4.5 million over five years in the NIHR Bristol Nutrition Biomedical Research Unit (BRU). This BRU aims to translate knowledge developed from work on causal associations in nutrition, drawn from population and clinical studies, to develop interventions that improve the health of people with conditions related to poor nutrition. One of the BRU’s research areas is prostate cancer. The overall aim of work in this area is to investigate the feasibility of undertaking randomised controlled trials of nutritional and physical activity interventions in men with prostate cancer and the impact of these interventions on cancer pathology to identify promising interventions to develop into phase III tertiary prevention trials.

NHS England does not hold this information centrally.

In March 2016, Public Health England (PHE) launched One You, an integrated social marketing campaign to engage adults in making changes to improve their own health and so help them reduce the risk of conditions such as diabetes. The programme encourages adults in mid-life to make a number of lifestyle changes including taking more exercise, improving diet, stopping smoking and reducing alcohol consumption.

Additionally, PHE’s Change4Life campaign encourages families across England to “eat well, move more, live longer”. Type 2 diabetes is highlighted in the campaign as a potential health consequence of poor diet and inactivity.

NHS England, Public Health England and Diabetes UK have been working together on the Healthier You: the Diabetes Prevention Programme (NDPP). By 2020, the programme will be made available to up to 100,000 people at risk of diabetes each year across England. Those referred will get tailored, personalised help to reduce their risk including education on healthy eating and lifestyle and bespoke physical exercise programmes.

There are a number of excellent initiatives to encourage teenage girls to get active such as Sport England's This Girl Can campaign, a nationwide campaign to get women and girls moving, regardless of shape, size and ability. It is already changing behaviours with 49% of women aged 14 to 40 who have seen the campaign reporting they had taken action as a result.

Sport England has also invested over £2million in Bury for a pilot called ‘I Will if You Will’. The programme, on which they worked closely with the local council, combined marketing techniques with sports sessions and exercise classes designed to overcome the hurdles that stop women taking part. Us Girls, funded by Sport England, also exists to increase and sustain young women's participation in sport and physical activity in some of the nation’s most disadvantaged communities.

Girls Active, funded by Sport England, in partnership with This Girl Can and Women in Sport is a scheme to encourage teenage girls to take part in PE and sport and the School Games offer children of all abilities the chance to take part in competitive sport. In 2014/15, 177,630 children took part at level 3 of the School Games (the county festivals) and 51% of these participants were girls.

In December, DCMS published 'Sporting Future: A New Strategy for an Active Nation', a new cross-departmental strategy for sport and physical activity. The strategy sets out government's vision for a successful and active sporting nation and emphasises the importance of helping people in under-represented groups, including women and girls, to get active.

I am committed to ensuring that the benefits of sport can be realised by all communities across the country. Whilst there have been no meetings specifically on this issue recently, I am always open to discussions with colleagues around the country and Sport England has a specific remit to work at all levels, for example funding the County Sports Partnerships which work directly with local councils.

We are currently consulting on our new sport strategy and will of course be taking devolved and regional issues into consideration as part of this. Earlier this year the Department for Culture, Media and Sport ministers signed the UK up to take part in the first ever European Week of Sport - the European Commission’s new initiative to promote sport and exercise in local communities across Europe, working with Sport England, Sport Wales, Sport Scotland and Sport Northern Ireland.

The standard fitness criteria for recruitment to the police service in England and Wales is that candidates must pass both an endurance fitness test and a dynamic strength test. The College of Policing has published guidance on the tests and a fitness training programme to assist potential recruits.

The management of the health, safety and welfare of police officers, including wellbeing initiatives to assist officers to maintain a healthy weight, is the responsibility of the individual police forces.

There is evidence that physical activity can alleviate lower back pain and can benefit musculoskeletal health. However, there have been no specific discussions between Department of Health Ministers and NHS England on the potential for exercise to reduce the need for patients to have back surgery.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommends that a structured exercise programme, tailored to the person, be offered as a treatment option for early management of persistent, non-specific back pain.

Public Health England is working with partners, including the Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Alliance, Arthritis Research UK and the business sector to encourage better prevention and management of back pain, particularly through the promotion of physical activity.