Asked by Baroness Jenkin of Kennington To ask Her Majesty’s
Government what action they are planning to reduce childhood
obesity. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of
Health and Social Care (Lord O’Shaughnessy) (Con) My Lords,
the Government’s childhood obesity plan, launched in August 2016,
focuses on the areas that are likely to...Request free trial
Asked by
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To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are
planning to reduce childhood obesity.
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of
Health and Social Care (Lord O’Shaughnessy) (Con)
My Lords, the Government’s childhood obesity plan, launched
in August 2016, focuses on the areas that are likely to
have the biggest impact on preventing childhood obesity.
All reports and data on progress in delivering our plan
will be published and open to scrutiny. We will use this to
determine whether sufficient progress has been made and
whether alternative levers need to be considered.
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(Con)
My Lords, I am well aware that we had a pretty
comprehensive trot around the issue earlier this week but I
did not have the opportunity to raise with the Minister the
issue of the Daily Mile, an initiative started some six
years ago in a small Scottish primary school where children
were encouraged to run for 15 minutes a day, which turns
out to be a mile. Since then the initiative has
proliferated and now over 3,300 schools are participating.
It has been independently evaluated and proven to show a
massive improvement in health, well-being and academic
attainment. The Scottish and Welsh Governments have written
to every single primary school encouraging them to
participate. Would the Minister please consider doing the
same here?
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Lord O’Shaughnessy
Following the debate that we had the other day, I looked up
the Daily Mile online. It is now in 2,000 schools now
across the UK. My right honourable friend the Secretary of
State has described it as an excellent initiative, which
indeed it looks like. It certainly seems to develop good
habits of physical and mental health. Writing to schools is
of course a matter for the Department for Education, but I
will certainly speak to my colleagues in that department to
encourage schools to take this up. In the spirit of the
debate of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, I think it
would be better to end with a quote from William at
Woodfield Primary School in Wigan, who said that the Daily
Mile,
“helps you with your maths, English, and you get faster
each time, which makes you healthier”.
What more could you want?
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(Lab)
My Lords, I cannot match the alliteration of the Minister
but I ask him if he and his colleagues in other departments
would consider an addition to the sport, to the dietary and
to the drive against sugar, given the evidence of the
recent review that the Government undertook into full-time
social youth action in which organisations such as
Volunteering Matters and City Year UK demonstrate that work
by young people for young people against bullying,
emotional trauma and mental health problems can have a real
effect.
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I completely agree with the noble Lord. I believe that he
chairs the National Citizen Service, which has been
a massive initiative to encourage such habits in teenagers.
I completely concur with him: the Government take a number
of approaches to encourage youth social action, and that is
something that we will continue to support.
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(Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that families need to
be presented with clear information about the food they buy
and how important clear labelling is? Does he agree that
when the UK leaves the EU, that will give us a greater
flexibility to determine what information should be
presented on packaged food and how it should be displayed?
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My noble friend is absolutely right: this is one of the
many opportunities which this country will enjoy after we
have left the European Union. We will have the flexibility
to vary food labelling to ensure that we can use the very
best, the very latest techniques to encourage people to eat
more healthily.
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(LD)
My Lords, there are two components to keeping fit and
losing weight. One is exercise—the example we have had is
excellent—and the other, of course, is food. There are
three partnerships in that: there is the Department of
Health and the Department for Education, but parents are
critical. What work has been done to involve parents in
this whole issue? It is really serious, because obese
children will probably be obese adults, and we know where
that goes.
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The noble Baroness is absolutely right: parents are of
course the first educators of their children and it is
about them being able to set an example. I would focus on a
couple of things: first, the national curriculum in
schools, which is encouraging parents to get involved in
understanding what good nutrition is, how to cook well and
so on. The second is Public Health England’s new One You
campaign, posters of which are up now, which talks about
the 400, 600, 600 of calories per meal per day to encourage
parents to get into good habits, because of course, if they
have good habits and are well informed, their children will
too.
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(Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister believe that within the plan
there may be a greater role for the major broadcasters in
this country to give a stronger lead against these
problems? The BBC, in particular, has major flagship
programmes which are primarily about eating, putting on
weight and calories, but the same applies to the other
channels. Will he join me in a conversation with the BBC to
try to persuade them to produce a major flagship programme
that addresses the issue, particularly with regard to
children?
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That is rather an interesting idea and suggestion from the
noble Lord. We would need to speak to colleagues in
DCMS—which I would be delighted to do. I think that
broadcasters such as the BBC have traditionally played a
very important and positive role in public health issues
and continue to do so, and I am happy to encourage them to
do so in this area, too.
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(Con)
My Lords, while recognising the essential nature of
sufficient exercise at all ages, in the absence of my noble
friend , I again
remind the House that the more you exercise, the more you
eat.
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Noble Lords
He is here.
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I understood that he was in China; I do not understand his
silence.
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All I can say is that both my noble friends are excellent
examples of slim and fit young men.
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(Lab)
I am sure that the Minister is aware that while exercise is
very good for children and adults—it improves mental and
physical health—it does not do much for obesity. It is food
that does the worst. It is not just sugar, it is fat, and ice
cream, crisps and chocolates are so appealing to children.
Ice cream has twice the calories of sugar. Will he consider
how to get that message across?
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One thing I noticed at Easter was that Easter eggs seem to
have got bigger. I was counting the calories on the Easter
egg that my children had. There is a serious point there. It
is about reformulation, it is not just about reduced sugar,
salt and so on; it is also about smaller portion sizes, and
that is a measure that we are tracking as well.
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(Con)
My Lords, it is really me. Is the Minister aware that a
recent report from Canada showed that children who were fed
on whole milk for the first eight years of their life were
much healthier than those not, and they were not obese? Why
on earth did we ever start skimming milk when human breast
milk has the same amount of fat as cows’ milk? As far as I
know, we have not started skimming human breast milk yet.
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I am trying to imagine how that might work. The noble Lord
makes an important point which he also made in a debate the
other day, that our understanding of dietary needs is
changing. In some ways, we are rediscovering old truths about
the importance of fat and reduction of sugar. That is part of
the approach that Public Health England is promoting.
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