21/01/2016 House of Commons

make statements first. No more point of order, we now come to the

backbench motion on child obesity strategy. Doctor Sarah Wallace.

Thank you to the backbench business committee for granting time for this

debate and I would like to thank all my colleagues from across the House

who are members of the Health Select Committee and for their work,

including the staff of the committee, particularly Laura

Daniels, for their work on the report on child obesity. Outside

this house there are many individuals and organisations who

tirelessly campaigned to improve children's health. I beg to move

that this has called on the government to bring forward a bold

and effective strategy to tackle childhood obesity. Perhaps we can

start by looking to the example of Team GB and their success in the

Olympics. On the morning of their track cycling victory the architect

of the team's success, Sir David Brailsford, but their success down

to the principle of marginal gains, the relentless pursuit of finding

every efficiency from both the writer, the bike, the environment,

their training regime. All of those marginal gains added together to win

gold for Team GB and the Olympics. We need the same principle when it

comes to tackling childhood obesity. Too often I hear people say it is

all about education, or it is all about getting children to move more

in PE and schools. But I would say there is no single measure, we all

know this. This is an extremely complex problem that requires action

at every level. I call on the Minister to look at every single

aspect to tackling child obesity and should we leave any of those out, we

would say to ourselves if we were running and cycling team, we would

realise we could not have success. Let's apply that principle here.

Let's set the scene about why that matters so much. We have a

situation, and we know this from the Child measurement programme in our

schools, that around one in five children are entering reception

class either obese or overweight. By the time they leave in year six we

find that a third are obese or overweight. Perhaps more worrying is

the stark data around the health inequality of obesity. That is to

say a quarter of children from the most disadvantaged groups in our

society are leaving school not just overweight, but the bees. That is

more than twice the rate than children of the most advanced

families. My first question is will the strategy not just tackle the

overall levels of obesity, but seek to narrow that yawning and growing

gap in our society from the most advantaged and the least advantaged

children? Any strategy that fails to narrow the gap will have failed our

children. Would she agree that some of that gap and some of the overall

problem is explained by the fact that people do not know how much

sugar is in their food. Women are supposed to have six spoonfuls and

men nine. Today a Snickers bar has five spoons of sugar, a yoghurt has

seven spoonfuls of sugar and the Coca-Cola has nine. I did not eat

any of them, you will be glad to hear. Would she agree that the

awareness of how many spoonfuls of sugar is very important so people

can manage their diets? I do the honourable gentleman for his

intervention and I completely agree with him and I will come onto those

points. I am pleased to hear he is not on a sugar high for this debate.

Let's set out not only the scale of the problem, but the consequence.

This has consequences for the whole lifetime of these children, not only

for their physical health, but also for their emotional health, and the

impact that school of bullying of those children who are stigmatised

in the classroom because of their weight. We know the increasing

evidence on the level at which obesity can be a factor in causing

many preventable cancers, the impact it has on conditions like diabetes

and heart disease. It is not just the cost to individuals, but the

cost to wider society and the NHS. The minister will know how essential

it is we tackle the issue of prevention and we cannot do so

without tackling obesity and particularly starting with children

because of the lifetime impact and the consequences of that. She will

know that 9p in every pound we spend in the NHS is spent on diabetes

alone. We estimate the cost overall to the NHS is now around 5.1 billion

a year and the wider cost to society has been estimated, and they do

vary, as high as 27 billion from the evidence we took on the health

committee. We cannot afford to take no action on this. The other point I

would make is that whilst physical activity is extraordinarily

important, and it will strongly feature in government strategy I am

confident, it is no good to focus entirely on physical activity.

Physical activity is good for children no matter what their weight

and for all of us no matter what our age, but any strategy that assumes

you can tackle childhood obesity just through physical activity will

simply be ignoring the overwhelming evidence, that most of this is about

reducing calories. It is not just about sugar, although sometimes it

is easy to be accused of demonising sugar. The fact is sugar in

children's diets we know children are having more than three times the

recommended amount of sugar and it is perhaps the easiest aspect of

this to tackle. The Minister will recognise when talking about overall

calories it includes fats... I give way. I need to declare an interest.

My union have been pressing me to remind my honourable friend that

sugar intake has a disastrous effect on the teeth, which is decay. Is she

aware, if she could pause for a moment, that the most common cause

for hospital admissions for 5-9 -year-olds is tooth decay? Every

week almost 900 children in this country will require hospital

treatment for tooth to gay and the biggest single factor is sugar? It

is one of the point I was going to come onto and I completely agree

with him and we must not forget the impact of sugar on children's teeth.

Also on that issue there is a great health inequality that we recognise.

How should we tackle this? I have spoken many times in the past about

the sugary drinks tax, but I recognise that is not where the

greatest gain lies when it comes to tackling childhood obesity. As the

Minister will recognise from the evidence presented by public health

in England that price promotions will form an extraordinarily

important part of the childhood obesity strategy if it is to be

effective. It is a staggering fact that around 40% of what we spend on

food and drink at home comes from price promotions. But these are not

saving us as much money as we would assume, they are encouraging us to

consume more. In British supermarkets are huge amount of

those promotions is going on sugary and other unhealthy products. I

would call on the government as part of their strategy to tackle back and

we need to have a clear and level playing field that looks at

rebalancing price promotions. But that has to be done in a way that

does not drive us to promoting other products such as alcohol. A very

careful evidence -based look. I am grateful and I am delighted she is

pursuing this issue in a debate today. Actually that whether there

could be a tax on the ingredient of sugar in