Obesity
Baroness Boycott Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, not everyone who is obese has mental illness, but some people who are obese do have mental illness. That is why we announced measures on weight management in Tackling Obesity: Empowering Adults and Children to Live Healthier Lives, which makes clear proposals for how those who have obesity as part of their mental illness challenge can be supported and provided for.
Baroness Boycott (CB) [V]
My Lords, I obviously welcome the report from the APPG, but I feel that we have heard it before and that its problem is in its implementation. I would like to make the point that a lot of our emphasis on the prevention of obesity is about stopping the promotion of unhealthy foods, whereas we do very little to promote healthy foods and to make a healthy diet affordable. Children from the poorest households are, at the moment, the most likely to suffer from obesity, but they are also suffering from food poverty. Healthy food is currently twice as expensive per calorie as unhealthy food, so just having a policy of restricting access to unhealthy foods can actually risk pushing people more into hunger and making them end up eating cheaper food. So, in order to address the inequalities in obesity levels, it is vital that restrictions in promotions of unhealthy food must be balanced by an increase of healthy foods, plus a really good public health campaign that encourages people to eat more healthily and tells them how.
Lord Bethell (Con)
The noble Baroness makes her point very fulsomely. We are doing a huge amount on advertising, promotions, front-of-pack nutritional labelling, out-of-home calorie labelling, alcohol calorie labelling and a whole range of stuff. The noble Baroness may well shake her head, but the truth is that this Government are doing more than any previous Government in this matter.
Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions) (England) (No. 4) Regulations 2020
Baroness Boycott Excerpts(4 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Boycott (CB) [V]
My Lords, it has been very interesting listening to noble Lords talking about the way we have blundered into this lockdown, thoughtlessly and without a great deal of evidence.
As many noble Lords will know, my concern is how people are going to eat or, rather, not going to eat. During the first lockdown, Feeding Britain—I declare an interest as its chair—worked with Northumbria University and found that one in four adults across the UK were struggling to access food they could afford. Half of all adults tried to cope by purchasing much less expensive—that is, really unhealthy—food which they would not ordinarily choose to buy. Nearly one in four adults looking after children ate less than they would normally do in order to feed their kids. Some people were going without food for up to three days. Since then, the economic consequences of the pandemic have led to many people, whose earnings from regular or self-employment previously afforded them a decent quality of life, using food banks for the first time. This was widely reported earlier this week.
There is a sense of outrage and injustice attached to each of these developments, and I propose the following four measures to the Minister to prevent these alarming trends worsening during this second lockdown, which is happening in the winter with a huge number of lay-offs. First, benefit sanctions must be suspended for at least the duration of this lockdown, given the lack of jobs which people can apply for. Secondly, the gaps in support schemes for low earners and the self-employed must be plugged so that nobody losing work is forced, in these cold months, to choose between eating or keeping warm. Thirdly, we need a Defra-led taskforce to maintain and improve the supply of affordable food to vulnerable people and those on low incomes. I suggest that money could be diverted to local cafés to feed such people. That also secures employment, rather than trying voucher schemes, which did not work last time. Fourthly, the national food strategy’s recommendations need to be implemented immediately, with a national programme of meals and activities for children over the Christmas and February holidays. We all know what that one is about.
Finally, while we all welcome the £20 increase in the universal credit, can that please be extended to those on legacy benefits such as JSA and ESA to ensure that they can meet any additional costs that crop up in this pandemic? My fear is that, in the absence of any of these reforms, the poorest in our society will be clobbered yet again by the latest social and economic consequences of Covid-19 and this pretty unnecessary shutdown.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Haskel) (Lab)
The noble Lord, Lord Fairfax, has withdrawn. I call the noble Lord, Lord Trimble.
Food Hygiene Rating Displays
Baroness Boycott Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, the pattern of food inspection rates across the country is uneven, as my noble friend points out. However, the costs of implementing this scheme should not and might not be a hurdle for implementation. We believe that it would actually serve as a potential encouragement for those doing food inspections to see the results of their work published in a mandatory fashion.
Baroness Boycott (CB) [V]
My Lords, I come back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. I was left a little uncertain as to when the Government would make it mandatory for all food outlets in Britain to display these notices, as it is in Northern Ireland and indeed in Wales. Everyone agrees that it is a brilliant, simple and overall cost-effective way of ensuring health, so when will it become mandatory and universal across England?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I cannot commit at this point at the Dispatch Box to a date, as the noble Baroness has asked. However, I will express an enormous amount of warmth towards the idea. I acknowledge that only 55% of businesses in England display their ratings for their premises, whereas in Wales, where it is mandatory, the number of businesses with the highest rating of five has increased by 25% since the introduction of mandatory displays in 2013. That is surely good evidence that the scheme has impact and works.
Food: Fruit and Vegetables
Baroness Boycott Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Baroness Boycott
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to increase the consumption of fruit and vegetables by (1) children, and (2) adults.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Bethell) (Con)
The Government are committed to encouraging children and adults to eat at least five portions of a variety of fruit and vegetables every day. Healthy Start vouchers enable low-income and disadvantaged families to purchase fruit and vegetables. Mandatory school food standards and the School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme also encourage fruit and vegetable consumption. Public Health England encourages the eating of fruit and vegetables through the Eatwell Guide, catering guidance and marketing campaigns, including Start4Life, Change4Life and One You.
Baroness Boycott (CB) [V]
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Answer and declare my interests, as set out in the register. As noble Lords know, diets low in fruit and vegetables are now directly associated with 20,000 deaths a year in the UK. Despite the Government’s costly Five a Day campaign, our vegetable consumption is steadily declining and now equals what it was in the 1970s, with only 28% of adults eating the recommended amounts. First, what are the Government’s new plans to promote fruit and vegetables to adults?
Secondly, Professor Greta Defeyter, a colleague of mine at Feeding Britain, has discovered a dramatic reduction in disadvantaged children’s daily fruit and vegetable intake since the suspension of the School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme. Can the Minister give both a date for the scheme’s return and a figure for the money that would have been spent on the scheme since March this year, but has not?
Lord Bethell
My Lords, I pay testimony to the hard work of the noble Baroness in this important area. The schemes she mentions have been incredibly impactful and this subject is very important. The progress made by the Start4Life, Change4Life and Eatwell programmes has been encouraging, as it has raised awareness of options for children and adults. The battle they face against decisions people make about their diet is extremely tough, but we remain committed to those programmes and will continue to invest in them.
Ultra-processed Foods
Baroness Boycott Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Baroness Boycott (CB) [V]
My Lords, there is no doubt that HFSS foods are unhealthy, particularly for young children, who are showing such alarming rates of obesity. We also know that advertising works. However, recent research by Cancer Research UK shows that over half of all food adverts on TV during children’s peak viewing hours, 6 to 9, are for processed foods that are high in sugar and fat, while fewer than one in 15 are for fruit and vegetables. The consultation on whether the Government would introduce a nine o’clock watershed for such adverts was completed and delivered in June 2019. Can the Minister update the House on the progress of that consultation and tell us when we are likely to have the Government’s response?
Lord Bethell [V]
The noble Baroness is right to say that the consultation is an important one and we take it very seriously. Covid has been disruptive, but I reassure her that we will respond to the consultation on extending advertising restrictions as soon as we can.
Dental Care
Baroness Boycott Excerpts(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Bethell
My Lords, at present there are restrictions on private dentists opening; the guidelines are clear on that. We are putting in place provision of PPE for when those guidelines are amended to allow the reopening of dental practices. We are also giving thought to how we will get through the large backlog of dentists’ work that will need to be done to catch up on those missed appointments.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
It was pointed out recently by Public Health England that snack buying has gone up hugely in the past few weeks of the crisis. As Ministers know, the main reason that children go into hospital and have anaesthetics is to have all their teeth out as a result of eating sugary foods. Will the Minister guarantee that, when the crisis is over, the Government will bring the obesity Bill back to Parliament and get it through this time, because this is a tragedy for our youngsters?
Lord Bethell
The noble Baroness is entirely right. I confess to having a profound biscuit habit through the Covid epidemic which I am wrestling to get over. On a serious note, the Covid epidemic has put a spotlight on the health of the nation. There seems to be some evidence that we have suffered badly from the epidemic partly because of obesity. The Prime Minister has commented personally on this issue. It will be a priority of the Government to address this point once the epidemic is over to restore the health of the nation and to tackle obesity.
Queen’s Speech
Baroness Boycott Excerpts(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble Lord and his 12 very good and challenging points. I want to make some points about the principles we must abide by if we want to secure this happy and healthy economy that has been laid out in the gracious Speech.
Our three-day debate raises interesting questions about what policy considerations we should cluster together. Today we have the economy, business and public services, yet, if we want a successful economy, we must consider it alongside the things that threaten to weaken it. Climate change is surely the greatest of these, affecting our business interests, the delivery of our public services, and our health, jobs, skills and infrastructure. I could go on; the truth is, it will affect everything.
We cannot think about our economy without also thinking about how we achieve our net-zero emission target. The food sector, which noble Lords will know is the one I work in, is just one sector, but a very good example, because the link between our economic well-being, climate change and food is huge. Food is a massive economic contributor. The food and farming sector is worth almost £122 billion to the UK economy, and the number of people employed in the UK agri-food sector is now well over 4 million. But if we do not look at our food economy through a climate lens, we will be in big trouble, because food contributes so much to global warming.
Global food loss and waste generate about 8% of humankind’s annual greenhouse gas emissions, and deforestation and forest degradation—a significant proportion of which is due to food-related farming— account for 10% to 11% of greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, climate change will seriously threaten the food economy. According to the IPPC, crop yield declines of 10% to 25% will be widespread by 2050, and rising temperatures are predicted to wipe out up to 40% of the world’s fish. So much of what we eat is threatened and we cannot rely endlessly on other countries to feed us—whatever Mr Fox used to say.
If these scenarios play out, we will severely damage our health and economy, not enhance them, and food represents just one slice of them. I am in no doubt about the complexity of this challenge. But, as all the great systems thinkers know, tackling complex challenges requires us to think about the guiding principles of the whole system. We have an opportunity to do this through the legislative and policy agenda that the Government have just announced.
First, the planned Green Budget is a critical opportunity for the Government to reconsider the economy and fiscal policy through a climate lens. Perhaps the Minister can say a little more about what we can expect. For instance, will we adopt the laws that New Zealand has that say there must be climate consideration in every piece of legislation, including on things such as housing? Secondly, will there be sector-specific legislation where all these principles can be embedded? In my sector, the planned shift in the agriculture Bill from a system that incentivises poor stewardship to one based on public money for public good is extremely welcome, but Ministers will know that there are many problems with how it will be administered.
Thirdly, we need to make sure that unilateral environmental principles govern all our decision-making. Despite indications from HMG, the last Environment Bill, introduced to Parliament in October 2019, did not enshrine environmental principles in law. It also specifically excluded public spending and taxation from their application, and it did not ensure that critical principles would apply to all public bodies. So, given the urgency, will HMG ensure that this is rectified in the forthcoming Bill?
To wrap it up, we cannot consider the economy any more without considering climate. We cannot consider business and we cannot consider public services, either. We should be operating on 10-year or 20-year plans. We cannot just look to the next electoral cycle—even five years now is too long.
I had the privilege of working with the Prime Minister when he was Mayor of London on many green projects, and he was tremendously enthusiastic about delivering everything from community gardens to trying to lower carbon gas emissions from the food system in the City. I feel very optimistic that the optimism that he showed and the popularity it brought him will go forward in his reign at No. 10. I would like to see him, when we get to the end of the year, step on to the stage in Glasgow and treat it as the Olympics of his prime ministership, and say that we in Britain will lead the world on this. We may not be the biggest country and we may be small emitters, but my gosh we can show the way as to how you can make climate and the environment completely part of all you think about. Quite frankly, if we do not, the future we leave our children will not be fit for purpose.
Queen’s Speech
Baroness Boycott Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lord, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, and I was very pleased to hear about the Welsh dairy farmers. As far as I know, Stoke Newington was an area where the milk for London used to be produced and where the cows lived.
Although it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, the Queen’s Speech was certainly not a pleasure to hear on my area of passion, which is our food system. As ever with the Government, there was little to do with food policy and our need to change. Every day, we hear stories about how our food system does not work. Take the first thing of the day—breakfast. Every day, 1.8 million children are at risk of starting the day hungry. Hungry children cannot concentrate. They miss out on hours of valuable learning. By the time they leave school, children eligible for free school meals are, on average, 19.3 months behind their wealthier peers. This is data recently collected from Magic Breakfast. This is not just gross inequality; it is also economic madness. It is certainly not unlocking our children’s full potential.
Children from the poorest households also struggle to eat healthily, which in part explains why children with severe obesity are four times more likely to live in deprived areas than in less deprived areas. The Chief Medical Officer’s report two weeks ago told us about the devastating consequences of childhood obesity, to which other noble Lords have referred. There are 100 new cases of childhood type 2 diabetes every year. There are 650,000 children with fatty liver disease and 90,000 children eligible for bariatric surgery, of whom less than 10 get the operations every year. Sally Davies was right to say this is a blatant contravention of children’s right to health.
Food is not only fundamental to health; it is also fundamental to the climate emergency. Currently, a third of greenhouse gas emissions derive from deforestation, as we grow palm oil for processed food and cut down rainforests to grow soy to feed livestock—possibly the most inefficient way of obtaining proteins that we could manage. It drives species extinction, as well as ill health.
Yet, in the gracious Speech, there was silence on all of this. The Agriculture Bill, which is making its way through Parliament very slowly—after the news tonight, I have no idea when it might arrive here, so I would be grateful if any noble Lord has a clue—concentrates a lot on the environmental goods that farmers need to provide. It promises public funds for public goods and nobody wants to disagree with that, but we need this Bill to help support farmers to deliver health goods as well.
Support for the horticulture sector is a case in point. Much neglected by the common agricultural policy, we could grow a great deal more of our fruit and veg in the UK. With the right mix of marketing and demand-side incentives, including public procurement, we could help our farmers improve our diets. It is a staggering fact that, for every one of your five a day you eat, your risk of early mortality decreases by 5%. Yet, according to the Food Foundation, of which I am a trustee, 30% of our children eat no vegetables at all, unless you count chips from McDonald’s.
Food is an incredibly complicated area. We need much more than the right support for farmers. Food is in almost every ministry; it touches health, trade and the environment—right across the board—and we have not, since the war, had a national food strategy. But one is being worked on right now, and I am very proud to say that I am an adviser on it. Over in Defra, Henry Dimbleby and a fantastic team are pulling together a strategy that will bring all these different elements together to try to give us a food system that really is fit for purpose and works for the future. It is so important that every noble Lord in this place supports it. We must not let this golden opportunity pass; we need to start debating all these key issues.
“Business as usual” is no longer good enough. Our food system runs, basically, for profit, like our agriculture system. It does not run to protect our health or the environment. In my years running the London Food Board—eight of them for our current Prime Minister and two of them for Mayor Sadiq Khan—I used to say, “Every day in London, we dish up 30 million meals”. As anyone who knows it can be quite difficult dishing up dinner for two, 30 million is mind-boggling. I understand why it is very hard for politicians to get their heads around this. It truly is awesome. But if we carry on with our small piecemeal policies and relying on the wonders of companies such as Magic Breakfast, which feeds 48,000 children every day through charity and raising money, then we really only have ourselves to blame for an environmental crisis and a health crisis, both of which could be prevented.
I would like the Minister to assure me that, whatever happens—I understand that she or anyone else is probably not in the position to give a definite answer to this—that her Government will continue to support the work of the food strategy and, hopefully, usher it into life, regardless of who sits in No. 10.
Restaurants: Calorie Labelling
Baroness Boycott Excerpts(6 years ago)
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Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
Based on the weather, I cannot really answer that, but I absolutely reject the premise that the Government are losing their grip on this issue. We have seen some real successes since the publication of the 2016 plan. The soft drinks levy has resulted in the equivalent of 45 million kilograms of sugar being taken out of soft drinks, which is a genuine success. Some products in the sugar reduction programme have exceeded their first-year targets: a 6% reduction in sugar in yoghurts has been achieved. As I mentioned, significant investments are being made in schools to promote physical activity and healthy eating. We accept, however, given the obesity crisis, that much more needs to be done and the noble Baroness will be glad to hear that the Secretary of State has, as I said, commissioned the CMO to urgently review and drive this agenda forward, which is exactly what we intend to do.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, I urge the Government to follow up on the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, about how many of these places are small companies. When I ran the London Food Board, we did research in Tower Hamlets and I found one single takeaway where a portion of chips—a large one, admittedly—was 1,800 calories. That is completely insane, and parents and children do not know about it. I would be grateful to hear the Government’s view on how we might publicise that fact.
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
I thank the noble Baroness for her point. As I said, we remain committed to exploring what additional opportunities leaving the EU presents for food labelling. At the moment, we have some world-leading simple nutritional information, but we want to work with the devolved nations and Administrations to explore the potential for common approaches. Obviously, the consultation on mandated calorie labelling has received a high level of interest—there were over 1,000 responses—and that is partly why we are in the process of going through that at the moment.
Children: Oral Health
Baroness Boycott Excerpts(6 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
I thank the noble Baroness for her question. I shall write to her on the exact amount of investment, but there are some reassuring figures coming forward: 77% of all five year-olds now have no visible decay, compared to 69% in 2008; there has been a fall in the number of extractions per 100,000 finished consultant episodes for the first time in the last decade; and more children accessed dentistry over the last year. All this is reassuring and we are committed to improving access and equality of access to dental care—that is what the Children’s Oral Health Improvement Programme Board, led by PHE, is intended to do. It brings together 20 stakeholder organisations specifically focused on oral health. There is a significant amount of activity targeting exactly the issue the noble Baroness raises.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, children get tooth decay because they eat too much sugar and too many sweets. How far are the Government getting with the commitments they made in chapter 2 of the obesity plan to restrict advertising of high-sugar products on TV before the watershed, and price and location promotions in supermarkets?
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
The noble Baroness is exactly right, in that improving children’s oral health is a wider picture: it is about not just access to dentistry but a preventive approach, which is a core government priority. This is exactly why we introduced the children’s obesity plan, one aspect of which is a consultation on advertising. Proposals on that will be brought forward shortly.