King’s Speech

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Friday 19th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I will focus my remarks on the Government’s intentions on health and care.

Your Lordships will be aware of the focus of my party’s general election campaign on social care. Despite its importance—it affects the lives of millions and the ability of the NHS to pick itself up—there was nothing in the King’s Speech about it. It is true that you cannot fix the health service without fixing social care, yet we have not heard what the Government intend to do. Like others who have spoken in this debate, I hope that the Minister winding will reverse that. However, I was pleased to hear reference to children’s well-being and mental health, and particularly pleased to read of the new Secretary of State’s focus on spreading best practice and the prevention of ill health.

This year, I have been able to focus on prevention as the chair of the Lords special inquiry into food, diet and obesity. The remit of the committee, which will publish its report in November, is to look at

“the role of foods, such as ‘ultra-processed foods’, and foods high in fat, salt and sugar, on obesity and a healthy diet”.

The reasons why the Liaison Committee chose this topic are obvious and uncontested. Poor diet is second only to smoking as a preventable cause of disease and death. Despite the best intentions of successive Governments, obesity rates have continued to rise. We are one of the fattest countries in the western world. Two-thirds of children are exceeding the recommended salt intake and 19 out of 20 children exceed the recommended sugar intake. Almost one-third of 11 year-olds are overweight and more than 60% of adults are either overweight or obese. This situation leads to a high risk of preventable diseases such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and many cancers.

All this adds up to human misery and an inability to go to work and contribute to the economy. Obesity alone costs taxpayers almost £100 billion a year by some calculations, including a vast amount of the NHS budget. It was these facts that caused the Liaison Committee to ask my committee to look into the factors causing this dreadful situation and make recommendations. Of course, I am unable to reveal the committee’s findings yet. However, what I can do is roll the pitch a little in the hope that the new Government will look, eventually, at our report as an opportunity to respond positively to this urgent and costly food crisis.

In mentioning some of the areas our witnesses covered, I should say that a 10-month inquiry with a general election in the middle did not allow us to consider the treatment of obesity or the environmental issues. We focus on the preventative power of a good diet and the harmful effects of a bad one. Here I would like to pay tribute to the late Dr Michael Mosley, who died so tragically a few weeks ago. Although we were not able to invite him to give evidence, there has been nobody in public life who has done more to help people focus on factors which contribute to their health than Michael Mosley. Many of his highly accessible broadcasts and books focused on diet, and since his untimely death many people have said that his work changed their life and health. I will be delighted if our report has a fraction of the life-changing effect of his work.

We heard from a wide range of experts and members of the public, and certain themes emerged. First, we were urged to be bold and to recommend a range of government actions which amount to a cohesive strategy. Small actions here and there have not worked. There have been 14 obesity strategies over the past 30 years, yet the nation is still getting fatter. Lives have shortened and the pressure on the NHS and the economy has grown.

Secondly, we were urged to recommend measures which do not just rely on people taking personal responsibility, because of the pressures of what has been called the obesogenic environment.

Thirdly, we were urged to focus on children’s health, given that it is more difficult to become a healthy adult if you are overweight as a child. Finally, we have reached out to people with lived experience of the issues, and from them we have received some of the most compelling evidence of the need for action. It is on their behalf that I ask the Minister to ensure that the new Government respond positively to our report when it comes out, with actions that will contribute vastly to the future health and happiness of our population and the health of the economy.