Diets: Fat

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2024 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests. I am a member of the committee to which noble Lords have already referred and I have a problem in keeping my weight down, so it is a subject that has been of great interest to me and I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord McColl for introducing this debate.

One of the difficulties, perhaps the greatest difficulty, when we are discussing food and diet is the tendency now to use hyperbole and oversimplification in dealing with a very difficult, complex subject. Of course, the press loves hyperbole and simplification, because it increases sales, but it does not actually solve the problem of obesity.

From our report I take out two important factors. One is that obesity has overtaken tobacco as a risk factor for disability in England. The second is that the total cost of obesity is now calculated at £100 billion a year, equivalent to a tax rate of £400 per head. So, there is a lot to be gained by getting obesity under control.

When we talk about simplification, the word “fat” is an oversimplification. There are good fats and bad fats, as my noble friend Lord McColl said. Some fats are extremely important to us. They are a source of energy; they help vitamin absorption; and they provide fatty acids, particularly omega 3 and omega 6, which are essential for keeping our nervous and brain systems healthy. Indeed, fat can be used to help reduce the urgency for food. Sarah Berry, associate professor at the Department of Nutritional Sciences at King’s College, says:

“Fat makes us feel full for longer. It delays the rate at which our stomach empties food, which again helps us create that feeling of fullness. So, it also controls our blood sugar levels as well, so that we tend to consume less calories, potentially later in the day”.


The idea that one can solve this problem of obesity with weight-loss jabs and get people back to work, which the Prime Minister seems to think is a good idea, is very flawed. Trials of the drugs have shown that people need help as well as just taking the drug. Eligible people who will require support cannot access the support to achieve behavioural change. These drugs will not work for everyone; all the trials have shown that. I repeat that obesity is a complex issue and trying to solve it with an injection is a poor cure when prevention would be far better.

There is of course the question of obesity stigma in the workplace, which is a huge barrier to satisfactory employment and leads to poor well-being and burnout. On the barriers, it is not obesity alone that causes a person to be unemployed; there are many other problems.

When we talk about oversimplification, we must remember that diets and our bodies are very complex. New research is demonstrating the importance and relevance of our gut microbiome. It demonstrates that we need to eat over 30 different plants of different colours weekly, 30 grams of fibre a day and around 100 grams of protein a day. We need to stop eating foods that are high in fat, sugar and salt, especially those that are ultra processed. There are other issues. We need to eat within a certain timeframe. All our daily consumption should be within a 12-hour period.

To pick up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, exercise is not the panacea. I was very sorry to hear Chris Whitty say that this was going to be the new solution to obesity; it is much more complex. Exercise can help on the fringes, but it is not the main solution. The main solution is eating a healthy, balanced, varied diet, but that is not what the Eatwell Guide tells us to do. I hope the Minister will look at our report where we analyse this very carefully, because we come up with some sensible solutions, including raising tax on people that produce the wrong food for us.

Food-related Crime

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

The noble Baroness is entirely right: this is a very distressing crime. I was pleased to note the convictions and custodial sentences in March last year under Operation Stock, led by Northamptonshire Police, of three men for a string of such offences in the Midlands. The NFCU remains alert to the entry of meat from these offences into the food chain and works with policing rural crime networks to actively counter this practice.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, the better the NFCU does, the more cases will be reported to it. Could my noble friend tell me what the budget for the NFCU will be over the next three years? Could he also confirm, as the opportunity for reporting to the NFCU improves, whether there is enough anonymity for people, particularly those within the food business, to be able to make complaints without exposing themselves to retribution by criminal gangs?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, the NFCU’s head count is just over 80 staff in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and its budget is £5.7 million. The NFCU has an anonymous reporting route available via the phone and the FSA website, and it welcomes contact from public-spirited people within the industry on wrongdoing. The unit also encourages engagement with industry through more overt routes, and I particularly thank the Food Industry Intelligence Network, whose members share over 50,000 anonymised authenticity sampling results with the unit each year.

Food: Fruit and Vegetables

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Monday 6th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell]

The noble Baroness does me a great service to point out the good work of Clara M Davis, who I was not aware of previously. She makes a very good point: the effect of advertising on children in school is profound—and not just on children but on adults, as well. The danger of ring-fencing children is that they do not learn how to make proper choices in the long term. That is why the emphasis of our work is on ensuring that children learn the difference between good and bad food, learn how to make the right decisions and learn the habits that can set them up for a lifetime.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con) [V]]

My Lords, this subject is one of many covered in the House of Lords report published today by the Food, Poverty, Health and Environment Committee, called Hungry for Change. I hope my noble friend has already been briefed by his civil servants on this. Will he work with his fellow Ministers in Defra to get the food industry to make available a wider range of vegetables—not just pre-packaged carrots and other vegetables, all of the same size, shape and colour—and at a more affordable price?

[Lord Bethell]

I thank my noble friend for reminding me of the important Hungry for Change report; I pay tribute to it and to its recommendations. If I understand his question correctly, the food given to schoolchildren falls within the realm of the Department for Education. He makes an important point about offering variety and a wide range of foods, and I am sure that that is on the department’s agenda.

Ultra-processed Foods

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell [V]]

My Lords, it is not my role to pre-empt the Prime Minister’s strategy formulation, but the noble Baroness has articulated a very reasonable list of the potential measures. We are closely focused on this area. We are measuring ourselves keenly and our objectives are clearly laid out. The focus is on getting movement on this important area.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I hope that my noble friend the Minister is as saddened as I am that, in this country, we eat more ultra-processed foods than any other country in Europe. That is a shameful position to be in and clearly the government policy is not working. Would he consider discussing with his noble friend in the Treasury the introduction of VAT on ultra-processed foods?

[Lord Bethell [V]]

My Lords, I completely agree with my noble friend that Britain’s record on obesity and the diet that we as a country eat is not one that we can celebrate or be proud of. The sugar tax has proved a successful measure. It shows the Government’s determination to make progress in this area and, if necessary, to use fiscal means to do so.

Junior Doctors: Industrial Action

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, as I have said, this is not a place where we ever wanted to be. Imposition was absolutely a last resort and I again try to assure the House that it was arrived at only after three years of negotiation, an independent review by the DDRB and countless meetings. It was felt that, after all that time had elapsed, we had no choice but to impose the contract.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as one of those who have suffered as a result of the doctors’ strike. My appointment on 9 March was postponed until tomorrow—that was a seven-week delay; I do not know when the next appointment will be—but many people are in a much more serious condition than me. Can my noble friend tell the House what the knock-on effect will be? The Statement referred to 110,000 patients who were due to be seen at the time of the last doctors’ strike, who were scheduled to come in for this doctors’ strike and who will now be delayed yet again and clog up the system.

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, there is an important distinction to be made around withdrawal of emergency cover. I can of course sympathise with the tens of thousands of patients who have been badly inconvenienced—that is bad enough—but when you withdraw emergency cover, people can die. It will be surprising if there are not some severe outcomes from what is happening tomorrow. Tens of thousands of people have been severely inconvenienced; tens of thousands of people have had their treatment disrupted, but the real tragedy will be when people lose their lives.