Health: Public Health Responsibility Deal

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend on bringing this subject before us today. Any initiative by people who take responsibility for public health should be applauded. Whether this is the right model or one for the future remains to be seen. However, trying to get several sectors to address the problem must be applauded for the simple reason that there is no one answer.

Behaviour, social change and the way we take in information and use it would seem to be the underlying message behind this. We have already heard that if you drink too much you put on weight and it affects your body in various ways; and that if you drink far too much at the wrong time you behave badly. Given the history of Gin Lane, Hogarth and so on, that is hardly news; it is nothing that we have not heard before.

Recently we have been dealing with the backlash of the social trend towards binge drinking. This has happened after the binge of taking pills to get oneself out of it. This habit seems to have died out in certain parts of the country but not in others, and people who have got into the habit of binge drinking seem to be carrying on doing so. People are suffering from liver damage earlier, getting stroppier earlier and losing control earlier. Given that our lifestyle today is one which has easy access to high fat, high salt and high sugar foods which can be consumed easily, and the fact that we do not take much exercise, we seems to be creating a world where it is quite easy to sit still for long periods of time, ingest huge numbers of calories and alcohol and damage ourselves.

How do we change that? There are two prongs to this which have worked in the past, of which smoking is a good example. First, you point out to people that it is damaging them; secondly, you take various supporting actions, through government, to encourage them to change. However, voluntary action is equally important. Every bit of information I have on this subject shows that we do not like being preached at. Talking to people may help them to change their minds over time, or preaching to people subtly and well may do so, but we are all politicians and we know how often we get that right and how often we get it wrong. We have got to strike a balance here.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, about the number of times we have heard about the labelling on food. I have had a number of bizarre meetings, particularly at party conferences, where people have tried to sell their form of labelling to me.

We also resist certain types of activity. I remember during a conference when the previous Government were in power—I think we were in Blackpool but I cannot remember which year—going to a dinner where people were trying to convince me that if we stopped selling what we now call full-fat Coke and other soft drinks in vending machines, children would die in huge numbers because they would cross the roads at lunchtime and, lemming-like, be flattened by cars. You could not make it up. You do not have to after a period of time. The rearguard action by the industries is usually very impressive and creative, but it is possibly one that missed. While we are talking about alcohol, by the third glass of wine I was prepared to say that they had missed on this occasion. Let us not knock everything all the time.

To address the issue of physical activity, the same ideas about what is involved in convincing people that exercise is pleasant must surely apply here. There is also the question of who we are addressing. I shall concentrate my remarks here on people taking low-level, casual exercise. Local government can make our parks and pavements, for instance, pleasant places to walk or take moderate exercise, as appropriate. People can encourage their children to have a game of football using two jumpers on the ground for goalposts while they use the swing. That is very appropriate. I look forward to hearing how we can encourage that.

Organised sports clubs can be only a limited aspect of this, because they are often dependent upon this type of activity. We talk a lot about school sport, but school sport can only do so much. A child must take part in physical education and become reasonably fit before they can be trained to take part in a sport and take it seriously. If a child who at the age of five has never moved, who has been plonked in front of the TV and who is carrying large amounts of fat around their waist and backside, is encouraged to go straight into some form of physical activity, the child will not do it. It will be painful and difficult.

If parents do not have access to a pleasant environment, and are not encouraged to give their child the normal amount of time in which to run around, it will not happen. We must address this. If a child or an adult then thinks that it is terribly difficult to undertake activity, they will chose sedentary leisure activities, which often involve watching something. They will take that hit of sugar and salt from fast foods, as we probably call them now, or high-density foods. How do we balance this? How do we encourage people to get out?

I received a series of briefings from the Ramblers Association, saying that people are 72% more likely to walk and to carry on walking if their local area is pleasant, but they are 55% less likely to walk if their local area is unpleasant. If you get that balance right and make walking enjoyable, then people can get involved in it. What action and assessment are we taking to encourage individuals and groups to make sure that physical activity can be undertaken in a pleasant environment? Unless this casual organisation is encouraged, unless it takes into account the fact of this normal reaction, then it takes away from both the introductory levels of more serious exercise and that low-level maintenance which is so important to health. I could go on for much longer, but the clock has beaten me.