Body Mass Index

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for tabling the Question. We may be debating some of these broadly related issues in even greater depth in the future, because the facts of life are that we have one of the unhealthiest populations in the whole of Europe. We now have some opportunities to review what we have been doing and what we might need to do in the future to improve our health. I have been given a good briefing by Diabetes UK, and I express my gratitude to it because I am one of those on the cusp of developing type 2 diabetes. That has been identified by two factors: a blood test and a BMI measurement with my doctor.

Without any doubt there are problems for those with eating disorders, and we need to address them, but we must be careful to ensure the right balance in dealing with the country’s health problems. The reality is that we have a greater problem—the numbers are much bigger—with people with excess weight than with those with too little weight.

While we acknowledge that there can be challenges in using and interpreting BMI as a measurement, as the noble Lord pointed out, the call for it to be scrapped could negatively impact on the care of those such as myself who are at risk of diabetes. Used appropriately, BMI can provide valuable information for care focused on individuals that does not discriminate against anyone. It is important that healthcare professionals take a person-centred approach to discussing weight and health, use appropriate language and consider the use of BMI based on individual circumstances. There are instances where the use of BMI may not be appropriate, so healthcare professionals should take a person-centred approach to weight and health. We hope that the integration of care outlined in the White Paper will boost the role of personalised care.

BMI is also an important tool for monitoring the population’s overall health and informing policy decisions. If we do not have that, we have to know what the alternative is to be able to make such assessments about the state of the nation’s health. Most recently, BMI data has been fundamental in the rollout of the QCovid population risk assessment, which identified 1.7 million people at increased risk of hospitalisation and death from coronavirus and enabled them to be added to the shielding list in March 2021. Without the use of BMI, that kind of population-based intervention would not have been possible and many lives would have been put at risk. I argue that we must retain what we have at the moment until something better is found.