Obesity

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Tuesday 5th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[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.