Health: Obesity

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Monday 4th April 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I would like to intervene briefly to express some marginally politically incorrect sentiments, because I share concerns expressed by Members of the Committee about the scale of the problem of obesity nationally, which I think is huge.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

Perhaps the noble Lord will forgive me, but we were not notified that he had his name on the speaking list.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I did not know that there was a speaking list.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I am afraid that there is; this is a timed debate. However, as one of the speakers has scratched, the noble Lord can speak for four minutes in the gap.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I intend to intervene only briefly. I support the noble Lord, Lord McColl, and congratulate him on introducing this debate. His speech is worthy of passing around our friends and colleagues because it would have made a very good after-dinner speech. Although it was amusing, it dealt with an extremely serious subject.

My noble friend Lord Patel raised the issue of calorific information on food products sold in stores and particularly in restaurants. The other week I went into a Harvester restaurant which I had never been into before. I noticed that every item on the menu had its calorific content in bold lettering, so much so that I cannot believe that people who eat in those restaurants are not aware of and do not take into account the calorific content when they order their food. I am told that in parts of the world, particularly in America, the authorities in some cities insist on calorific information being provided on all menus in restaurants.

I wonder why we cannot do something similar here in the United Kingdom. I know that the Government are not over-wedded to the principle of too much regulation, but when so much is at stake arising out of problems of obesity and their consequences for health service expenditure, why can we not grasp the nettle in this area and introduce a regulatory framework for food manufacturers whereby the general public really do have to sit down and consider what they eat daily? If we were to do that, I believe that it would certainly have some consequence for obesity.

I return to being slightly politically incorrect. There is another problem as well. Families are often simply not prepared to raise the issue internally. There is an embarrassment about fatness. People just do not want to talk about it. Even among one’s colleagues, here or anywhere, we do not talk about whether people are fat or thin. We have to get over that because a huge problem is developing, in part due to an element of political incorrectness which is reflected in how the media and the industry treat the subject.

I am sorry if I did not comply completely with the rules. Having come from the Commons, and as I normally speak only at Report, in Committee and on Third Reading, I am not used to listings during debates.