Obesity

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Wednesday 18th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord McColl, for bringing us back to this important subject, and I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, to your Lordships’ House.

Travelling on the Tube yesterday in the middle of the afternoon, I sat opposite a gentleman who took up two seats. His stomach was protruding out of his shirt. He looked very uncomfortable, and he was eating a pasty. I thought, “Sir, this is not good for your health”. It took me back to an occasion soon after I entered your Lordships’ House when I sat down at the long table in the Home Room with a plate of salad. A former, very personable Member of the House sat next to me, looked at both our plates and started to laugh. She said, “Oh look! The slim lady is eating salad and the fat lady is eating sausage and chips”. I was too polite to say, “Well, yes, don’t you think there’s a connection?”. Of course, the noble Lord, Lord McColl, is right. What matters most is what we eat and drink.

Many clinicians now feel that it would help to regard obesity as a disease. We would then be less judgmental and recognise that many people suffering from it have been conditioned since childhood to respond to sugary or carbohydrate-rich foods, with those foods then becoming a need. The gentleman on the train is probably one of them. They need help and services, not judgment, and those must include mental health services. For some, one of the services needed is bariatric surgery, with a multidisciplinary team to help them return to a healthy body weight. I talked recently to an eminent paediatric bariatric surgeon. He told me that the service he provides is not widely available and yet it can save the lives of his patients and reduce the eventual costs to the NHS. Therefore, I ask the Minister what plans are in place to make this service available wherever it is needed. Of course, it is a last resort for very serious cases, and I want to emphasise that the surgeon I spoke to spends a great deal of time working with public health services to prevent people becoming obese in the first place. Prevention, I believe, is the key.

I was interested in two items on the news this morning which chimed exactly with what I wanted to say today. First, there was new guidance from Public Health England’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition about the number of calories that should be consumed by young babies. It was reported that many are consuming far too many calories and this is laying the foundation for obesity later in life. We were reminded that exclusive breast-feeding, at least for the first six months of life, lays the best foundation for health, not just because of the many antibodies and good micro-organisms passed on from mother to child but also because breast milk is perfectly balanced nutritionally and has just the right number of calories for healthy growth. Therefore, I call Public Health England in aid when I ask the Minister what is being done to encourage more mothers to breast-feed—we have a bad track record in this country—and to ensure that they can do so comfortably wherever they need to do it.

The second news item was about the Football Association saying that many days of play are prevented because of the state of the pitches. This is because of years of underfunding of local authorities, which cannot afford the necessary upkeep. As my noble friend Lord Addington told us, what we eat may be a major part of the obesity problem but keeping active is also vital. Incidentally, it is also important for mental health. A senior tutor at an Oxbridge college told me recently that, of all the students coming forward for counselling for mental health problems, not one took part in regular sport. She found that very significant and I am sure she is right.

However, my main concern is with young children. We have had the statistics from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, and I join its demand that there should be a 9 pm watershed ban on advertising on TV foods that are high in sugar, salt and fat. I am pleased that chapter 2 of the childhood obesity plan promises a consultation on this. I am quite sure that the evidence will show that the majority of TV watched by children is not children’s programmes, which already have a ban, but family viewing between 6 pm and 9 pm. If your Lordships are looking for evidence that advertising these foods influences people’s choices, they have only to look at how much the food companies spend on it. The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, reminded us of that. They would not do that if it did not work. People are influenced by messages that tell them how delicious these foods are and how happy they will be if they eat them, so I hope the Minister will assure me that when the Government get this evidence in the consultation, they will act decisively.