Tackling Obesity

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2024 Westminster Hall

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Sir David Evennett) on securing this important debate. As he said, it affects all MPs because it affects all our constituencies. It affects families across the country.

I am here because I recently visited Putneymead Group Medical Practice in my constituency. It is a really large surgery, which serves 25,500 people and employs 23 GPs. They know what they are talking about; it is an excellent facility. I asked the doctors what the main issues were they were facing, and they said that the main issue was childhood obesity. They were worried that the current state of the NHS meant that it was unable to provide services to combat childhood obesity, and they were also worried about the lack of services for primary school children. Early intervention is very important in tackling childhood obesity, but they were also concerned about secondary education. They mentioned Wandsworth Borough Council provision for primary school children, but that ends at year 6. In secondary school, there is even less provision and support for tackling obesity, and they identified that as a key issue.

Today, two in every five children in England are overweight or obese by the time they finish primary school. That has lasting consequences for their physical and mental health and for their quality of life. The national child measurement programme found that in 2021-22, 10% of reception-age children in England were obese. The proportions were higher among year 6 children, with 23.4% being obese. Something is going wrong in our provision and support programmes for primary school children.

Childhood obesity is a significant concern in my borough of Wandsworth, where more than one fifth of children in reception are overweight or living with obesity. In year 6, that figure rises to 37.7%, which is higher than in the rest of the country. Wandsworth Council has several programmes to tackle the issue. The Health4Life team runs the Mums, Minis and KickStart programmes for primary school-age children and their families. The children’s school food strategy and the campaign targeting takeaways near secondary schools are also having an impact, but that needs to be amplified and supported by having the same programmes across the country. As I said, this support needs to be maintained and to continue through secondary education, as well as through primary. In the United Kingdom, the prevalence of obesity among year 10 children is still 23.4%, so one in four children are still classified as obese—in London, the figure is still 37.4%.

It is essential to continue promoting healthy lifestyles, but there are also significant infrastructure issues. There is an issue around planning and having shops with healthy produce in the right places so that they are easier to access for people who do not have the same transport options as others. We also need to tackle takeaways near secondary schools, which Wandsworth Council is starting to do, and there are elements of good practice that can be learned. In addition, we need to tackle inactivity in schools. Many playing fields have been sold off, which has reduced access to physical education classes in school. I have seen that with my own children, who have gone through secondary school with significantly less access to PE lessons than I had when I was going through school.

There is also the issue of healthy eating and teaching cookery. I pay tribute to a great community organisation in my constituency called Bags of Taste, which teaches people how to eat better for less. It has a really high take-up, and people really enjoy making the kind of food they would get from a takeaway but can cook for less money in their own homes. That is to be applauded and supported.

There could also be much more action taken by supermarkets, and action on advertising unhealthy food. Another excellent programme that I have seen really working, but that is not taken up comprehensively enough, is the Daily Mile. Having started off with a school in Stirling in Scotland, it has been taken up by many primary schools around the country. It is tackling this issue and making a difference.

To conclude, Labour will tackle childhood obesity through a range of measures, including by implementing the 9 pm watershed for junk food advertising, getting kids moving through a mandatory national curriculum with a wider range of physical activities, providing free breakfast clubs in every primary school and taking action to end the promotion of junk foods targeted at children. We will take action. The current obesity figures are a damning indictment of 14 years of Tory rule that have not worked. It is time for Labour.