Healthy Life Expectancy

Lord McColl of Dulwich Excerpts

Tuesday 20th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My noble friend raises an extremely important point about inequality. The Health Foundation report focusing on the 2010s shines a light on the need to drive action, which we are doing across government through our missions, with a very ambitious goal and the right approach of halving the gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest and poorest regions. Although I am certainly very interested in what the Health Foundation report says, further strategy is not needed at this time because of the approach we are taking. But I assure my noble friend that in addressing health inequalities, including in areas of past industrial decline, we will be driving economic growth and removing health-related barriers to health, wealth and prosperity.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)]

My Lords, people are not living as long as they were because of the obesity epidemic, which is killing people at an earlier age from a variety of very unpleasant diseases. Does the Minister agree that there are a lot of pseudoscientists around putting out propaganda that people cannot exercise personal responsibility and therefore government action must be taken? Could it be that those people do not want to see the end of the obesity epidemic because they are making so much money out of it?

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

The noble Lord always has interesting observations that I listen closely to. I certainly agree that obesity is a major contributor to ill health. Some 64% of the adult population is overweight or living with obesity, and it does indeed, as he says, pose a major health inequality issue. The approach has to be on many levels, and there is government action. For example, we have laid secondary legislation on TV and online advertising restrictions on less healthy foods. We got on with that because we thought it extremely important. Equally, we support people not just through policy or medical intervention, but by encouraging them to adopt a healthier lifestyle. The reasons why people are obese are complex, and we approach it in that way.