Childhood Obesity

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I hope the noble Baroness will forgive me if I am not quite sure which former Prime Minister and Chancellor she is referring to. I could not resist that, but I take her point and will respond in writing.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, is it not the case that we have had strategy after strategy, all well intentioned—we all agree on what we want to do—but it is not working? The Government pussyfoot around this. As my noble friend Lord McColl said, we need to tell people that it is not acceptable to be obese. If you are obese, guess what, your children think that it is acceptable to be obese. Might not we have a bit more of a robust strategy on this?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I like to think that we have an active strategy in this space. Personally, I prefer carrot to stick in this area. However, as I answered in the previous question, I am prepared to learn from anything that has worked in this country or abroad. If there is evidence of where the stick works better than the carrot, I would be willing to look at that and see whether we should be copying some of it.