Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nicola Richards and Neil O'Brien

Tuesday 7th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Nicola Richards (West Bromwich East) (Con)]

8. What steps he is taking to help reduce childhood obesity.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Neil O’Brien)]

The Government are committed to addressing childhood obesity. We have introduced calorie labelling for on-the-go food and brought in the sugar tax. To drive up activity, we are spending £330 million a year on school sport through the PE premium and investing £300 million in new facilities through the youth investment fund. We are also spending £150 million a year on healthy food schemes such as school fruit and vegetables, nursery milk and the Healthy Start scheme.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O’Brien]

My hon. Friend is totally right. As well as the funding that I mentioned for healthy eating in schools, cooking and nutrition are part of the national curriculum from key stages 1 to 3, which aims to teach children how to cook and apply those principles of healthy eating, but I am sure there is more that we can do together.

[Nicola Richards]

The announcement of the Government-backed trial in Wolverhampton to introduce a Better Health: Rewards app is welcome, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Jane Stevenson), who has campaigned hard for it. My constituency also suffers from poor health outcomes, including excessive levels of childhood obesity, with one in three year 6 children being overweight or obese. How will the Minister monitor the success of the trial? Will he consider extending it to areas such as West Bromwich East?

[Neil O’Brien]

The Better Health: Rewards pilot that we are funding in Wolverhampton is very exciting, and more than 10,000 residents have already registered with the app. We will be monitoring the lessons of the pilot closely and looking at how we can apply them more broadly.