Childhood Obesity Strategy

Nigel Huddleston Excerpts

Thursday 21st January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

I, too, pay tribute to the Health Committee for its great work. I pay tribute particularly to the Chairman of that Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), and to my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) for her work in the all-party obesity group.

This is a very important topic. It is also a very emotive one, as we have heard, especially for those of us who are generally instinctively against Government interference and taxation, and want small government. I have wrestled with that, like my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double), but I have come round to the idea that when it is necessary to interfere, and when we have to balance out these freedoms with doing the right thing by our children, then we do need to consider all options. I have been slowly persuaded, but am now comfortably persuaded, on issues such as the sugar tax. So unfortunately, probably for the first time ever, I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince). However, I am sure that it will be the first of many such times over coming years.

The evidence is overwhelming. Like the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), in researching this topic I found that the numbers are astounding. The figures are overwhelming, and very alarming. I will not repeat them, but the report contains many such figures, and it is well worth a read.

One of the issues that comes up again and again is food marketing. Research tells us that children as young as 18 months can be influenced and are capable of recognising brands, which is a truly astounding fact. The House will be aware that current regulations on TV advertising mean that foods high in fat, saturated fat, salt and sugar are banned from being advertised during children’s programming, but many organisations, as well as the report, have suggested that that should extend up to the 9 pm watershed, and with considerable reason, given the evidence. The latest Ofcom figures show that two thirds of children watch television during what is considered adult airtime, with peak viewing for children between 7 pm and 8 pm. The British Heart Foundation found last year that during just one episode of “The X Factor”, a programme that is quite popular with children, there were no fewer than 13 junk food adverts. The issue is even more acute with online advertising, where adverts are often attached to videos, including music videos. That is probably worthy of a debate in itself.

Let me turn to food standards in schools, where there has been a tremendous breakthrough over the past few years. Those of us who visit schools look on with envy at the school meals now compared with the ones that many of us had to suffer years ago. Yet in many schools up and down the country, we have the farcical situation where lunches provided by schools are generally very healthy, but the food children themselves bring into schools, or is provided by their parents, is often not healthy. We can only imagine how frustrating it is for teachers, and indeed everybody who works in schools, including my wife, to see children filling themselves up with junk food at school and knowing there is little they can do about it. We need more co-operation between schools, and between parents and teachers. I back the Committee’s proposal that nutritional guidelines should be published for packed lunches and that, where necessary, teachers should be able to have, perhaps robust, conversations with parents so that these guidelines are followed.

Of course, diet is very important, but so is physical activity, as has been mentioned many times. I back up the supportive comments about the DCMS’s sports strategy. In The Times on Monday we saw a snack guide that included information on how long it would take to burn off the calories of various foods. It is easy to laugh at things like this, but it showed that a chocolate bar, bag of crisps and a bottle of Coke would require almost one hour of running or more than two hours of walking to burn off. How many children, or indeed parents, know that? Given that a child could consume all those things on top of, or instead of, a healthy meal, while doing no exercise, it is a really alarming picture. We must do more to encourage and enable exercise.

I am blessed to represent a primarily rural constituency. It is very easy for me and my family to get outdoors, to go on bike rides, and to go on public pathways. I am well aware that not everybody in the country has those privileges. Councils and local government need to do much more to enable access to healthy outdoor living and sports facilities. Planning plays a part in this too. When I see planning proposals for housing developments, I find it remarkable how little provision there is for recreational facilities, or indeed access to countryside. Cities fare far worse than the countryside in this regard.

[Helen Whately]

My hon. Friend is making an important speech covering a wide range of actions that need to be taken to tackle the obesity problem. Does he agree that this is not just about the sugar tax or product placement? The scale of the problem is such that we need a whole range of steps where the Government take a lead in showing how serious the problem is, and a whole range of actions to make sure that a difference is made quickly.

[Nigel Huddleston]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention; I could not agree more. Indeed, she has stolen my conclusion. It is absolutely the case that this is a very complex matter that covers so many areas that it is difficult to fine tune it. I hope that we can avoid focusing purely on the sugar tax, as important as it is.

We must recognise and praise the fact that up and down the country there are some great experiments going on, with schools practising innovative ways to encourage physical activity. For example, Commando Joe’s goes into schools and encourages team building and physical activity. I give credit to Bengeworth academy in Evesham in my constituency where we have our own Commando Joe—a gentleman called Chris Parry who works alongside staff and children having previously done four tours of Afghanistan with the Marines. He is doing great work, and long may that continue.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) said, this is not just about healthy eating. It is also about planning, education, labelling, and information, and the cost in healthcare if we do not do anything—we need to cover so many areas. If the aim of this debate was to give the Government ideas about what they could do to help in this area, then I am sure that by the end of it that will have been achieved.