Childhood Obesity

Robert Halfon Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod) on securing and opening the debate. She showed an incredible level of expertise and was thoughtful in her remarks. We have had our own discussions about food, and I look forward to having many more in future.

I confess that I was hesitant about speaking in the debate today. It is difficult to talk about obesity, including childhood obesity—and we have a serious problem in Harlow—in a way that does not upset people. When I have spoken about it in the past, I have had many letters and e-mails from anguished individuals and residents. Nevertheless, I decided to go ahead today because the issue is so important and must be dealt with.

Some take the view that the only way to solve obesity is by encouraging people to go on a diet. I do not take that view. Dieting is essential, but obesity problems are very much about parenting, education and health. One of the best books that I have read about food—I read it almost in one sitting—was called “The Hungry Years” by William Leith. The author talks about his addiction to food, describing food almost as a drug. He went on the Atkins diet but, although he addressed that addiction, he went on to another—from memory, drugs. It was only when he dealt with the reasons for his compulsive behaviour that he ultimately managed to lose weight. It is a very important book.

I know how difficult diets are, having had to be on diets as a child because of my walking. As hon. Members understand, diets sometimes feel like walking up a hill with a boulder, like Sisyphus in the Greek myth: as soon as we get to the top, we see the boulder roll down, and we have to start again.

As well as having obesity and childhood obesity problems, Harlow has some important sporting organisations for young people. I want to talk about them; they are very much part of the big society. We have the Harlow athletics club, the Harlow gymnastics club and the football club Kickz, as well as strong candidates for the Olympics and Paralympics such as James Huckle and Anne Strike. We have probably the finest sports Leisurezone in the country, run by a non-profit making trust, which is another example of the big society. However, we still have the problem of obesity.

As my hon. Friend set out, Harlow is not alone in having such problems. Over the past 13 years, the United Kingdom has seen an unprecedented rise in obesity, especially in childhood obesity. The proportion of children aged two to 10 who were overweight or obese increased from 22% in 1995 to 28% in 2003. If the number of obese children continues to rise, such children will have a shorter life expectancy than their parents do.

My constituency of Harlow has significant challenges of its own. Sadly, by the time that Harlow children finish primary school, one in three is overweight; and one in five has the most challenging weight problems and is considered obese. Harlow has the highest such figures for any of the 12 district councils in Essex. I mention that not to criticise anyone—I am proud of my constituency and residents, and I do not want to cause offence—but because such problems cannot be swept under the carpet.

Clearly, some of the obesity problem is down to parenting, but it is also down to the McDonald’s culture that we live in. We do not even have to get out of the car these days; stopping off for fast food is so much easier than going to the supermarket and having to cook ingredients from scratch. I have a confession to make: I happen to love McDonald’s. As for most people, it is a treat, providing value for money and affordable meals. It has made progress, with the preparation of chicken salads and so on. The problem is when people eat there regularly, as if it were an extension of their kitchen.

The second reason for the obesity problems is the big retailers and food companies. At an all-party group meeting with Kellogg’s, I asked why all its cereals have so much sugar—cornflakes, or whatever they might be. The people from Kellogg’s said that some of the company’s cereals did not have so much sugar, and that it has non-sugar brands. However, we never see those non-sugar brands advertised or displayed prominently. As with everyone else, I go to the supermarket, but I would not have a clue about what a non-sugar cereal from Kellogg’s is, and yet I would know about its cornflakes and the rest, because those are the ones advertised.

Schools have made a lot of progress with their meals, following the media campaigns of recent years. Jamie Oliver, who has been mentioned, was successful partly because he was not the man or woman from Whitehall, although there is always the risk of bureaucracy when we deal with such things. I have a short anecdote on that subject. I visited a school in my constituency that wanted to give fresh fruit to its children every day. Instead of being able to buy it from the greengrocer down the road, the school had to order it through a centralised fruit planning system set up by the bureaucracy. A fruit co-ordinator was needed, to count the number of pieces of fruit, and how much was eaten and left. That shows the ludicrousness of what happens when big government gets in the way.

Why does Harlow have a unique problem? There are many reasons for general obesity, but they do not explain the specific problems in my constituency. The truth is that the tale in Harlow is of two towns. In many ways, it is an ambitious and enterprising place, with a culture of hard work. We have more than 2,500 private businesses, which makes us one of the most entrepreneurial towns in Essex, but according to the latest comprehensive study in 2007, Harlow also has housing estates with pockets of some of the worst deprivation and poverty not just in the region, but in England as a whole. That impacts on everything: homelessness, unemployment, literacy and numeracy, family breakdown, crime, and of course health. Obesity is just one symptom of the broken society, but is that because of poverty, or educational poverty?

When it comes to solutions for obesity, it is fair to say that big or grand Government diet schemes do not work. Television adverts a few years ago urged us to eat fruit and said that it was wrong to have a bottle of wine with dinner. Many parts of the UK are still awash with NHS adverts covering the landscape with the same advice. In 2009, the Food Standards Agency—a quango that survived the bonfire—announced a scheme to encourage restaurants to give calorie counts beside each dish. The Department of Health has told us that we are all eating too much saturated fat, but despite all those worthy initiatives and their cost for taxpayers, obesity has gone up and up.

I am a Conservative because I believe in choice, freedom and the right of individuals to make their own decisions. Big state or “nanny-knows-best” programmes usually cost a lot, and do not achieve what they are intended to achieve, however noble they are. One thing that sticks in my mind about the Jamie Oliver success is that parents came to the school and tried to thrust fried Mars bars through the gate. The reason was partly lack of education, but also resentment at being told what to do by the big state. They were the parents, and they wanted to decide what to do with their own children.

People are not chess pieces to move around a board. We cannot design a Government scheme that will magically repair people’s lives, but I accept that we must not abandon people. The solutions must come from the communities and neighbourhoods that we live in. That is an old idea, but it has been given fresh impetus by the big society reforms.

We have some remarkable sporting groups in Harlow, which are very popular. They are run by volunteers and social entrepreneurs, who know how to stretch a few hundred pounds to have the greatest impact with as little bureaucracy as possible. Such big society groups need more support. If we diverted just 1% of the sin taxes on cigarettes—around £209 million a year, based on 2010 figures—and if the same were applied to alcopops, excessively fatty foods and high-sugar products aimed at children, and that money was then funnelled into the big society bank, the Big Lottery Fund or local funds and ring-fenced specifically for smaller grass-roots charities, that would really make a difference. It would transform childhood obesity. That incentive could work in many ways. Supermarket vouchers that are currently used for school equipment could also fund sports charities in the community.

Community support officers on the Berecroft estate in Harlow have a regular Saturday football game with local children, and organise it with the Berecroft residents association. All they need is a few hundred pounds to connect their floodlights to mains electricity. Small amounts of money can make a huge difference, and millions of pounds are not always needed, because small community groups are best at fighting obesity. Another example is Harlow gymnastic club. It has many members, and the cost of joining is very small. It has changed the lives of countless young people and those with significant health problems, but it struggles to access funding because it is not part of any grand Government diet scheme.

I have often said that, if the big society, or even the big-boned society, is to work, we must build the little society. That is why I urge the Minister to focus on sustainable funding for smaller, grass-roots charities, as well as national organisations.