Obesity and Fatty Liver Disease

Steve Yemm Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dr Cooper]

I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent intervention. She is absolutely right. With her public health expertise, she highlights the very real problems that lead to fatty liver disease: our broken food system, the issue with access to good, nutritious food for children in school, and the need to ensure that our stark health inequalities are addressed. I will come to that later in my speech.

To go back to the issue of diagnosis and treatment, we should note that a staggering 80% of England currently has no effective detection and treatment pathway—yes, a staggering 80%. The British Liver Trust, whose representatives are here today, is rightly calling for an end to this postcode lottery, so a key ask raised in this debate is that every integrated care board, every regional and national health area that we have, should have a full pathway for early detection of liver disease.

There is some excellent, innovative work out there that can help us to get to a much better place in tackling this disease. I recently met the team at Predictive Health Intelligence—whose representatives I think are also here today—who have developed hepatoSIGHT, which is a great name; well done. That is an inspiring example of how technology can transform early detection. The system uses existing NHS data to identify people at risk of liver disease before symptoms develop, allowing GPs proactively to invite patients for screening and support. I am delighted to say it is now being implemented across NHS South West. It is proof that, with genuine support from senior NHS management, clinical and digital teams at all levels can come together for the good of patients. That system is exactly the kind of innovation we need in order to make early diagnosis and prevention the norm and not the exception.

I now come to prevention. Screening and early diagnosis are vital but, as for all population health issues, as my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) rightly highlighted, we must have a laser focus on preventing the root causes of fatty liver disease.

[Steve Yemm (Mansfield) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising this debate. We are calling obesity the enemy, but the liver does not count in pounds or kilograms. The real culprit is not body weight; it is metabolic dysfunction, as she points out—insulin resistance, poor diet, genetic risk and so forth. Lean people also get fatty liver disease, not always people who are overweight. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should talk less about obesity and more about screening early, taxing junk food and treating metabolic disorders and disease rather than strictly BMI? If we chase the scales, we might miss the science.

[Dr Cooper]

I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent point and agree absolutely. In our society, we focus on how people look for many reasons, cultural and commercial, but this is purely about health. This is about keeping people healthy on the inside and allowing them to live good quality lives. My hon. Friend is absolutely right in that sense.

Poor diet is now the leading risk factor for death and disability. It is responsible for millions of preventable deaths each year. In the UK, almost two thirds of adults are overweight or are living with obesity, increasing the risk of fatty liver disease, cardiovascular disease and a multitude of cancers. In my job as a public health consultant, I see a lot of data and read many papers, but this statistic shocked me: four in 10 children with obesity may already have fatty liver disease. That demonstrates the urgent need to act now to prevent an even greater epidemic of disease in future.

That has not happened by accident; it is the result of a broken food system, which has made the UK Europe’s third most obese country and one of the world’s biggest consumers of ultra-processed food. We have a system that makes the unhealthy choice the cheapest, easiest and most available choice. Healthier food now costs more than twice as much per calorie as unhealthy food. That is £10.24 per 1,000 kilocalories compared with £4.50. For fruit and vegetables, the cost is even more at £11.90 per 1,000 kilocalories.

For the lowest income households, following a recommended healthy diet would swallow half or more of their disposable income. It is no surprise that obesity and fatty liver disease hit hardest in poorer communities. As I said at the beginning, this is not about personal failure. As hon. Members have said, sometimes people feel that that they are failing to lose weight and failing to keep themselves healthy. This is not about personal failure; it is a political failure. It is our collective failure to create a food environment that protects rather than undermines public health. If we are serious about prevention, we must be serious about reform—the right type—with stronger fiscal and regulatory measures to reduce the availability and marketing of foods that are high in fat, salt and sugar, and to rebuild a food system that serves public health and not profit.

Why have we not addressed this yet? Weighted against the commercial gain of the food and drink industry, our obesogenic environment is killing our population and costing the taxpayer billions. Economic analysis last year suggests that excess weight costs the economy £126 billion a year. A Budget is coming up next month; I am fairly sure that our Chancellor would like £126 billion a year. That figure takes in wider factors, such as lost productivity, care costs and lost years of healthy life. The direct NHS cost of obesity is projected to rise from £6.5 billion to £9.7 billion by 2050. We cannot separate our health and our wealth, and we cannot hope to achieve economic growth without tackling issues such as obesity and fatty liver disease.

Since 1990, there have been nearly 700 policies proposed by Government to reduce obesity. Imagine having 700 policies about your life! Past strategies fell short because they targeted behaviour change—individual choice—rather than the structural and commercial drivers of diet. Many lacked delivery plans, timelines or evaluation frameworks, leading to fragmented progress and limited long-term impact.

What can we do now to ensure that this public health emergency is addressed? My key asks for our Health Minister, who is kindly listening here today, are as follows. First, there is a clear need for a national liver strategy, ensuring increased public awareness, early liver checks and primary care pathways. As stated earlier, every integrated care board should have a pathway for the early detection of liver disease.

Secondly, we need strong planning and co-ordination to be ready to deliver the next generation of medication for liver disease. Thirdly, if we truly mean to deliver the left shift to prevention, promised in the 10-year health plan for England, then we have to change the environment that is driving poor health. There is strong consensus about the necessity of upstream interventions to regulate the unhealthy food and drink environment. We can build on that strong consensus to extend the levy model to high-sugar and high-salt foods; to enforce the 9 pm watershed for high fat, salt and sugar advertising, closing brand mark loopholes; to provide stable funding for local food partnerships, so that councils can act on local needs; to reinstate the full childhood obesity plan; and to address food affordability via fiscal reform.

None of this is easy or it would have been done already, but right now our environment is draining our health service of billions each year and weighing heavily on the nation’s health—no pun intended. Let us not keep repeating our mistakes, but rather embed food policy as a national health priority. Through our work on preventing obesity and fatty liver disease, let us support and finally see the long-discussed and essential shift towards prevention and a healthier, wealthier country.