Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the policy paper Tackling obesity: empowering adults and children to live healthier lives, published on 27 July, what steps they are taking to help people with severe and complex obesity maintain a healthy weight following weight loss.

Alongside work to establish the National Institute for Health Protection, the Government continues to focus on health improvement and preventing ill-health, including tackling obesity, with support from the expert teams currently located in Public Health England (PHE). We do not envisage any changes to where those responsibilities will sit before spring 2021.

We have established an external stakeholder advisory group to help us develop our thinking on the best future arrangements for prevention, health improvement and delivery of public healthcare services including where PHE’s health improvement functions would be best placed in order to support the public health system and improve the public’s health. We will be engaging more widely over the coming months.

Through Tackling obesity: empowering adults and children to live healthier lives we are delivering a range of measures on weight management, including expanding weight management services to help more people get the support they need and making conversations about weight in primary care the norm. Further details about these measures will be available later in the year.