Contribution
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Dr Cooper) on securing the debate. We have veered quite a long way into the public health arena in the last while, but that demonstrates how important it is. I pay tribute to the expertise that my hon. Friend brings to this House and everything that she is doing to promote public health, including sharing the news about the winter flu vaccine—I will get that in while I am here, Mr Efford, because it is so important.
As has been said by many, including the resident GP on these Benches, my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Opher), we have all learned from this debate. Well done to the British Liver Trust for its fantastic campaigning and briefing, which has clearly paid dividends. My hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West has given me the chance to update the House on the Government’s efforts to tackle the obesity crisis. I am here on behalf of the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton), who is responsible for public health, but this issue concerns us all. Many of us have been involved in this area for some time, and it is one of the defining public health challenges of our time.
We heard today some of the facts. Obesity is a major risk factor for both fatty liver disease and cardiovascular disease; there are common risk factors such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes. Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease now affects about one in three adults in the UK. Prevalence has increased with the rise in obesity rates. Currently, almost two thirds of the adult population in England are overweight or obese, and almost 29%—almost 13 million people—are living with obesity. When children in England start school, just over one in five of them are overweight or obese, and that rises to more than one in three by the time they leave primary education. Children living with obesity are five times more likely than other children to live with obesity as adults.
We have heard that there are major inequalities in how obesity is distributed across the United Kingdom. That was highlighted brilliantly by my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd), and by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood (Lorraine Beavers), who talked about the loss of her constituent Stuart. My hon. Friend the Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer) spoke eloquently for Sara and her stepmother Dorothy on their loss of Stephen, which brought home to all of us the real impact of this disease on people’s lives.
Kids in deprived areas are twice as likely to struggle with obesity as those in the least deprived, so this is an extremely serious matter. We are effectively hobbling the life chances of a little boy or girl before they have had a fair start. The Government cannot and will not look the other way as a generation of kids miss out on the best start in life. The points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West make sense, given that we both stood on a manifesto that committed to halve the gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest and poorest regions in England, and reverse the legacy left to us by the last Government. We share that goal. The question is: how do we get there?
On my hon. Friend’s calls for a liver strategy and a childhood obesity plan, our 10-year health plan sets out decisive action—we have heard about some of it in this debate—on prevention to tackle the obesity crisis head on and create a fairer, healthier food environment. We are looking at people as a whole: where they live, what services they need and how to prevent illnesses in their communities. That will help us to be better prepared for the changing nature of the disease and allow our services to focus more on the management of chronic long-term conditions. I will talk more about prevention later.
On my hon. Friend’s call to extend the levy model, we are taking steps to ensure that the soft drinks industry levy, which the Lib Dem spokesman, the hon. Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers), discussed eloquently and which colleagues know as a sugar tax, remains fit for purpose. On the request that my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West made for an ICB pathway, we are working with partners including the British Liver Trust to raise awareness and address the stigma related to hazardous and harmful levels of alcohol use and viral hepatitis, which are key drivers of liver disease. We will continue to work with communities and help those most affected by liver disease through the community liver health checks programme.