Dr Beccy Cooper

Thank you, Mr Efford, for chairing the debate this morning. I thank the Minister for her excellent remarks, and all the parliamentary colleagues who have taken the time to be here. I thank the British Liver Trust and everybody who came to hear the debate. I hope they found it edifying and useful. I have no particular further remarks; I think most points have been covered. There is a lot of work to do. As has been said, 90% of liver disease is preventable. That is a serious amount of disease that we do not need to face in this country, which is incredibly important to remember. Our obesogenic environment—my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Ben Coleman) told me to say that slowly; it basically means it is hard for us to do healthy things and keep well—encourages us, consciously and subconsciously, to do things that are not great for our bodies. The Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson), said that we have agency. Of course we do, but we are humans in an environment that is telling us all sorts of things all the time. Our job as parliamentarians, as representatives of our residents, as members of the party that is governing the country, is to make sure that the messages and signals that we send, and the legislation that we pass, encourage a healthy environment for our residents to live in. Within that healthy environment, people can make their own choices. To those who accuse me and other public health consultants of being part of a nanny state, I say, frankly, the nanny we have in this state right now is not a great nanny. It is one that allows us to eat things that make us ill, that encourages us to not exercise, that makes our children sick and that means we die earlier than we need to. I do not want to live in a nanny state, but I do want to live in a healthy environment that allows our children to live well and allows all of us to live the lives that we want to lead—one that makes the healthy choice the easy choice, the affordable choice and the normal choice, and one where, if we want to do things that make us ill, we really have to try hard. I thank everybody for their time today. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered obesity and fatty liver disease.