Tackling obesity

Labour’s Health Secretary Alan Johnson has called for a national movement to tackle the growing problem of obesity.

In a major speech on public health Alan Johnson outlined the public health implications of the obesity epidemic and argues that a strategy to combat obesity will only succeed if every part of our society recognises the problem and joins together to takes steps to address it.

To read the full speech click here>>

Speaking at the Fabian Society, Alan Johnson said:

Today, two thirds of all adults and one third of all children are either overweight or obese. By 2050, on current trends these figures will rise to almost nine in ten adults and two thirds of all children.

Our strategy made clear that in approaching this problem, we reject both the “nanny state,” which polices shopping trolleys and institutes exercise regimes and the neglectful state, which wipes its hands of the problem, and wags the finger in the direction of the most vulnerable families in the vague hope that they will do as they are told.

The Conservative Party have apparently chosen this approach. Reading David Cameron’s Glasgow speech, I was struck not by how much the Tories have changed, but by how little. Cameron is following a Tory tradition which would have been familiar to the Fabian progressives of the 20s and 30s, and which was distilled to create pure Thatcherism in the 80s. He delivered Tebbit’s “Get on your bike” speech, refined by PR experts. Chingford meets Notting Hill. It attracted predictable support in the pages of the Spectator, where, in an article headed: “Shouting abuse at fat people is not just fun, it’s socially useful,” Rod Liddle congratulates Cameron for “telling these awful people it’s all their own fault that they are hideous, poor and stupid.”

It’s easy for politicians to stand on the sidelines accusing the impoverished, the fat and the excluded of only having themselves to blame. But before we evoke the Victorian notion of the deserving and undeserving poor – the very concept that Fabians have battled against over the years - we should take a moment to consider how complex these issues really are.

Academics and medical experts do not say that children are “at risk” of obesity or poverty because of political correctness – they say this because it’s an accurate assessment of the situation. A child who grows up in poverty, and whose parents have little or no aspiration for them, who doesn’t get to go to the best school, who isn’t blessed with an inspirational teacher, is by any definition “at risk” of becoming a poor adult. It’s not inevitable, but without some help and support, it’s highly likely.

It is simply wrong to suggest that the only solution to deep-rooted problems such as obesity is for people to be more responsible. Of course people must take personal responsibility for their own actions. Nobody in their right mind would argue for personal irresponsibility.

But rather than engage in oversimplification, government has to develop and implement a sustained response to a problem that will have profound and long-term consequences for health and well-being and major costs to the health budget and the wider economy.

Just as the government has a moral duty to tackle poverty and exclusion, so it also has aduty to address obesity. But this is not a licence to hector and lecture people on how they should spend their lives – not least because that approach simply won’t work.

Tackling obesity requires a much broader partnership, not only with families, but with employers, retailers, the leisure industry, the media, local government and the voluntary sector. We need a national movement that will bring about a fundamental change in the way we live our lives.