Are the Government's child obesity plans a cop-out or will they help end an epidemic?

In the middle of the parliamentary recess and with the Prime Minister away on holiday, the Government has finally published its long-overdue plan to tackle child obesity. The plan has been widely rubbished as a cop-out. Jamie Oliver, the celebrity chef and campaigner on healthy eating for children, said: 'Everything about it stinks of "We don’t care".' Is this fair, or do the government’s plans offer the prospect of ending an epidemic that is afflicting more and more of our children?

Few people doubt that child obesity is one of the most serious public health issues Britain (and most other developed countries) faces. It blights the lives of children as they grow into adulthood, doubling their risk of early death from any number of associated diseases, including diabetes, heart failure and cancer. One third of British children are overweight at the time they leave primary school; a fifth are clinically obese. Children from poorer backgrounds are roughly twice as likely to be overweight.

Obesity is also terrible for the health of the NHS’s finances. It is reckoned that obesity costs the NHS around £4.2bn a year. Simon Stevens, the head of NHS England, has said that obesity could ultimately 'bankrupt' the NHS.

The government has long promised what the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, called a 'game-changing' plan to end the epidemic and improve the health of the country's children. But the plan has been a very long time coming. It was initially supposed to have been published nine months ago but the delay, and the endless rewriting of drafts, has led many to suspect that what finally emerged would be a damp squib.

That is exactly the phrase that Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat health minister in the coalition government, called the final document which had been whittled down from thirty pages to a mere nine.

The government's claim still to be acting in the 'draconian' way it promised is the introduction of a sugar tax on drinks, itself a controversial measure that David Cameron finally committed himself to last autumn. It will in effect put 8p on a 68p can of Coke. The government has also set a target of reducing the sugar content of food by 20%, but has left it to the food industry voluntarily to bring this about. The industry argues that it has already been setting about the task.

The government, also in a voluntaristic spirit, is encouraging primary schools to make sure that their pupils exercise for an hour a day, and wants Ofsted to monitor progress.

But what is missing from the plan, the material that covered the twenty-odd pages that have been ripped out of earlier drafts, is any mention of, never mind any action on, restricting advertising of the food and drink that causes obesity or any curbs on promotional deals on junk food such as two-for-one bargains. 40% of the food we buy is in the form of promotional deals, much of it junk food that simply makes people overweight. These are the measures that Public Health England has consistently argued would be the most effective at dealing with the problem.

The government's meagre plan has been widely slated. Graham MacGregor, chairman of the campaign group Action on Sugar, said: 'It's a disgrace that the revised obesity plan has been limited to nine pages of ineffectual recommendations. We were shocked to see that there's absolutely no recognition of advertising, marketing and promotions, all of which would have helped combat the growing obesity and type-2 diabetes epidemic.'

Sarah Wollaston, the Tory chair of the House of Commons health select committee, said: 'The key message on childhood obesity should have been about the importance of reducing junk calories. In completely removing whole sections from the draft strategy, it is hugely disappointing that the obesity plan puts the interests of the advertising industry ahead of the interests of children. The plan also misses the opportunity to improve children's diets by reining in the saturation marketing and promotion of junk food.'

What is perhaps most striking in the responses to the plan is the difference of view about it between, on one hand, the food and drink industry and, on the other, parts of the food retail business. Ian Wright, of the Food and Drink Federation, said: 'Government has acknowledged that working in partnership with industry on a voluntary basis is the best way to make progress on this crucial issue.' But retailers have called for greater government imposition.

Andrew Opie, the director of food policy at the British Retail Consortium, which represents food retailers such as Tesco, Waitrose and Marks and Spencer, said: 'The only way to achieve the targets that the government have set out is to ensure a level playing field across the food industry.' It is the experience of using the voluntary approach to reducing salt in food that has led the BRC to this view. Mr Opie said: 'By reducing the salt content of their own-brand products at a faster rate than some branded competitors, retailers found themselves at a competitive disadvantage. This is why we had previously called on government to consider mandatory targets for sugar reduction.'

The view was echoed by Mike Coupe, the chief executive of Sainsbury’s, who wrote in a letter to The Times: 'We need compulsory and measured targets for the reduction of sugar (and other nutrients such as saturated fat) across the whole of the food and drink industry. Nothing less will work. We have seen this with voluntary targets on reformulation and labelling, which led to a piecemeal response from business.'

The Prime Minister’s decision to overrule her health secretary and, in the words of one Whitehall source, 'castrate' the policy has been attributed to her wish to give the economy priority in the more uncertain post-Brexit world. Food industry lobbyists had claimed that a tougher policy would have threatened their profits and put jobs at risk. But critics say this is a classic case of short-term thinking trumping long-term sense. Not having an effective policy to tackle child obesity will cost everyone more in the long run and most of all those whose lives will be shortened by their poor diet in childhood.

That is certainly the view of Jamie Oliver. He wrote: 'This was the moment we’d been waiting for – the first true test for our prime minister and the opportunity for the British government to say "Enough is enough". It could have been one of the most important pieces of work of our time but instead it was prepared and delivered in the most underhand, insensitive, unstrategic way…Theresa May did not ask for insight; she did not ask for perspective. It's crystal clear to me that the health of our nation is absolutely not on the agenda for Mrs May and her government.'

Is such a sharp rebuke justified?

Let us know what you think.