Theresa May’s government has been accused of diluting plans drawn up under David Cameron that were designed to cut Britain’s childhood obesity levels.
Restrictions on junk-food advertising and on unhealthy product placement in supermarkets were among measures cut from a draft of the government’s childhood obesity strategy when it was published in August, Channel 4’s Dispatches programme will say on Monday.
The programme says the draft, a copy of which it has seen, also contained a pledge to halve childhood obesity by 2026 to 800,000 cases. But when the full strategy was released that had been changed to a pledge to “significantly reduce” the number of chronically overweight children.
Criticising the watering down of the strategy, Jamie Oliver, the celebrity chef and healthy food campaigner, tells the programme: “Obesity is killing huge amounts of people, well before their time. This is a war. If you are worried about the thing that hurts British people the most, it ain’t Isis, right?”
He said of the published strategy: “This should go to the Trade Descriptions Act because that says an ‘action plan’ and there’s hardly any action in there. When you look at how the plan came out at midnight, next to the A-level results, while the whole of government’s on holiday, it absolutely screams out, ‘we don’t care’. I’d say it’s never too late to say I’m sorry. And, just sort of, you know, start again.”
The leaked draft, thought to date from June, numbers 37 pages, while the strategy published in August ran to just 13 pages, according to the programme.
Proposals removed included forcing restaurants, cafes and takeaways to put calorie information on menus, Dispatches says. Other plans dropped include making supermarkets remove junk food from checkouts and ends of aisles, and limiting buy-one-get-one-free and other multi-buy discounts on unhealthy foods.
The published strategy is also missing proposals for restrictions to junk-food advertising, including commercial breaks in and around popular Saturday night television programmes such as The X Factor, which were included in the draft.
Instead, May’s version emphasised the role of exercise, despite the Cameron-era draft which stated exercise “will not in itself solve childhood obesity”.
Doctors, health campaigners and politicians criticised the strategy when it was published, for not going far enough. Key elements include cutting sugar by 20% in food eaten by children and a tax on sugary drinks to raise money for school sports.
The health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, had previously said the strategy needed to be a “gamechanging” moment to tackle a “national emergency”.
James Cracknell, double Olympic gold rowing medallist and healthy eating campaigner, said of the published strategy: “The terminology – it’s about hope, would, should. A lot of it is voluntary codes, and we know that doesn’t work.”
Graham MacGregor, professor of cardiovascular medicine at the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, and chairman of Action on Sugar, told the programme: “I was gutted. I mean it was a pathetic plan. It didn’t include any restrictions on marketing or promotion or advertising to children, which is scandalous. We’ve missed a huge opportunity. We would have been the first country in the world to have a comprehensive plan for preventing obesity. We could have done it, and very sadly and very disappointingly Theresa May – for reasons best known to herself – decided not to go ahead with it.”
Writing in the Sunday Times, Oliver said: “Cameron’s strategy is 37 pages long and bravely commits to halving England’s childhood obesity levels within 10 years. May’s plan is only 13 pages long, and her voice and personal commitment do not ring true on a single one of those pages.”
He added: “After two years in the making, it took just 36 days for May to dismantle Cameron’s plan, and she has not replaced it with something better, bigger, bolder, braver or something that is even fit for purpose. What happened? Was it too big for her? Did parts of the food industry start to bite back? Nothing has changed to warrant milder action. Things have not got better, they have only got worse, especially in our most disadvantaged communities.”
A Department of Health spokesman said the government’s published strategy was groundbreaking. He said: “No other developed country has done anything as ambitious. The government has intentionally taken a careful and measured approach which will reduce obesity. We are taking bold action through the soft drinks industry levy to cut the amount of sugar consumed by young people.
“Alongside this, our restrictions on advertising and promotion are among the toughest in the world. These steps will make a real difference to help reverse a problem that has been decades in the making, but we have not ruled out further action if the right results are not seen.”
• Dispatches: The Secret Plan To Save Fat Britain, is on Channel 4 at 8pm on Monday
Childhood obesity: May government diluted plans, claims Dispatches
