HC Deb 24 February 2004 vol 418 cc154-6 1.17 pm
Mr. Jon Owen Jones (Cardiff, Central) (Lab/Co-op)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to prohibit the sale of high fat and high sugar content food in vending machines in schools. I appreciate that I am not the only parliamentarian who is this week seeking to curb children's consumption in schools, but I hope to persuade the House that my proposals are well researched, evidence based and have widespread support. Indeed, the Bill has the support of the National Union of Teachers, the British Heart Foundation and the Royal College of Physicians and is the product of my conducting a lengthy investigation into obesity with the Select Committee on Health. Other countries have tried similar measures or variants on it.

Only last week, a joint working party of the Royal College of Physicians the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and the Faculty of Public Health called for the replacement of sugar drinks and high-calorie snacks with healthy alternatives in schools and warned that failure to act now will have severe consequences for millions of individuals, for the nation's health and for the health service. The can that I am now displaying is familiar to everyone since it is the most famous brand in the world. I am sure that all Members of Parliament know that its contents are carbonated water which contains sugar. However, I doubt whether hon. Members realise just how much sugar is in that can. Depending on whether we use American or British teaspoons, it contains seven to 10 teaspoons of sugar. We know that many children drink three or four such cans in the course of a day. What responsible parent would permit their child to take 28 teaspoonfuls of sugar in one day? Yet in our schools, children are given the means, the opportunity and the time to do just. that.

There is evidence that parents are worried about this. An ICM poll in The Guardian last year showed that 70 per cent. would support the banning of fizzy drink vending machines in schools. In an era in which parents and health professionals are increasingly worried about obesity and nutrition. junk food in schools is rapidly becoming an anachronism.

The past 20 years have seen a startling rise in the proportion of children 1 who are overweight or obese. Since 1982, the number of such children has more than doubled, and 10 per cent. of today's six-year-olds are obese. The chief medical officer for England has called childhood obesity a "public health time bomb". If present trends continue, at least one fifth of boys and one third of girls will be obese by 2020. According to experts, that is the conservative estimate.

Children who are overweight or obese tend to become overweight or obese adults, leading in the long run to high blood pressure and other health problems. Obese children are far more likely to develop type 2 diabetes. An American survey has shown that severely obese children have a 93 times greater chance than average of developing diabetes. A long-term study of 51 Canadians who were diagnosed with that type of diabetes before the age of 17 showed that by the age of 33, seven of them had died, three were on dialysis, one was blind, one had had a toe amputated and out of 56 pregnancies in those people, only 35 had resulted in live births. Those statistics should be sufficient to Show that childhood obesity must be taken very seriously.

I do not claim that vending machines in schools are the only, or even the primary, cause of the problem. The rise in childhood obesity clearly reflects broader changes in lifestyle and diet in our society. However, vending machines whose primary products are fizzy, sugary drinks, crisps and chocolate—which the Americans describe with the term "foodstuffs of no nutritional value"—are a clear example of how schools, and by extension the state, allow the problem to go unchecked and are seen to promote and encourage those products. The fact that we cannot do everything to solve the problem at once does not mean that we should do nothing.

I have just mentioned America. Several US states and school districts have proposed or passed legislation similar to this Bill. I hope that the problem of childhood obesity in Britain will not have to reach US proportions before we take such measures here. All over the world, people are considering such proposals. In Canada, from September this year Coca-Cola and Pepsi will remove all their fizzy drinks from vending machines in schools and replace them with healthier products. I am sure that they are doing that to pre-empt legislation. In this country, Coca-Cola has just announced that it will remove all advertising on its vending machines in schools. It is clearly worried about what the Government might do, and I hope that it has good reason to be.

The food and drink industry does not make sizeable profits from vending machines in schools, but those machines raise the profile and familiarity of the industry's products with children and adolescents. Children are already disproportionately targeted by advertisers of fatty, sugary and unhealthy foods. Indeed, 40 per cent. of all adverts shown to children on television are for those products. Whether such adverts should be banned is a matter for another day, but to allow those brands into our schools—to allow the work done in the classroom to be undone in the corridor—is to take a desire to avoid accusations of nanny statehood to a ridiculous extreme.

Banning junk food in school vending machines will not turn us overnight into a nation of superhuman children, bursting at the chance to win Olympic golds; if only things were so simple. However, it is a step that we can take. When I was at school, I was exposed to much old-style Welsh nonconformism. To paraphrase what I was told then, just because we have junk food sellers does not mean that we have to have junk food sellers in the temple. It is time to throw them out.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Jon Owen Jones, Mr. David Amess, Paul Flynn, John Austin, Ms Debra Shipley, Dr. Richard Taylor, Mr. Win Griffiths, Mr. Bob Blizzard, Mrs. Jackie Lawrence, David Taylor and Chris Ruane.