UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE

UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 23-vii

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

HEALTH COMMITTEE

OBESITY

Monday 29 March 2004

RT HON MARGARET HODGE MBE, MP, MS MELA WATTS,

RT HON TESSA JOWELL MP and MR PAUL HERON

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1401 - 1512

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Health Committee

on Monday 29 March 2004

Members present

Mr David Hinchliffe, in the Chair

Mr David Amess

John Austin

Mr Keith Bradley

Mr Simon Burns

Mr Paul Burstow

Jim Dowd

Mr Jon Owen Jones

Dr Doug Naysmith

Dr Richard Taylor

________________

Witnesses: Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MBE, a Member of the House, Minister of State, Minister for Children, Ms Mela Watts, Divisional Manager, Curriculum Division, Department for Education and Skills; Rt Hon Tessa Jowell, a Member of the House, Secretary of State, and Mr Paul Heron, Head of Sports Division, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, examined.

Q1401 Chairman: Colleagues, can I welcome you to this session of the Committee, the final session on our Obesity Inquiry. It seems to have been going a very long time but it has been extremely interesting. Can I particularly welcome the Secretary of State and the Minister, and their colleagues. We are most grateful for your co-operation with this inquiry. We had hoped to have a session involving yourselves and the Public Health Minister but for various reasons, which we understand, it will not be possible. We are grateful that you have been able to attend. I wonder if you could each briefly introduce yourselves to the Committee.

Tessa Jowell: I am Tessa Jowell, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.

Mr Heron: Paul Heron, Head of the Sports Division within Culture, Media and Sport.

Margaret Hodge: Margaret Hodge, Minister for Children, Young People and Families.

Ms Watts: Mela Watts, Curriculum Division within the Schools Directorate at the Department for Education and Skills.

Q1402 Chairman: Secretary of State, you have done 7,000 steps today already, which is 1,000 more than me.

Tessa Jowell: 8,561.

Q1403 Chairman: Excellent. Put your feet up for an hour or two! Can I begin by asking you some questions about the location of public health. I ask you particularly because, unusually, you are in a position where you have actually been the Public Health Minister. I recall that when we looked at public health one of the issues that we were concerned about was the appropriate location of the public health function, bearing in mind that public health as an issue crosses so many government departments and so many initiatives. I am conscious that certainly in recent times you have been making a lot of statements that have relevance to public health. Do you have any views now different from those you had when you were the Minister responsible directly about the location of public health in government and, also, how departments can work together better than has been the case in recent times?

Tessa Jowell: I do not think I do, Chairman. Certainly when I was Public Health Minister, which is now four or five years ago, I felt that it was extremely important to engage the whole of government in the positive promotion of health. I think that if you look at what we have done as a Government, and were it described in public health terms, it would be an extraordinarily proud record in relation to child poverty, pensioner poverty, promoting greater road safety, quite apart from the very strong thrust of public health policy coming from the Department of Health, and all the work that is being done now led by Margaret in DfES through SureStart right through to making sure that young girls, particularly vulnerable young girls, have high levels of education which will cause them to aspire to be more than mothers when they are too young to be mothers. All these, and there are many more, those are just some headlines, are areas which represent progress in public health. I think that what we have seen over the last five years is a flowering of that ambition, that this would become a defining theme for the Government as a whole.

Q1404 Chairman: In the last four or five months I have been very conscious that you personally have come out with some important statements in relation to public health. Is that because of your frustration at the lack of progress on issues such as obesity? There has been some surprise that you have taken the lead on the issue of obesity and you have made statements that some may agree with, some may disagree with. Is there a reason why in the last four or five months you have taken a particular interest in this area?

Tessa Jowell: I am not in the lead on obesity, John Reid, the Secretary of State, is in the lead on obesity and questions about obesity are reflected very extensively in the Public Health White Paper, but I head the department that can make a very important contribution to the battle that we are all joined in now against the rising tide of obesity. What I have sought to do, and I think John and I have tried to work with Melanie in a complementary way in relation to this, is to focus on the fact that one of the causal factors for the increase in levels of obesity has been the fact that while calorie intake has remained relatively stable - I stress relatively stable and I know that the FSA in their most recent report have cast some doubt on the estimated average calorific values because of the extent to which obese people tend to under-report how much they eat, but that taken as part of the work in progress - what has received much less attention is the fact that activity levels have substantially reduced. We have seen a substantial reduction over the last ten years in the number of children walking to school and a corresponding increase in the number of children going to school by car. Also we have seen the evidence of the intractable difficulty of getting adults to be active at a level that is going to safeguard their health. My answer to your question is to say that public health now, as in the days when I was the first ever Public Health Minister, requires a whole government response; a government response which is led by the Department of Health but draws on the respective contributions of each department, as in the case of my own department, without which a strategy to tackle obesity will not be effective.

Q1405 Chairman: How do you view the issue of departments actually contradicting each other in respect of this policy area? One of the concerns we had when we looked at public health before was that there are many different strands of public health policy, and you will fully understand that, for example housing and transport have a key role to play in public health, as we all know, but what we have seen in recent times is in one instance from your department, and in another instance the Minister's department, messages were sent out, and I am thinking of the Cadbury's initiative, the Walkers crisps' initiative, which were contradictory to what I would have thought would have been the main thrust of government policy. You are aware of the examples that I am referring to presumably, we have talked about these on several occasions in this Committee. How do you get away from this idea of one department contradicting the other? Can you ever get a strategy that is actually singing off the same hymn sheet?

Tessa Jowell: To deal with the broad point, of course it is important that government departments work together in a way that mutually reinforces each other's efforts so that you have a policy which has the value added of interdepartmental co-operation. I know that is what John, through the Public Health White Paper exercise, is seeking to achieve, and I am quite sure that he and Melanie will do that. You know that in the business of government there will always be discussions and differences of view, the important thing is that we never get to a point where a policy pulls one against the other. You are absolutely right that there are examples that you can draw on both where that synergy has been achieved and others where it is much more difficult. I would actually take issue with you in relation to Cadbury's. What we have to bear in mind is that it touches the nature of our approach in educating children about the importance of healthy eating, the importance of exercise and the different values in what they eat. Cadbury's have made a substantial contribution through what is called the Get Active campaign. There are those who take the view that any association of any commercial interest with any health campaign is undesirable. I do not take that view. Sport in this country is not in a position to be able to turn away sponsorship that can provide facilities and equip teachers to be better at promoting sport and activity. Without making any further judgment about the Get Active campaign, it has represented a considerable investment in sport and activity in schools. What is important is that we separate and understand the risks of that in relation to somehow getting children hooked on chocolate to the exclusion of everything else. I would prefer to work in a context where children grow up understanding the importance of healthy eating, have an internal understanding of the importance of a balanced diet, what constitutes a balanced diet, and not in a way that can be unrealistic, protected from the kinds of pressures that any child will be subject to when they go out and spend their pocket money, but understand that it is absolutely fine. Paula Radcliffe eats a bar of chocolate before she runs a race. If you get the children understanding the link between calorie intake and calorie burn then you will begin to get children who are literate in understand the importance of physical activity. I think that we need to take a pretty measured view of the conclusions that we draw about sponsorship. The gains where they are to be made in relation to health will be very clearly understood, but let us also understand what may be lost from facilities which without that investment simply would not go ahead.

Q1406 Chairman: One or two of my colleagues want to explore that point in detail. My reason for raising it was not specifically to look at those examples but to press you on whether, as somebody who has been in the unique position of being Public Health Minister, you feel the structures of government over the past five years since you were in Richmond House doing that job have changed in a way that enhances interdepartmental working on public health issues such as obesity? Do you feel there have been positive improvements in the way that departments are working together, that you can focus on an objective shared across each department?

Tessa Jowell: Yes, I do. I very definitely do.

Q1407 Mr Jones: Minister, some of us would feel that the example that you gave about Paula Radcliffe eating a bar of chocolate is singularly inappropriate in the issue that is before us because, of course, to an athlete or someone who expends a huge amount of energy, eating the odd bar of chocolate is no difficulty, in fact it is an asset, and that is why the companies that would promote products such as Lucozade, and show that product associated with an athlete, wish to give the impression in the minds of children in particular that if they eat this food or drink this drink they too will become athletic. It is a completely false message because the vast majority of people will not do this. You appear not only to be endorsing the message but promoting it, doing the exact opposite of what the role should be in terms of health gain. How do you answer that challenge?

Tessa Jowell: By refuting it. I think that if you read the speeches that I have made on this, if you read the challenge that I have laid to the advertising industry, the answer to your question would be very clear. I do believe that food companies, advertisers, have a very important role to play in promoting precisely those kinds of messages about healthy eating, about a balanced diet, and are uniquely placed to do so. I have challenged them to do that and I await their response.

Q1408 Mr Jones: Would you not say that is rather naïve? Would you think that the advertisers' responsibility is to promote their product, not to promote any general message, it is the Government's responsibility to promote the health message?

Tessa Jowell: It is their job to promote the health message as well. The other point that you have got to factor into your conclusion is that there is a very high level of public interest and public concern about obesity now, in part due to the work of this Committee, and there is a level of interest in the impact of advertising on children, the nature of children's diets, that there has never been before, so the industry itself is now under very great pressure, and pressure that, if they do not respond to, will translate itself into consumer preference for other kinds of products. I do think that we are at a point where it is possible to engage with the industry. I am optimistic about the outcome of that engagement. I think that if we can get the industry to implement at a level which is level with our enthusiasm the importance of healthy eating, get those messages across to children, that will be a far more effective way of doing it than anything that I or, with respect, any Members of the Health Select Committee might be able to do in terms of public persuasion.

Mr Jones: We are well aware of our limitations.

Chairman: Some more than others!

Q1409 Mr Jones: When you speak of outcomes, earlier you gave a list of what the Government has done in terms of health gain and it was a list of noble issues but it was not a list of outcomes. The key outcome that concerns this Committee is the outcome in terms of rising levels of obesity that we already measure, we already know and the trends are extraordinarily worrying. The health experts tell us that it is the biggest health problem facing generations to come. We know the direction in which the outcomes are going now and it is not a direction that we want to see. We were given some very interesting information when we were in Denmark recently and compared graphs of health, fitness levels and obesity levels for a generation of children today and a generation of children 20/30 years ago. The graphs showed something quite interesting. The top quartile of the fittest children 25 years ago compared with the fittest children today - this is in Denmark but we suspect something similar would occur in this country - showed the fittest children today were fitter than the fittest children 25 years ago. The huge problem was the rest of the graph, particularly the lowest quartile, where they were much less fit. That would indicate to us that a policy of promoting sporting achievement does not touch those sections of the public or the children who are most in need of health improvement.

Tessa Jowell: I think that is right and were we only to promote sport rather than healthy activity participation more generally, if we were only to promote elite sport, championship sport, then you are absolutely right, I do not think that our ambition to use sport as a way of arresting the increase in the rate of obesity would be very successful. That is why over the last three years we have radically changed the function and focus of Sport England. Sport England's overriding role now is to promote participation. The means by which participation will be promoted will be through the work of the Regional Sports Boards. We have just had the first Regional Sports Plan published from the South West. Doug is from a constituency in the South West. I commend it to you. It is the first of a series. They set targets, for instance, like getting 5,200 people a month involved in physical activity. They will do this through a number of different ways, very small local pilot projects that recognise rural and urban, but essentially solutions which fit the region, the demography and the geography of the region. Our strategy is certainly to promote sport and to promote sporting achievement, but the strategy in relation to obesity is much more focused on building levels of activity, hence our adoption in Game Plan of the half an hour, five times a week recommendation which is now also endorsed by the World Health Organisation.

Q1410 John Austin: There are none of us around here who would deny that there has been a reduction in physical activity, particularly among children, and none of us would deny that increasing physical activity, particularly among children, is going to have a beneficial health impact. You seemed to be implying in your earlier statement, and when you did your Radio 4 interview, that the key issue was getting exercise levels up rather than tackling the nutritional issue. In the light of what Jon Owen Jones was saying, is that not misleading given that proportion of the population which is at risk at the moment, that there are different habits amongst different sections of the population and those who are consuming high fat, high calorific diets are not those who are running the marathon with Paula Radcliffe?

Tessa Jowell: That is absolutely right. I am here to talk to you about what I and my department bring to the table in terms of solutions. Of course nutrition is important, and Margaret may want to say something about nutritional standards for children in schools. In order to understand obesity and in order to put in place an effective strategy for tackling obesity we have got to recognise its multi-faceted causes which require a range of different solutions. One causal element in the increase of obesity is the fall-off in levels of exercise so we need to get people more active. Another factor appears to be, but we cannot attribute scale to it - this is from the FSA - that advertising has an impact but it is difficult to assess precisely what the impact is. Then, of course, diet and the changing balance of diet also has an impact. As Public Health Minister, I was always concerned, as subsequent Public Health Ministers have been, about the social class inequalities in this. Social class inequalities apply in relation to obesity as they apply in almost every other aspect of morbidity.

John Austin: Would you accept that by and large you cannot get people up to levels of activity sufficient to actually eliminate the over-consumption of calories? You and I are finding it difficult to get up to 10,000 paces a day and we are motivated.

Mr Burns: Speak for yourself!

Q1411 John Austin: The kid who eats a Mars bar is not going to go off and run six miles to burn it off.

Tessa Jowell: They will do if they have got the opportunity to do so and if they have got the opportunity to do so taught by somebody who is competent and specialist in facilities that are modern and appealing, they absolutely will. All the evidence of our specialist sports colleges and the PEE and school partnerships shows that this is working.

Q1412 John Austin: I do not want to get into the argument about whether there are good foods and bad foods or less good foods if you eat them in quantity, but I come back to this association with some of the food products which we know are contributing to the obesity epidemic, whether it is through snacking or chocolate consumption or whatever. Associating a healthy activity programme with a product whereby kids would have to eat 170 chocolate bars to get their school a basketball, which would require 90,000 hours of active basketball playing to burn off, do you not accept that is not a good association, to associate high calorie foods with sport and exercise activities?

Tessa Jowell: No, I do not accept that it is necessarily a bad association. It depends. Rather than bringing children up in a world where they are denied access to any chocolate, any biscuits, any of the things that children customarily eat, I would rather see children growing up understanding that they should balance the bar of chocolate they eat with a banana or with apples or a salad or whatever. If children grow up like that they are far more influential over their own lives than if they are brought up in some completely unrealistic protected environment that means that when they are 15 or 16 and that protective environment is no longer around them, they do not know how to eat. Teaching children how to eat, what is balanced, what is good for them, what they need for what purpose, is terribly, terribly important. That should be the focus rather than somehow outlawing the chocolate. This is the way that you can get children to eat in moderation.

Q1413 John Austin: Would you accept that it is at least as important to address the issues of nutrition as it is of physical activity?

Tessa Jowell: Yes, of course I do.

Q1414 Mr Burns: Will you accept that it is a two part solution to the problem and that is a healthy diet and proper exercise which is the equation. A healthy diet from time immemorial does include some foods that might not be considered healthy, but if it is a balanced healthy diet it does not matter. You have mentioned chocolate, rightly, and you associate sweets and chocolate with children and to my mind it would be crazy to ban children from eating chocolate. What is important is to make sure that the parents are educated enough on dietary requirements and exercise so that they do not eat it to excess. Would you agree with me that if there is a healthy diet and an exercise regime, quite frankly there is nothing wrong with schools, for example, benefiting if the manufacturers of chocolate or crisps, or whatever it is, are prepared to put something back into the system, into equipment for schools or whatever, with a message about healthy eating and exercise and rather than being counterproductive that moves the whole thing forward?

Tessa Jowell: Broadly I would accept that analysis subject to the messages about healthy eating being proper messages, not part of the small print on the back of a wrapper. It takes us back to the way in which the products are marketed, the way in which they are promoted and so forth. It would be very easy indeed, and this is always a risk in this kind of area, to do something because there appears to be a lot of public pressure in the absence of a very clear understanding of its impact, but to feel that doing it is somehow enough of itself. The important thing is to put in place a strategy to tackle obesity which is underpinned by the evidence of proportionality and the evidence that the measures taken are going to work. I think in relation to our understanding of our diet, in relation to our understanding about exercise, we are on secure ground. In relation to television advertising, as I have said on a number of occasions, I have asked the media regulator - Ofcom - to look again at the robustness of the existing code. They are working with the FSA and they will give me advice in the summer. Then I think we will be in a better position, I hope on the basis of evidence, to determine a conclusion on that particular aspect.

Q1415 Mr Burns: Can I just ask the Minister for Children, given that she is within the Department for Education, so I think it is particularly relevant to ask her, what is happening to encourage and ensure that school children and young people in secondary schools are getting a reasonable level of exercise through games? What is being done in those areas particularly, mostly inner cities, places like London, where the facilities for sport are either non-existent or not as good as they could be?

Margaret Hodge: This is a very good example of joined-up working between the DfES and the DCMS in this particular instance because we have a joint programme of over £1 billion over this spending review period ending in 2006 when we are investing not just in facilities, and particularly facilities in schools in deprived areas, but we are also investing in creating links between children and the activity that they undertake in schools and clubs. We are investing in the training of teachers and in partnerships. There is a huge amount of activity going on to encourage ----

Chairman: I am conscious that other colleagues hope to ask this in some detail later on. I will be happy to bring you back in later, Simon, is that okay?

Mr Burns: Okay.

Dr Taylor: Secretary of State, I think we are all very relieved to hear you say that you agree that the attack on obesity has got to be multi-faceted and I do not think any of us are trying to outlaw chocolate. When we had Cadbury's here some of the older ones of us were talking of remembering chocolate as a luxury rather than as part of a staple diet.

Jim Dowd: I still do.

Q1416 Dr Taylor: I hope we still do. The hard fact that has come across to us is that something like 2,000 steps will only burn off 100 calories. Does this not mean that concentrating on increasing exercise is perhaps taking the easy way out from really what we ought to be doing, which is tackling eating habits and even marketing habits and trying to get the food industry to promote and market the foods that are most healthy?

Tessa Jowell: Can I say with some vehemence that the strategy that I hope will materialise from this will be a strategy that embraces the whole range of policies and interventions that will be necessary. It is not getting people more active or getting them to eat more healthily, it is doing both. That is what the aim is that we want to achieve.

Q1417 Dr Taylor: You may be emphasising the exercise side perhaps more than the other side and I just want to make sure that there is a balance.

Tessa Jowell: I talk about exercise because that is my direct departmental responsibility. I am responsible for running those programmes but I absolutely accept that you weigh with equal balance the importance of a healthy diet and exercise.

Q1418 Jim Dowd: I just want to come back to this point about the commercial involvement. As I am sure you are aware, we live in increasingly sceptical, not to say cynical, times where whenever you involve the food manufacturers or processors or the supermarkets in a project then people assume at the back of their mind that the reason they are involved with it must be to sell more chocolate bars or more crisps or whatever it is, so it undermines to some degree the message they are attempting to convey. We have taken evidence, and I think we are all pretty clear, that we must involve the manufacturers and the retailers as part of the solution rather than just as part of the problem, but as soon as you do involve them people become very jaundiced about why they are getting involved. Would a better approach not be for them all to contribute to, say, a blind trust, say a healthy lifestyles institute which although supported by commercial organisations would not actually be directed by them and would have the power to take decisions, along with money from other sources, to try and encourage a healthier lifestyle, better attitudes towards a balanced diet, activity, et cetera?

Tessa Jowell: I think the first part of your question was absolutely right. They are spending £400 million on advertising food. I would have to check the figure but food promotion is a huge part of the overall advertising market in this country. Of course they are doing it in order to get product preference and to persuade us to buy their products. I do not know whether you have put that question to them. I am not going to answer for them but I would go back to what I said earlier, that the important thing is young people, and all of us who are going to be persuaded by their messages, are persuaded by messages which do reflect social responsibility, a recognition of their very powerful and instrumental role in persuading people what they should eat and when they should eat and that they direct that role positively to promote healthy eating and to promote the kind of dietary balance that we all know is beneficial.

Q1419 Mr Amess: Our inquiry has already had a huge impact. When we went to America we saw at first hand just how serious this is. None of the 11 Members on this Committee want to produce a report that gathers dust, we want to produce a report that really does make a long and lasting impact. I have the distinct feeling that the Government does know what needs to be done but is somehow reluctant to upset anyone. Secretary of State, in this interview that you gave to the Today programme you made it very clear that you thought that food advertising does have a detrimental impact on young people's diet. Given that you feel that strongly, and I know you said you want to wait a bit, why have you not done anything?

Tessa Jowell: The Food Standards Agency are at the moment in the process of producing a report which addresses precisely this question. When I did that interview I was reflecting that it is a problem that our state of knowledge is changing as we move from the Hastings Literature Review to the Food Standards Agency's appraisal of that to their interim conclusions which are now out for consultation. As I understand it, they have proposed a rather similar route of action to the one that I have advocated which is that there should be particular focus on the advertising of healthier foods and promoting healthy eating messages. It is frustrating for everybody. It is frustrating for the media who report this with such an appetite and it is probably, unfortunately, confusing for people at home, but I am not going to take any decision on this until the summer, until I have had two further pieces of advice. One is the Food Standards Agency advice to ministers and, secondly, the advice from Ofcom about whether or not the code that regulates broadcast advertising to children is sufficiently rigorous in the light of the emerging evidence.

Q1420 Mr Amess: I have to say I am surprised and disappointed because fast food advertising right now is having a huge impact on our children's lives, I have no doubt at all about it.

Tessa Jowell: What is your evidence?

Q1421 Mr Amess: I would like to develop the point a bit. Pay 30p, get a bigger size: many of us with children can see the impact and it is not so easy to keep saying no to children with the huge influence of their friends. This is happening right now and you are talking about waiting until the summer and this is not for another three or four months. What I am surprised about is in the interview you agreed about the damage but why can there not be an interim moratorium about it because it is real, it is happening now? In America, and I am sorry to keep on about it but whatever happens in America seems to find its way over here, we just could not believe the state of children and young people and fast food in particular was very, very damaging. Secretary of State, I applaud all of your intentions but it is just that it is happening now. I cannot really see the reluctance unless there is some reason, that we are upsetting people, as to why we cannot take action now.

Tessa Jowell: I do not think any of this is motivated by upsetting, placating, reassuring or making anybody particularly happy. The Government's consideration in relation to this, and my consideration in relation to this, is motivated by one thing and that is getting the right policy that will have an effect and that will put us at the forefront of countries that are tackling what is very much a western disease. That is the first point. The second is that were I to come to you and say, "I have just read another thing in the paper about the effect of advertising and so forth, so forget the fact that I have asked the regulator to report and review the evidence, forget the fact that we have our principal body that advises on food undertaking one of the most rigorous analyses of the impact of promotion ever, I know better than any conclusions they will draw, I have decided that we will ban it", you would say that is irresponsible and damaging, and you would be right. That is why I think it is important to wait until the summer and then reach conclusions on the basis of evidence. This is an area, like many, many areas in this broad public health field, where it is very easy to react on the basis of emotion and instinct, but what we have got to do is to root these policies in evidence and we have to be clearer than we are now about the respective balance in putting together our strategy, to pick up Dr Taylor's point, between the promotion of exercise, the promotion of a healthy diet and the impact of advertising. Also we have got to have a strategy to act in relation to the glaring social class inequalities here. Just to add to what Margaret said, that is why our school support partnerships are being implemented in the first instance in the most deprived areas, to give those children who are likely to get least exercise, least support, the first chance.

Q1422 Mr Amess: It really is not the case that no action is being taken because the Government is afraid of being accused of running a nanny state, that is not an issue at all?

Tessa Jowell: I think it is the Opposition that most often raises that charge. No, we are not afraid of Opposition charges or anybody else's charges about the nanny state. We could get into that discussion about the respective responsibility of industry, of the individual and families, and the Government, which again tends to provide an intellectual structure for a lot of public health policy. No, we are not doing this out of anything other than a determination to get the policy right.

Q1423 Mr Amess: I have listened very carefully to what you have said and we are in recess in the summer, we will see what happens when we return in September. You did ask me earlier for my evidence. The evidence that we saw in the United States of America could not have been clearer. They are practically giving the food away with no consideration for the damage it is having on our children. It does not add up. We are told, on the one hand, that the Government was not just prompted to do something about obesity because of the Health Select Committee inquiry, they have been anxious about it for two, three, four years, but I am still just a bit puzzled now that the fact that it is make your mind up time and something has got to happen that we are being terribly cautious. Everyone everywhere can see the evidence that children in particular are getting fatter. Why on earth are we all going round with these pedometers, and I am delighted that we are going round with them, and when it comes to the scores some of my colleagues will ask other questions? I just do not buy this idea of where is the evidence and we have got to wait. For the Committee it is very, very frustrating.

Tessa Jowell: One of the things I am sure you understand is children's lives, and particularly their leisure time, are much more sedentary and you can see that trend over the last ten years. Whereas ten years ago children may have been running around the playground, now they are in front of their Play Station. That is why such an important part of our response to this is to re-engage children in sport and to re-engage children in sport by having good teaching and first class facilities. In those school sport partnerships that have been established now for three years, the positive results are beginning to show.

Q1424 Dr Naysmith: Secretary of State, since David has raised advertising so forcefully can I ask a very quick question of you. It is really about your personal views. Both here and in America we have had evidence from advertisers and so on and they all tried to convince us that advertising is not about expanding the market for their product, in general terms it is about brands and promoting one brand against another. I think that is just a load of nonsense, it is about promoting totally whatever amount of product we are talking about, whether it is tobacco or fast food or junk food. I just wonder what do you believe on that when advertisers come and tell you, as they tell us, that all they are doing is trying to get a bigger share of the market for their brand when, in fact, what they are doing is trying to create a bigger market?

Tessa Jowell: I suspect in practice it is a bit of both. What they are trying to do is to get you to buy Galaxy instead of Cadbury's milk or whatever it is, but they are also trying to increase overall levels of consumption, of course I understand that, but that does not detract from my earlier point about the message that attaches to that which should be one which is focused on healthy eating and healthy lifestyle, how much exercise you have to take to burn this off, all that kind of information. That is the way in which we should be directing this.

Q1425 Dr Naysmith: There are millions, sometimes billions, being spent on that side and on the other side we are spending hundreds of thousands to tell them to eat healthy. It does not compare, does it?

Tessa Jowell: That makes my point, which is why we should tap into the millions of advertisers to invite them to join with us in pursuit of this campaign for healthy eating and healthier lifestyles and for the reasons that I was trying to set out in answer to John Austin's questions, the market pressure and consumer pressure, and I believe that the time is right for that.

Q1426 Chairman: One issue that we are struggling with in terms of our final report is this polarised view of regulation on the one hand and on the other persuading the food and drink industry to take this matter more seriously. I was rather surprised to see a new product, the Mars Delight, launched recently which seems to completely fly in the face of all the current thinking about the calorie content of products. Do you feel that is significant at all, that a particular major player in the market, at a time when there is perhaps more debate publicly than ever before about the calorific content and obesity issue, chooses to market such a product at this stage? Were you surprised? In a sense does it influence your thoughts as to which direction we need to go on this polarised regulation or free market sort of approach?

Tessa Jowell: I do not really think I can comment on that. I have not seen the promotion. I assume that these promotional campaigns have a long gestation. This is an issue which in the minds of public interest has become very salient in the last six to nine months, in large part because of the work of this Committee, although it is a problem that I was aware of as Public Health Minister four or five years ago. I do not think I can make any comment on that.

Q1427 Chairman: It is not so much the promotion, it is the launching of such a product. Your point, which I accept, is that we need to get the industry to be more responsible, and to some extent there is evidence that some parts of the industry are being more responsible, and yet we see the launch of this completely new product, the calorific content of which is frankly quite frightening. It seems strange that in this political environment when people are aware of the obesity question, the calorific content, that a major player launches such a product against that background.

Tessa Jowell: I am afraid I have not tried the product so ----

Chairman: It would not be helpful to your pedometer.

Q1428 Mr Burstow: Can I ask a couple of points. The first is just a process question. You mentioned that you have got two pieces of evidence you want to consider in terms of advice from the FSA and Ofcom before you come to a view about advertising. Will the conclusion that you reach be an input into the White Paper or will it be a separate matter that will be reported and dealt with by yourself on a separate basis?

Tessa Jowell: Certainly it will be dealt with in the White Paper. We are in discussion at the moment about precisely how we handle all of these pieces of advice. John Reid will obviously want to take a view about the extent to which the White Paper is an omnibus as opposed to setting an overarching structure for public health generally. Remember, obesity is part of the Public Health White Paper, it is not all of the Public Health White Paper. The two studies that I have referred to relate specifically to the concern about obesity. We are in discussion about that. I can assure you there will be a synergy between the Public Health White Paper and the decisions that I, as Secretary of State, have to take.

Q1429 Mr Burstow: I will move on to the other thing I wanted to ask you about. You were talking about the need to try and strike a balance in terms of the power of the industry to promote its products but at the same time harnessing that power to promote positive healthy messages. In terms of the work the FSA has been doing so far, in their last main board consideration, they seemed to come down against the idea of a ban on advertising as such but instead advanced the idea that there needed to be some mechanism put in place to enable a balance to be struck in advertising both of unhealthy products or products of one sort or another, and getting across messages about health products as well. Do you think that is something that can only be achieved through consensus and agreement or do you see a role for regulation if consensus and agreement cannot be arrived at in terms of striking that balance?

Tessa Jowell: In a sense this is a process answer to your question. If it is clear that on the basis of the evidence the FSA submits to us that the evidence base on which policy can be built is clear and established we will then proceed in the way that I have outlined, pursuing policies in relation to healthier diet and exercise. I think you always have to be prepared to say that if a voluntary approach, if agreement between the parties, is not going to produce results then you move to regulation, but that does not mean that you leap to regulation in the first instance. My sense, and I hope I am not disappointed, is that there is a willingness among the food industry to work with us on this. It has been brought about as a result of the consumer pressure that I referred to earlier. We have to go with that and we have to try to get that willingness to deliver for us the change about which I think there is broad agreement.

Q1430 Mr Burstow: I have got two more questions. One comes out of the things you were saying earlier on in answer to questions from the Chairman. Do you think it is possible and desirable for the Government in its White Paper around the issue of obesity to be setting targets first and foremost to stabilise the obesity situation and then, secondly, to reverse it? If you agree that that is a reasonable proposition, what sort of timescales do you think would be acceptable to enable at least the stabilisation of the problem?

Tessa Jowell: I think you need an epidemiologist to advise you on that. You need to get the policy right and that is our job, advised and based on the evidence. Rates of decline and so forth are things which you need public health specialists to advise on.

Q1431 Mr Burstow: They should be helping to frame the White Paper.

Tessa Jowell: I am sure they will be.

Q1432 Mr Burstow: My last point is to come back to Ofcom and their role in respect of taking some aspects of the codes and so on that are currently being reviewed. As I understand it, there is a proposal to franchise out advertising regulations to the Advertising Standards Authority, which is an organisation run by the industry. Do you share, or understand at least, the concern that some would have about that franchising out, seeing it very much as putting profits before the interests of people rather than dealing with a proper regulatory framework for the industry?

Tessa Jowell: That is an unsustainable parody of what we are doing. What we are putting in place is exactly the same as is currently in place for billboard advertising, newspaper advertising, for broadcast advertising, for the televised content of broadcast advertising. It is what we call co-regulation. In other words, there will be a code that will be binding on the advertisers, they will have to comply with it, and we have made it absolutely clear that if the voluntary code fails then we will put it on a statutory footing. The statutory position is a default that we would go to in the case that the co-regulatory approach, which we are applying at the moment, did not work and provide sufficient levels of protection.

Q1433 Dr Naysmith: We are moving away from advertising for a little bit, you will be pleased to hear, we are going on to talk about sport for a bit. Jon Owen Jones earlier referred to something that has come up quite a lot in our inquiry and that is that overweight and obese children are often excluded from sport on the grounds that they will never make the first team. That applies at school and sometimes in community sporting facilities as well. You mentioned in the South West there is a programme to try and encourage more community involvement and the involvement of people who are never going to be stars but would enjoy sport. It is true, the South West people were up here a couple of weeks ago and I was very impressed with what they were doing. They are doing it together with the funding groups. I wonder if you could expand a little bit on how you hope to roll this out over the rest of the country and make sure that it is a really well-grounded programme because when we are talking about an Olympic year and that sort of thing there is going to be that kind of focus and it could take away from it.

Tessa Jowell: Olympic Year and the Summer of Sport which will run across the country up to the Olympics is about engaging young people in activity, not in being champions. You have to see this a little like a pyramid, in that the vast majority of physical activity and sport is played by young people who will never ever be champions and do not aspire to be champions. People like me - I was never going to be a champion but I loved playing sport. That is the first objective, to get children more active at school and to get them to get the sport habit while they are at school and to continue to be active once they leave school. Within that, there are a series of initiatives which are intended to enable children to be as good as they can be, so to move from just running around the playground kicking a ball through the School Club Links programme to joining a football club and to move from that, if they show real aptitude, on to a talented and gifted programme. As they move into further and higher education and they really are outstanding at netball, football or track athletics, being a member of the Talented Athlete Scholarship scheme which settles a sort of dowry to meet the costs of high-performance training: coaching, nutrition, sports psychology and travel costs. Then we have the World Class Start Potential and Performance programmes which are run for our really elite athletes. What we are doing is promoting participation, rolling out what will be, in time but not yet, a universal programme but allowing children to progress to whatever level they are capable of achieving within that.

Q1434 Dr Naysmith: Also, it is part of the policy of the Government that the sale of school playing fields is being restricted and I just wonder how you think that programme and that policy is working and also, in replying to that, how are the funds from the New Opportunities Fund being distributed and made use of and is it possible to recoup the fact that we have lost a lot of school playing fields in the past?

Tessa Jowell: To take the point on playing fields, as you rightly say, no playing field is now sold until it has been through a process of scrutiny, in the first instance by Sport England or the Secretary of State for Education who will determine whether or not this is a playing field that is of sporting importance. The latest figures, which I published about a month ago, showed that only eight per cent of sales proceeded where the playing field in question was of sporting importance. Where the playing fields were sold - and I have to tell you that, in many cases, the best thing that can happen for a school is that their playing field is sold and the money is reinvested in modern state of the art facilities - in the last year for which I published figures, the money raised was reinvested and produced new facilities. It produced 489 new or refurbished sports facilities to an investment value of £268 million. That is about 50 per cent more than the Lottery spends on sport altogether. So this is not a sale of playing fields programme, dereliction of duty and all the rest of it, this is an investment in 21^st century facilities and an investment that is running at close on £300 million. When we talk about participation and how you get kids involved and how you get them continuing to play sport, the problem is that children today will not play on unlit, muddy pitches with no changing facilities, no hot showers and all the rest of it, but, if you provide modern facilities, the kids will use them.

Q1435 Dr Naysmith: That happened in my own constituency: in Monks Park School there was a new sporting facility which replaced the playing field and it is excellent. How are these investment decisions taken about what happens to the money in individual cases?

Tessa Jowell: The decisions are taken by the schools.

Q1436 Dr Naysmith: Perhaps Margaret Hodge would like to come in as she has been sitting there very quietly.

Margaret Hodge: They have to reinvest the money, there is no choice, in sports facilities and any sale of school playing fields does have to have the outright permission of the Secretary of State for Education and can only take place if there is a reinvestment in sports facilities. So, it cannot go anywhere else, which is why we are getting these very good figures that Tessa is publishing.

Q1437 Mr Burns: Ministers, I genuinely do not want to be unhelpful but, as you have both mentioned the New Opportunities Fund, there is something I do want to raise with you for some clarification. As you will remember at the Labour Party Conference in 2000, the Prime Minister said that £750 million would be used from the New Opportunities Fund over the next three years for expenditure on sports. Could you explain to the Committee why, in 2004, only £8.5 million of that money has actually been spent.

Tessa Jowell: Because this was launched as a five to six year programme.

Q1438 Mr Burns: He said that £750 million from the New Opportunities Fund will be spent in the next three years amongst sport.

Tessa Jowell: --- will be allocated over the next three years, that is absolutely right.

Q1439 Mr Burns: Yes, but only £8.5 million has. Why? We are now in year four.

Tessa Jowell: The programme is now ahead of schedule.

Q1440 Mr Burns: It cannot be because he said over three years and we are now in 2004.

Tessa Jowell: No, you are confusing allocation with programme build. The allocation was certainly over three years.

Q1441 Mr Burns: How much has been allocated in those three years: £8.5 million?

Tessa Jowell: The majority of the funding will be committed by the next year and the majority ---

Q1442 Mr Burns: Hang you, you said that, over three years, the allocation would be made. Surely the allocation is allocating the funding to then do the build.

Tessa Jowell: Let me explain by taking you through the process by which the money was allocated. Indicative allocations were made to every local authority. Local authorities were then asked to bid and put in specific proposals against the allocation that they were given. So, initial approval was then given. Those individual projects had to be designed, contracted for and put out to tender. That is the process which is now in train.

Q1443 Mr Burns: I understand that but I am still confused because the Prime Minister said at the Labour Party Conference in 2000 that, over the next three years, £750 million from the New Opportunities Fund would be spent on sports and only £8.5 million has. Now, I understand about allocation.

Tessa Jowell: We can look at the precise terms of what the Prime Minister said but I am advised in my briefing that he made it clear that this was a long-term five to six year project. You are right in that the money has been allocated over three years so, each year, there has been a contribution to this headline figure of £750 million from the New Opportunities Fund and that is now in the process of being spent. As I am sure you are aware, you could spend that money in a year but spend it very badly because the sort of decisions that have to be aligned are decisions about building schools for the future. Most schools now have the prospect of major capital investment. We have to make sure that the decisions about what are really much smaller amounts of money for sports facilities are compatible with the major redevelopment of many schools which are now in train. That said, there are now already ... I am just seeing if there is one in your constituency. St Christopher's School in Southend?

Q1444 Mr Burns: No, nowhere near me.

Tessa Jowell: Langdon School in Newham?

Q1445 Mr Burns: No, nowhere near me. Secretary of State, please, this sounds wonderful but can we get back to the original question about the money that the Prime Minister announced on the New Opportunities Fund because, whatever the rhetoric, the basic fact remains that only £8.5 million of the £750 million has been spent. The Prime Minister said, "We are going to spend £750 million over the next three years on sport from the New Opportunities Fund." Most people would think that that means that, after the end of year three, £750 million would have been spent by the New Opportunities Fund. To make an exception to that to be fair, I understand that you do not want to rush in if it is not going to be the best, but you could allocate the funding in order that you spend in allocation the £750 million during the Prime Minister's timescale even if you do not actually physically have the facilities because you are still designing them and building them. That I do understand but that has not happened either.

Tessa Jowell: Can I take you back to a matter of fact. I entirely accept your rhetorical flourish in that. The facts are that commitment was made to allocation from the New Opportunities Fund of £250 million a year over three years. We are now at the end of that process.

Q1446 Mr Burns: How much has been allocated of the £250 million each year? That would help us.

Tessa Jowell: So far £8.5 million has been drawn down but that money is drawn down when the projects are complete. We have 44 projects which have been completed so far, another 36 are on site and another 356 have funding firmly committed to them. I have been driving this programme very hard indeed and I am assured that all the projects will be completed by 2006 on course within the timeframe set out by the Prime Minister of this being a five to six year programme.

Q1447 Mr Burns: I am not going to dispute your allocations but can you give us an assurance that when every one of these projects that has been allocated is completed, it is not unveiled and heralded as a new spend in addition to what has happened already because we are used ...? Secretary of State, you look a little shocked but we are used to Government constantly recycling announcements and presenting as a new initiative something that they announced six months ago or 12 months ago and we all get a little confused.

Tessa Jowell: If you do not say that this is part of the great Lottery spend on sport facilities, people do not understand what it is. Of course you do that.

Q1448 Mr Burns: Exactly but if you keep saying that this is a brand new initiative that the Government are making available under the New Opportunities Fund, £750 million can go even further if you keep re-announcing it at each stage.

Tessa Jowell: But nobody has ever ---

Chairman: This exchange has been very interesting but can we move on.

Q1449 Mr Burns: But it flushed you out!

Tessa Jowell: It has what?

Q1450 Mr Burns: I said that it flushed you out on what is going on.

Tessa Jowell: Can you explain what you mean by that.

Chairman: I think we should move on.

Q1451 Mr Burns: It flushed you out on what is going on because everyone assumes that all this has been spent by now.

Tessa Jowell: "Flushing out" suggests that somehow I was withholding information.

Q1452 Mr Burns: No, no.

Tessa Jowell: I have set out the information very clearly and every new facility that is opened is a new facility funded on the back of £750 million.

Mr Burns: I was not suggesting that the Secretary of State was doing that and I would not want her for one minute to think that. It was a terminology but not in a derogatory sense.

Q1453 Chairman: It might be helpful, Secretary of State, if you dropped us a line covering the points you have made in order that we can understand fully.

Tessa Jowell: I would be very happy to do that.

Q1454 Jim Dowd: Members of the Committee often have difficulty in deciphering when Mr Burns is acting as a member of the Conservative Front Bench and when he is acting as a member of this Committee. Can I take you back to something you said earlier on. One of the first remarks you said was that the evidence is that decline in activities stems not from sporting activity per se, but actually a decline in activity in everyday life in terms of walking and cycling and associated activity or inactivity as the case may be. Your department leads on the promotion of physical activity; is sport the best portal through which to focus that given the fact that all sport is physical activity but nowhere all physical activity is sport?

Tessa Jowell: No, that is absolutely right and that is why we are, through Sport England, funding an increasing number of governing bodies: we fund 22 governing bodies and an increasing number of those are governing bodies that run more kind of leisure-type activity rather than what would be regarded specifically as frontline sport. The approach that you describe is also driven by our PSA target to promote increased participation and we are very alive to the importance of extending the opportunities for physical activity to people from ethnic minority communities, disabled people and older people. The levels of inactivity amongst older people are very disturbing indeed. Also, we are aware of the fact that there are different ways of getting young girls to become more active than through mainstream sport. This is something that we are very much alive to and has been represented in the funding pattern participation through Sport England and I hope will yield results against our PSA.

Q1455 Jim Dowd: Driving the message of increasing physical activity goes way beyond sport, does it not? That is what I am trying to get at. If people decide that they are not participants in sport, organised, disorganised or the kind of football that Crystal Palace play, for example, if it is not something for them, how do we get a message to them about increased physical activity in their own lives not just for children because we are not saying that we are actually giving up on adults, are we? I understand the imperative of getting people early because that sets the pattern for the rest of their lives but, equally, we are not giving up on adults and saying, "You are a lost cause, so we will not bother putting any effort into that."

Tessa Jowell: Absolutely not and I think that Melanie Johnson will have talked about the leap(?) pilots and the work that has been done at the regional sports boards in how developing their plans has this as their overriding focus: how do we get people to become more active and more active not just by playing sport but more active in the course of their daily lives as well?

Q1456 Jim Dowd: Perhaps by sticking bus stops further apart! You mentioned earlier about calories and we have certainly taken scientific evidence on this which does indicate that overall calorific intake has not been radically different over the years, it is the lack in activity, but what we did see was the balance within that intake far more towards fats, sugars, salts and all the rest of it. So, it is not just the quantity, if you like, it is the quality of the diet as well. I presume that you would support the Food Standards Agency's recent call for sports clubs and sports personalities to redress the current imbalance by promoting healthier eating styles and healthier food choices. Assuming that you do agree with that, how do you think that can be practically achieved?

Tessa Jowell: I think it is a very good proposal but I think it will have to be handled with the greatest care. I do not know whether or not success will be achieved. I was going to say "whether or not we will achieve success" but it is not a job for government, this is a job for negotiation between the individuals concerned and their sponsors. It links back to the point that I was making earlier about the challenge that I have laid to the industry to respond to public concern about the quality of diet and obesity by promoting healthier lifestyle messages. Nobody should underestimate the significance of the endorsement of some of the celebrities who do endorse products and, if that endorsement can be linked to an exercise and healthy eating message, it will be doubly powerful.

Q1457 Jim Dowd: Is there not a danger within this if it is a personality - and I will not mention any names particularly - who you intend to recruit into doing this who is also saying, as Jon Owen Jones mentioned earlier, "Drink more X or Y and you will be fitter" of a mixed message there?

Tessa Jowell: That is the point. My point is that I would hope that the consumer will perhaps have an impact on sugar levels of fizzy drinks, just as the market has responded in relation to salt levels, but that also the celebrities' potential endorsers will rise to the challenge and recognise the value of positive promotion.

Q1458 Mr Bradley: Secretary of State, you mentioned the acknowledgement of the sedentary lifestyle of children particularly now and the reduction level of activity, particularly walking and cycling. Could I ask both you and the Minister what actions you would take to encourage children to walk or cycle to school.

Margaret Hodge: What can we do to encourage it? Let me just take that in a number of questions. It is undoubtedly true that more and more children are now being taken by car to school and, whilst that is unhealthy, I think that you have to be very careful on this issue as well as a working mother because, for quite a lot of parents who are attempting to balance their lives between work and their care and responsibilities, sometimes using the car is the only way in which they can get to work on time. So, we have to watch because, as with many of these questions, there are wider issues about how employers respond to work-life balance issues in the wider context. Having said that, what we can do and are intent on is bringing in the draft bill that is before the House where we will try and encourage various experiments and pilots to take place where people can look at alternative ways in which they can innovate and find new ways in which children can be transported to school, and the other thing we are doing is putting a bit more money into things like cycling sheds and pedestrian sheds to stop rain pouring on us. So, those are the sorts of incentives that we can try to promote, different habits. What is interesting is that of those who do choose to drive to school, for the vast majority the school is within two miles, so it is about lifestyle choices that go beyond just the availability of the car.

Q1459 Mr Bradley: Would you agree that one of the reasons for the decline is the safety of routes to school and the problems of traffic en route? If you do, what is your view about children wearing cycle helmets as a safety measure?

Margaret Hodge: Children wearing cycling helmets when cycling?

Q1460 Mr Bradley: That would be preferable, yes!

Margaret Hodge: I thought we were talking about children wearing them as a safety device when walking to school. Are you suggesting that we should regulate in that regard?

Q1461 Mr Bradley: I want your view about whether you think it is a sensible safety measure.

Margaret Hodge: I would not let a child of mine cycle without a cycling helmet and I would not myself cycle without a cycling helmet, so I think they are probably a good idea. Should we regulate in that regard? I do not think anybody has mentioned parents in any of the discussion this afternoon which rather surprised me because I think the role of parents in the way that they ...

Q1462 Jim Dowd: We have a long way to go yet!

Margaret Hodge: ... develop children's habits in all sorts of things, whether it is in choice of foods or anything like that or indeed whether they have a safety helmet when they cycle into school is an issue which the Committee would be wise to address. They are the biggest influence.

Q1463 Mr Bradley: May I just press you a little. You are saying that, as a parent, you would like your children to wear a cycle helmet and there is a great deal of evidence to support the fact that wearing cycle helmets help prevents serious injury. If you accepted that, would you agree that having a regulation to tell children to wear such helmets would be a sensible approach by government in that that would lead to more children cycling to school and being more active?

Margaret Hodge: I am actually not adverse to that sort of regulation, although it is not for me to say. I certainly think it would be something one could perfectly well consider. Whether of itself it would encourage more children to cycle to school I am not sure.

Q1464 Mr Bradley: Perhaps I could ask the Secretary of State the same question.

Tessa Jowell: I agree very strongly with Margaret's caution in relation to this. Of course, it is excellent to make it easier and safer for children to cycle to school. You cannot prescribe it. There are great opportunities for making it possible for children to be more active when they get to school: playing sport before school, playing sport at lunch time and playing sport after school and this is what is beginning to happen. So, once children get to school, they do have more opportunities to be more active than is otherwise the case.

Q1465 Mr Bradley: From that answer, are you saying you are not in favour of taking measures that will promote the use of cycle helmets for children travelling to school by bicycle?

Tessa Jowell: I am sorry to sound equivocal about this but, if you take statutory measures, then who is responsible? What happens if a child is caught not wearing a cycle helmet on the way to school and so forth?

Q1466 Mr Bradley: That is similar to many other regulations.

Tessa Jowell: Yes, but these are things one would have to think through. I would honestly want notice of a question about whether or not regulation was essential to achieve the change in behaviour that would actually see more parents feeling that their children would be safe enough to be able to cycle to school, which would be a good outcome, or walking to school rather than going by car.

Q1467 John Austin: It was very clearly said to us in Denmark that compulsory introduction of cycle helmets would actually discourage and lead to a reduction in the number of children cycling to school. Has the department looked at that negative possible impact or has the department not looked at it at all?

Tessa Jowell: I have to say that this not an issue that we have looked at departmentally. This is something that I am quite sure the Department of Transport are looking at and I am quite sure that DfES, in discussion with the Department of Transport, are looking at, but school transport and how children get to school is part of the range of issues to be addressed here but it is not one which sits within the responsibility of my department.

Q1468 John Austin: You referred earlier to social disadvantage and social exclusion. You could apply it to cycle helmets. A number of local authorities do encourage children to wear cycle helmets: a number of local authorities bulk purchase and then sell at a discounted rate to children. Would your department encourage that?

Tessa Jowell: That is obviously a very good idea. Anything that makes safety equipment or sporting equipment cheaper to buy must be a good idea.

Q1469 John Austin: On access to what we are told is one of the most healthy forms of exercise, swimming, a lot of young people in particular are excluded from access to swimming not only because of the lack of access now through the schools' programme but in their leisure time because of the cost of the facilities. A number of local authorities in London over Easter, for example, are providing free swims. What is your department doing to ensure that all children have access to swimming facilities?

Tessa Jowell: There are now in this country more swimming pools than ever before.

Q1470 John Austin: Many of the newer ones are the more luxurious facilities which actually cost a lost more.

Tessa Jowell: That is absolutely the point that I was going to make. There is - I think it is between the Department of Health and DfES - an initiative on swimming at school. It is certainly one of the sports which is offered as part of the PM sport and school partnerships, but there is a specific programme about getting children to be able to swim between health and education.

Margaret Hodge: In fact, it is now a statutory programme, so we would expect children by the age of 11 to be able to swim 25 metres and we are getting closer and closer to that. We have massively increased. Bristol - and Doug Naysmith may know about it - has undertaken a top-up programme specifically geared at those kids who have not yet learnt to swim as has Durham and they have cut the rate of non-swimmers dramatically to I think eight per cent in those two areas.

Q1471 John Austin: It is great if more children are learning to swim through the school but, if they cannot access the facilities in the holiday time or in their normal leisure time, it is not doing much to ---

Margaret Hodge: Is that not a responsibility for the local authorities and, as you have said, there are some local authorities that have put in place practices which enable some children to swim more cheaply or freely at particular times in the year? I think that is probably the right direction for that policy to go and that should be left to the discretion of local authorities.

Q1472 Mr Jones: Secretary of State, you spoke of parental responsibility earlier. As an irresponsible parent, when I did not reset the alarm this morning, the kids missed the school buses but, as a responsible parent, I drove two of my children to school. I did that because I would not let my children walk or cycle, with a helmet or without a helmet, to school because the routes are too dangerous.

Margaret Hodge: Or maybe because they would have been late!

Q1473 Mr Jones: They are very dangerous routes. I live in the middle of Cardiff and, like many other cities, we do not have safe cycleways to school. It is not my responsibility as a parent to ensure that there are safe cycleways to school. It is my responsibility partially as a legislator and it is your responsibility as part of the Government to ensure that there are. I am sorry, you do not believe that it is a government responsibility to ensure that the roads are safe enough so that children can cycle on them?

Margaret Hodge: I would not divest yourself as a parent or I would not divest myself as a parent from the responsibility of taking my children to school in that way navigating roads that may not be as safe as one would have wanted.

Q1474 Mr Jones: That was not the point I was making. The point I was making was that the choice available for my children to cycle to school is not there because the roads are dangerous. When we were in Odense in Denmark, 80 per cent of the children cycle to school but the roads are much safer because they are designed that way. In fact, we saw a marvellous example where each and every child in the City of Odense every year looks at a computer programme and they put on to the computer programme the route they take from school to home and back again and they put on the programme where they feel safe and where they do not and then the city planners design the routes according to how the children feel about their safety. Cycleways go right across junctions. If that existed in my city and in other cities, I would encourage children to cycle. Do you have any intention of doing anything to make it safer in order that children can use this choice?

Margaret Hodge: The responsibility for promoting cycle routes is down to both local authorities and what they do in their local areas supported, clearly, by investment which partially comes from Government. One could point to local authorities up and down the country where great emphasis has been placed on developing cycle routes to enable safe cycling and I think that they are very successful. So, what I would suggest as the appropriate way forward is to put a little pressure on both the Welsh Assembly and local authorities in Wales to do that. I think always thinking that the answer lies in there being further legislation---

Q1475 Mr Jones: I was not making a devolved position. I am quite sure that the position is not different in cities in England as it is in Wales. The levels of cycling to school do not compare. There are one or two examples - and they are largely rural examples - of where there are large numbers of children cycling to school but, in the urban examples, the cycle routes that we use are lines painted on the side of the road which frankly in many cases are more dangerous than not having them there at all. I regret that you do not feel it is in any way the Government's responsibility to promote this.

Margaret Hodge: I did not say that at all. First of all, there are many examples across the country, some of which are here in London, where there is huge effort being made to develop safe cycling routes and I would support that. It is an issue for the Department of Transport but, as the Minister for Children, I would support that. However, that is largely down to local authorities and their willingness, both at the upper and lower tier, to promote that, with some funding from Government. So, there are a number of players in this arena who have to come together and I think that is being encouraged. Most children in an urban environment, interestingly enough, to go back to the issue of why they get taken to school by car, live within two miles of the school they attend, so cycling is not the only option of a healthy and safe way of going to school - they could walk - and it was in that context that I was saying that parents could actually walk with them to school. Whilst accepting what I said at the beginning of this, I think there are real tensions between the increasing participation of mothers and fathers in the labour market and therefore just trying to hack it and balance your life between going to work on time and getting your children to school.

Q1476 Mr Jones: Minister, I agree with you about getting to work and so on, which is why I was talking about the cycling because you are not required to move with your child if they are cycling in. Another comparison between Denmark and us is that, where we have a three-mile free transport provision, the position in Denmark is that it is not on the basis of distance, it is on the basis of how dangerous the route is. So, they have free transport if the route is dangerous. That obviously gives the local authority an incentive to make the routes less dangerous because they save money by doing that. We do not have the same incentive. This is not a devolved issue, I assure you, but a newer school built in my constituency is built right next door to a dual carriageway and a large roundabout meaning that you could be living 100 yards away from the school yet your child could not safely walk there. If I can move on to a different issue. We understand that less than half the schools currently do the two hours recommended PE every week and the evidence that we have been given by many witnesses is that they would say that the curriculum is so crowded that they cannot fit in the time. We have also seen some evidence that doing PE can actually help the academic achievement of children. Do you think there is any possibility that we could move to alter the curriculum work in order that this extra PE would be done?

Margaret Hodge: It is because we wanted to increase the activity of children in taking part in high quality sports that we set ourselves this target, which Tessa and I are both working towards, of ensuring that 75 per cent of children have at least two hours of PE and sport by 2006. That is the target we have set ourselves because of the base from which we have come and we are pretty confident from where we have got to so far that we are being effective in that. Where we do have either the specialist sports colleges or the school sports partnerships in place, we are seeing evidence of a massive increase in child participation in sports activity. It measures it in those areas that have had a school sports partnership for three years and we are up to 68 per cent of children now taking part and, if you go to Years 7 and 8, we are at 90 per cent, so we are beginning to change the culture and the behaviour of children in schools. We are also doing a survey as we speak which will come out, I am told, in the summer, as these things always do, so probably not in time for your report, to measure the difference between facilities being available and children participating because it is actually the children's participation which we are interested in. I do not think this is an issue of rethinking again the curriculum in the sense of moving away from the emphasis we have had on building skills in other areas, I think it is an emphasis on providing the facilities which we are doing, on training the staff which we are trying to do much more about, on creating those partnerships and collaboration between institutions, on creating the links between schools and clubs, it is all these initiatives in which we are engaged which will help us to reach our target but we are confident that we will get there.

Q1477 Chairman: Before I bring Richard in, are you familiar with the work that Barry Gardner is doing in Brent on the issue of two hours of PE in a school day? Barry came to the Committee to give evidence on this initiative and I was certainly so encouraged by what he mentioned to me probably about 18 months ago that I tried to do something similar in Wakefield but without success because the head teachers felt that really they were under such pressure in terms of academic achievement that they simply could not build into the day the kind of things that I was wanting to see happen. Are you following that pilot and, if so, what are your views on it?

Margaret Hodge: We are following that pilot and what the pilot does indicate is that actually you can have the two but there has to be a willingness on the part of not just the head teacher but the staff. I actually think that it is much more about lack of confidence in teaching, particularly in primary schools, around PE and sports which is why our training programme for teachers and the links that we are trying to create through partnership arrangements are important in raising the confidence of those who teach, that they feel they know what they are doing when they teach PE and sports to children.

Q1478 Chairman: That is an issue we have picked up in evidence. So, what you are talking about is actually improving the existing training.

Margaret Hodge: Yes.

Q1479 Chairman: Not specialised sports teachers in primary schools but giving the teachers who are in primary schools the skills to do that particular part of their work?

Margaret Hodge: We are talking about a number of initiatives and levers. One is improving the skills of the teachers in the primary schools; the other is creating the links, particularly with the specialist sports colleges which are growing all the time, in order that they can share not just their facilities but some of their expertise and we are actually funding teachers to take time out of the sports colleges and to move into, let us say, the primary schools which is probably the place where you need to give most of the professional support in order that they can support better-quality teaching by the existing staff there and creating the links with clubs, sports clubs and right across all the sports facilities. So, I think using those levers will help increase the quality of the teaching and PE and sports in all schools but particularly in primary schools.

Dr Taylor: We have really covered the question of walking to school, cycling to school and safe areas to play. We have all seen on this Committee that the issue of pedometers introduces a tremendous air of competition and I think we are now more aware of the exercise that we are taking, perhaps some more than others. Would there be any prospect of extending this to schoolchildren in some way and to parents of schoolchildren who have the time to walk with their kids to school and introducing this sense of competition amongst children? Is there any thought of issuing, as a trial, pedometers to certain schools to see what happens?

Q1480 Chairman: While you are thinking about this, can I just add that, when we were in the States - and we have been all over the place in the last year looking at obesity and we have learned a great deal - in Colorado, we saw this great example where the youngsters in schools are provided with pedometers and their lessons are geared to the total mileage they do each week. They plot on a map across the States where they have got to collectively and then next week's lessons are based on that particular area. It seemed a very, very good idea. We felt that it was something that could be picked up in the UK. Is that something you have thought about?

Tessa Jowell: Yes, it is and the Youths Sport Trust are looking at this at the moment. Obviously, if you get a decent and straightforward pedometer, the costs are considerable. It will be very interesting to see the report of your assessment of the experiment.

Q1481 Chairman: My personal one?

Tessa Jowell: No, your collective, as a committee, experience of seeing this in America. I think that is a very imaginative example that you have just described. One of the things we have to be clear about is, how long does the motivational effect last? Certainly I have been walking upstairs, getting out of the car and walking home and doing all sorts of things in the last week because I have been wearing a pedometer which I would not otherwise do. The question is, how long does that effect last? What you do not want to do is to spend a huge amount of money supplying children with something that would be a good toy for a couple of weeks which they then throw away. So, that is why we will certainly draw on your report on the American experiences.

Margaret Hodge: We might consider advertising it, of course!

Q1482 Jim Dowd: When we arrived back from our visit to the US, we had pedometers coming out of our ears! I gave one to my 11-year old grandson and he thought it was the most severe insult he had received in recent years! I would just say to Richard that, far from encouraging a spirit of competition on the Committee - and I am not taking part in this ludicrous experiment - I think it is actually encouraging a spirit of fraudulent exaggeration! We will not go into that now! Tessa, you have answered this in part but I just want to come back to this idea of physical activity for health and sport. In schools, I recognise that we need to balance the pursuit of excellence with wider participation but, certainly in the way school sports has been taught over the years and I appreciate your distinction between PE and sport because the two are not the same thing, it is also as if people are categorised as not being sporty and therefore sport is not for them and what the effort goes into is identifying future, not Olympic champions, participants full time, perhaps professional sports people, and you mentioned earlier attempts to get those who are not traditionally associated with sports, weaker children, the more timid and those who might be overweight or fat and certainly disabled children. I remember the old slogan - it has gone now - in the days when it was the Sports Council, "Sport for all", that was the pursuit, but are we still actively pursuing that?

Margaret Hodge: The school sports partnerships that we have established are experimenting in a wide range of ways to try and reach those who would feel that they do not excel in sport. For example, there are activities targeted specifically at overweight boys and there are activities targeted at Asian girls and girls in general. There are lots of very, very good examples of school sports partnerships working in that direction. The other thing is to look at sports which are perhaps not the ones we traditionally think about as providing good exercise and healthy lifestyles: yoga might be an example of that and aerobics might be another example of those sort of sports in which some people would engage without feeling failures. I think there is a lot of good work going on and I think the investment that we are undertaking in both creating the partnerships and the infrastructure and providing the professional expertise and linking this in to sports clubs in various fields will grow that provision in schools and grow participation.

Tessa Jowell: If I could just add to that. This is also why the investment in facilities and modern facilities is so important because teenage girls particularly want to be able to change with privacy, be able to wash their hair and all that kind of thing. All these are ways of removing the barriers to participation and where the new facilities exist alongside the regime of the school sports partnership, the level of participation and the enthusiasm is quite fantastic. The other thing that I just wanted to mention in that context as well is the Step into Sport Volunteer programme where, by 2005 - and I will check this figure - I think it is 100,000 young people will have gone through a sports leadership programme. So, there are other benefits as well in giving young people leadership skills/citizenship skills that are part of the drive to increase participation in sport.

Q1483 Mr Amess: I entirely agree about the responsibility of parents in terms of children's activity because, whilst we all know that they seem to be doing precious little, when you think that some parents are so lazy that they practically want to drive the cars into the classrooms, it is not a very good example. In primary schools, often it is left to the chap to do the football and whoever has done a bit of sport earlier in life. Sport England recommend granting all primary school teachers at least 25 hours for PE in their initial teaching training but we have heard examples that, for many of the newly qualified, they only get about six hours. What is your response to that and what are the Government going to do to address it?

Margaret Hodge: Clearly, if you are expecting primary school teachers to have the confidence to be able to teach sports, you have to provide that for them within their initial teacher training. So, having recommended that, we then, through Ofsted, will inspect to ensure that the initial teacher-training curriculum for students is appropriate to meet the qualifications they need, so we need to make sure that happens. Again, these changes take time to bed in.

Q1484 Mr Amess: Is there a proper methodology for assessing physical activity and education on nutrition in evaluation of schools?

Margaret Hodge: Say that again!

Q1485 Mr Amess: You probably will want to write to us about this! Is there a proper methodology for assessing physical activity and education on nutrition in evaluation of schools?

Margaret Hodge: Physical activity and education on ...?

Q1486 Mr Amess: Perhaps I should go on and complete the question. Should this be separately identified in Ofsted reports and do you think that Ofsted should report on the provision of food in schools as well?

Margaret Hodge: I think this is like an exam question - I need to see it in front of me! Certainly Ofsted do inspect on the delivery of PE and sports in schools and they are currently reporting an improvement since really we have embarked on our strategy and our investment. There then comes the issue of, should Ofsted inspect on school meals which is another aspect of the whole issue of obesity in schools? I think my answer to that is in two parts. Firstly, I do not think that you or I would want Ofsted to be diverted from the inspection of teaching and learning within the institutions and I think that is where they should put their emphasis. Having said that, we introduced our nutritional standards on school meals in the year 2000. The DfES, together with Ofsted, and the FSA are currently undertaking a review to see how schools are abiding by those standards and how they are using the guidance that we issue to them. That review will report to us in April and clearly we will reflect on what they find to see whether or not we need to take further steps to ensure that appropriate nutritional standards are being delivered in the school meal service.

Q1487 Dr Naysmith: Margaret, earlier on, you were talking about the fact that we have not mentioned parents very often, but one area where you would not expect parents to be involved directly is in the schools themselves - just let me finish - and there is evidence of things happening with soft drinks manufacturers giving free exercise books and endorsing exercise books in schools and Burger King has supported school breakfast clubs and that sort of thing. Now, you would expect that parents could send children to school and be confident that they are not going to have products endorsed that they would not approve of back home. Do you not agree with that?

Margaret Hodge: I do not think that any of these things are as straightforward as I felt when Tessa was being questioned earlier that some of the Committee perhaps felt that they were. I think it would be wrong for us in the DfES or for us in Government to prescribe from the centre what individual schools should do in relation to where they seek sponsorship. What we have done is to give guidance to say that they should measure the advantages and make sure that the educational advantages gained from a particular form of sponsorship outweigh the disadvantages and that has to be a decision for them. I have to say that, every year in my own constituency, I support Tesco in their Computer for Schools programme and I am sure all of you round the table equally engage in celebrating how sponsorship programmes have added value to the curriculum and the teaching and learning of children. The other thing I would say, just reflecting a little on the conversations that happened before, is that I do not think that you simply transform cultures through regulating either advertising or sponsorship. I think it is a much more complex set of factors at play, which is why I started talking about parents a little earlier. I think it is how we educate the children within the school environment in order that they can start learning to discriminate in the choices they make and much of what we do either through the curriculum or through the provision of school meals is ---

Q1488 Dr Naysmith: I know this is the nanny state and I know that we have to be very careful about it but what we are saying is that we know some parents do not make very sensible choices and do not make very good role models for their own children and that is what things like SureStart and all sorts of other programmes we have introduced in the community are about. Is it not reasonable to think of doing that in this area, maybe at least issuing guidelines?

Margaret Hodge: I have to say to you that the greatest influence on children and the outcomes that they achieve is the quality of the parenting in the home, more important than their socio-economic background, more important than the educational qualifications of the mother, more vital than the best school and more crucial then the most talented teacher. That is the most important influence on what happens to children. So, where I would put my energy in this regard would be in seeing how we could transform and support parents in their role in the home. It is the child in front of the television who sees the advertising, it is that sort of an experience which is the important one. So, I think that we ought to be placing more effort - that is where my priority would lie - in seeing how we can better support parents.

Q1489 Chairman: I understand the point you are making but one of the things that struck me about the healthy schools initiative in my own area, which has been very successful, is the way in which I am told that, in certain parts of my constituency, children had rarely seen certain fruits and green vegetables and schools were actually growing vegetables and it was a knock-on effect where the children were actually educating the parents in a better diet. So, it is not parents educating children, it is the other way around in a sense, and I think we should not lose sight of the fact that, so often, youngsters can influence the parents in a very positive way which is where the school environment is crucial.

Margaret Hodge: But let me just make this point to you. Of course the school environment is important as indeed is the support given through the community health services, which is an issue for this Committee, so the influence of the schools nurse or the health visitor or indeed the GP is as important as the influence of the teacher. I think very often we place far too much emphasis simply on the teacher as being the key individual and the key lever to changing behaviour patterns and I think there are wider issues. That is really the point I was trying to make.

Q1490 Chairman: Doug says that we should ask you about school nurses at this point and I will do that because we will have a division at about 6.20 and I do want to get this matter across and seek your views. One of the issues that has come up is the question of how unaware we have been of the obesity problem gradually catching up on us and that we have not had the kind of measurements of children's weight that perhaps we would have had, say, when you and I were at school where you probably had, as I did, the regular medical and the nit nurse and eyes, teeth, etc. What about the issue of resurrecting on a regular basis weighing and measuring children and actually being able then to address the problems where you have a particular child who has a weight problem and doing something about it because it seems that, at the moment, we are not doing anything like that and, as a consequence, children who need support and the parents who need support are not getting it? What are your views on that?

Margaret Hodge: As you will probably know, the Chief Nursing Officer is currently undertaking a review of the role of all the community health nurses, whether it is school nurses, health visitors and midwives, and I am really extremely keen that we should see in what ways we can actually bring back school nurses very much into the school environment for a whole range of support that the school could give to lives of children. I put it in the broader context. I think the whole reform agenda for which I have responsibility of transforming children's services and trying to bring them together and build them round the needs of the child rather than the professional silos in which they are currently delivered very much plays to your concerns and I would see not just school nurses being located in our extended schools, the concept that we are trying hard to promote as a department, but all the other health professionals who could have an influence on the habits and who could spot early, which is really the other point you are making, when things start going wrong, whether it is in the field of obesity but across the whole range of issues around sex and relationships, drugs and alcohol. You could take a huge array of issues and, if you had the health professionals located within the school premises working much more closely with the education professionals, you would provide a much, much better service for children and spot things much earlier and be able to intervene and indeed, in the Building Schools for the Future programme, one of the things that I am working on, together with the Schools Minister, David Miliband, is to see that, if we are going to completely renew our secondary school estate, we should build into that the capacity to provide a far wider range of services that we think make sense in meeting better outcomes for children.

Q1491 Chairman: You are open to persuasion on that specific point.

Margaret Hodge: On school nurses?

Q1492 Chairman: On the weighing issue. We have not made that recommendation, it is a possibility.

Margaret Hodge: I am not sure that is the most appropriate mechanism for ensuring that you promote the health and well-being of a child, just the measuring. You would have to think about that, Chairman, and think whether you want a more targeted intervention in a different way, but in the school environment I am very keen on that.

Q1493 Mr Jones: I hope that whatever recommendations we make if they are to do with any form of regulation there will not be a knee-jerk response that is over-simplifying, especially if we can show by evidence that this form of regulation has had a beneficial effect in another country. As an example of that I proposed a Ten Minute Rule Bill about a month ago on vending machines in schools and the promotion of these vending machines in schools. In researching that I discovered that a can of coke contains ten teaspoons full of sugar and other drinks contain similar amounts, does it make any sense to promote healthy eating in the classroom and then promote products which are certainly unhealthy in the corridor?

Margaret Hodge: I think the answer to your question is, where is that decision best taken? Is that decision best taken by us as legislators at the centre or is that a decision that is best taken by individual headteachers within their own schools? I think I would say that the individual headteacher ought to decide himself or herself what vending machines to have or what other form of promotion he or she chooses to have within their institution and weigh up the economic and educational benefits against the disbenefits. That may be where we differ a little, that is where I think the decision should be taken.

Q1494 Mr Jones: We do not necessarily differ because you do not need to regulate you can indicate your view and that may help influence the view of headteachers. Perhaps responding to pressure Coca Cola recently announced they will stop promoting their product in our schools, not stop selling it but stop promoting the product in the school, but by way of contrast in Canada this year Coca Cola and Pepsi have announced they will not sell any of their high sugar products in schools. If it is good enough for Canada should it not be good enough for the United Kingdom?

Margaret Hodge: Who took that decision?

Q1495 Mr Jones: Coca Cola and Pepsi in response to pressure from government, amongst others.

Margaret Hodge: That indicates the way we are trying to move forward. I think in all of these issues there are a range of stakeholders and assuming that the Government must always be the one that takes the decision in regard to regulatory issues is not necessarily right and the stakeholders, the children and young people themselves as consumers, are the most powerful ones, which is why, and we have not touched on it, the nature of our curriculum and what we are doing round food technology and the science curriculum, the PSHE, all of these issues matter; the parents and the influence they have; the headteachers and professionals in the school; the LEA; Government and the industry itself and the advertisers. I think we are all stakeholders in this game and we need to work together in the interests of promoting the health and well-being of children and young people. That is precisely how we are working. The Advertising Association has talked to people in DCMS, talked to people in the Department of Health, talked to people in our Department and we are trying to work through a way of working together.

Q1496 Mr Jones: In terms of the food the State provides or local authorities provide in schools we have seen some evidence that sometimes the amount of money spent on that food can be as little as 40 pence per day and the school menu sometimes look like fast-food menus with pizzas, chips, fish cakes, not necessarily the best form of food. Sorry to keep quoting Scandinavian examples but they have a rather good record on many of these things, there we have seen quite simple menus given to children, without these fast-food products, of a high quality, would it not be an idea if we moved towards better quality food in schools?

Margaret Hodge: I have just come back from a visit to Sweden - as we are all talking about our international visits - where I was looking at their early years in childcare provision and it was pretty heart-warming to go round the nurseries and find muesli and yoghurt being offered there as the 11 o'clock refreshment. In 2000 we introduced for the first time in over 20 years nutritional standards for school meals and we moved away from prescribing the food which had to be offered on the menu to one which was a nutrient based set of standards, that is where we are currently, we are reviewing them with the FSA and with Ofsted to see whether or not they are being adhered to. We took that decision on the basis of advice given in the consultation, most people who we consulted felt it was better to move to a nutrient based set of standards rather than a food based set of standards, which was the sort of food we enjoyed, or otherwise, when we were at school. The thinking behind that has probably been proven because in doing that you provide a greater choice of menu for children and the take-up of school meals has gone up and the children tend to eat everything that they choose rather than rejecting the food that was placed in front of them, so the waste is less. We will see what comes out of this review that we are currently undertaking with the FSA and with Ofsted to see whether these nutrient based standards are right and appropriate and are encouraging better eating. I have to say I think a lot of the work which is going on in the curriculum through what we are doing through food technology courses and what we are doing through science and what we are doing on the PSHE is as important in influencing children's choices as the food they get offered to them at lunchtime in the canteen.

Q1497 Mr Burstow: I was interested in your answer because you were talking about setting nutrient specific standards within the context of the English guidance that is currently out there, which you are reviewing, my understanding is that at the moment the regulations that apply in England do not require any specific nutrient content and indeed the only elements that are compulsory do not apply to nutrient standards.

Margaret Hodge: I have it the wrong way round.

Q1498 Mr Burstow: Whereas in Scotland they are about to start introducing specific nutrient standards, is that what you are looking at in the context of this review, possibly adopting the Scottish model?

Margaret Hodge: This is why we have asked for the review, to see whether or not it means that children are getting that balanced diet through their mid-school meal which they get at school.

Q1499 Mr Burstow: The evidence from the work done by the Consumer Association, which was published last year, tends to suggest so far students are still choosing the least healthy option, is that one of the reasons you are choosing to have a look at the guidance which is being used in England?

Margaret Hodge: Interestingly enough the Consumer Association worked with us in establishing the standards, so they were party to the development of those standards. They have been in place for four years, there is concern round obesity and the quality of what children choose or do not choose to eat and I thought it is an appropriate time to have a review, and that is what we are doing.

Q1500 Mr Burstow: One of the things which was very interesting about the comparison between the Scottish and the English situation is that the standards in Scotland specifically bar the provision of fizzy drinks as part of a school meal in primary schools and do not encourage them in secondary schools and crisps as part of a combination of a meal option or a meal deal or a packed lunch are only to be offered twice a week, neither of those things are dealt with in regulations in England. Is that the sort of thing you think could now be encompassed in English legislation?

Margaret Hodge: I know it sounds like I am avoiding the issue, we have asked for a review, we are carrying out the review, and the review will be with us shortly. I will make sure that the Committee is sent a copy of the outcomes of that review and we will have to see what it tells us. I think it would be wrong to prejudge it at this time.

Q1501 Mr Burstow: Without prejudging it can you tell us whether or not the review will also be looking at nutrient standards in respect of school breakfasts?

Margaret Hodge: No we are not looking at that because the school breakfast is not part of the statutory entitlement of children in a school day, it is an addition. Over time it might be interesting to see how the development of breakfast clubs changes that, at the present time we are looking at the statutory mid-day meal which is provided in schools on a statutory basis, not the non-statutory services.

Q1502 Mr Bradley: Talking about fizzy drinks in primary schools and accepting your point that it is up to the headteacher to make the decision, when you visit those schools and you see fizzy drink vending machines in primary schools and you have a discussion with the head about it what sort of arguments do they put to you in favour of having such machines in their schools?

Margaret Hodge: Interestingly enough I rarely see them in primary schools, they are much more often seen in secondary schools, so I do not really enter into that discussion very much. In the secondary school context we talk about the educational benefits and disbenefits of having that there and they put there are arguments to me. If you can see it in that context in the same way this Committee has been influenced to have an inquiry into obesity and the factors which lead to growing obesity amongst children I have no doubt that headteachers being commonsense individuals are thinking about very similar issues within the confines of their schools. The only other thing I would add is remember that much of this was introduced at a time at very, very poor school funding. In the last six or seven years the huge increase in investment in school funding has eased the burden on headteachers to manage within the budgets they are given.

Q1503 Mr Bradley: There is no need for them to have them at all!

Margaret Hodge: I am not going that far, I am leaving it for them to decide.

Q1504 Dr Taylor: Going back to the importance of weight monitoring in schools, I have read today of a Diabetes UK conference recently where one study was published of seven year old children and I think 20 per cent of these were overweight or obese and one third of the parents of the girls and half the parents of the boys all felt that the weights were about right, they did not even notice the problem. I would have thought, and would agree, that really weighing children in school would at least bring home to parents that there is a problem that they need to take note of.

Margaret Hodge: Resources will always be constrained however generous a Labour government is. The only question I was posing to the Chairman when he raised this is even if we managed to get additional health resources into the school environment the use of those for universal testing is the most appropriate way to employ those resources. All I am doing is posing that as a question rather than providing you with an answer.

Q1505 Dr Taylor: It struck me the resources are there, is it about the amount of time it would take to weigh the child and record it?

Margaret Hodge: There are far fewer school nurses today than there were ten years ago. We are down to 2,000, maybe 4,000 it is a tiny, tiny number of school nurses now.

Q1506 Jim Dowd: Why do they not weigh them in the class once a week or once a month and give them a little card they can take home, that does not have a major resource implication?

Margaret Hodge: It depends on whether you want to do it on an individual or on a class basis. There are children who are obese who feel very self-conscious about it and weighing in a class is not probably the most appropriate way to make them feel confident.

Q1507 Jim Dowd: I am not saying in front of the whole class, you could do it confidentially.

Margaret Hodge: If you do it confidentially you take them outside the class and you will have the teacher spending his or her time outside the class weighing. If it is taken as a class activity as part of developing their numeracy skills I do not think that is the most appropriate way of trying to tackle obesity.

Q1508 Dr Taylor: It was on our report when I went to school, your height and weight were the first things on the report, it is very valuable.

Margaret Hodge: If you were like me and you were slightly overweight you felt terrible about that, absolutely terrible.

Q1509 Mr Burstow: To pick up on one final question which comes back to one of the questions we were asking about the role of Ofsted in respect of teaching nutrition, what assessment has been made by the Department as to the extent of which basic domestic science is still being taught in schools given we have received some anecdotal evidence to suggest that generations coming out of schools now have a far lower basic knowledge of how to cook and as a consequence of that are driven increasingly to rely on processed foods and the microwave to meet their dietary requirements?

Margaret Hodge: Even those who learned to cook at school are not taking as much time to cook in the home as adults as our parents did for us. Food technology, as it is known today, is on universal offer in every primary school and it is available in 90 per cent of our secondary schools, it is widely available. About 100,000 young people every year take a GCSE in food technology. The availability is there. It is a compulsory element in the curriculum for primary school children. Interestingly enough if you talk, as I do, to 14 and 15 year olds who have undertaken a much more modern curriculum than we have I think you will find that there is a link. In our days we were not really taught about the ingredients and the nutritional content, or otherwise, in any great detail or the impact on our health. That link between being able to cook and linking it back into the healthiness of the ingredients you choose to cook is much stronger today than it was in the past, in some ways it is better than it was.

Q1510 Mr Amess: We just wanted confirmation that the two ministers are pleased that the Health Committee are taking the lead on this issue?

Tessa Jowell: Absolutely.

Margaret Hodge: I could not do my job if I did not work across Government.

Q1511 Chairman: Can I raise one issue, you mentioned parents, one of the things which has surprised me throughout this inquiry is the limited evidence we have had on the connection between alcohol and obesity, do you have any thoughts on the connection between alcohol consumption and obesity? What factors in relation to obesity, taking into account the development of the Government's strategy on alcohol, are being taken into account?

Tessa Jowell: The Home Office is leading on that.

Q1512 Chairman: I appreciate that.

Tessa Jowell: I think you have to get the information from them. Alcohol is highly calorific and there are the risks of young people not eating a proper dinner, going out drinking too much, getting into all sorts of trouble. These in a sense are clinical issues that I think you would be better served by getting a considered response from the Chief Medical Officer. As you will be aware as a Government generally we have got a lot of cross-government interdepartmental action to tackle alcohol and anti-social behaviour. My Department has led on the new licensing laws which will tackle anti-social behaviour and improve the protection of children.

Margaret Hodge: Alcohol education is part of the PSHE curriculum and it is one of the standards for the healthy school standards work. It is pretty integrated to the approach we are taking round encouraging children to grow up in a healthier way.

Chairman: Can I thank you both and your two colleagues for your evidence today, we are very grateful to you. Thank you very much.