This week the London Health Commission, established by the mayor and led by former Labour health minister Ara Darzi, published proposals for a ‘healthier, slimmer, fitter, city’. Beyond the most controversial of these proposals – on smoke free public spaces, which the mayor has already vetoed – are ideas for combating the threat of alcohol, obesity, lack of exercise and pollution.
Just one policy, suggesting limiting takeaways near schools, has the mayor’s support. The report states bluntly the only way to solve obesity is ‘eating less food’. With half of London’s adults and a third of London’s 10-year-olds overweight or obese, the commission wants London to lose weight and proposes using planning to enable this.
In addition to calling for mandatory ‘traffic light’ labelling on menus in restaurants with more than 15 outlets, and a sugar tax, Darzi calls on the mayor to alter the London Plan to give London boroughs planning powers to ban fast food outlets from within 400 metres of schools. The report polled Londoners, three quarters of whom want councils to implement this policy already adopted by Labour councils including Waltham Forest and Barking and Dagenham. Legal challenges over the approach in Tower Hamlets would be resolved by an alteration to the London Plan.
A second report published by 2020 Health this week, ‘Careless Eating Costs Lives’, proposes allowing councils to limit the impact of fast food outlets by using licensing laws. With councils now in charge of delivering public health, giving them the powers to deliver measures that could help tackle obesity is vital.
Earlier this year, a joint report by Public Health England, the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health and the Local Government Association, Obesity and the environment: regulating the growth of fast food outlets, stresses that ‘the prevalence of obesity in the 10 per cent most deprived groups is approximately double that in the 10 per cent least deprived’. With the consequences of obesity impacting on individuals’ health and life expectancy, this is an equalities issue. The rising cost of obesity – which the Labour government’s 2007 Foresight report estimated to be likely to be £50bn per year by 2050 – makes it a fiscal issue too.
It is too early to predict the imminent end of the fast food nation, with over 8000 fast food outlets and growing in London. Enabling councils to limit their impact through planning and licensing would be a step in the right direction. However the reality is that fast food will remain popular so measures to make fast food healthier are also needed.
The GLA Food Board – which reports to Boris Johnson – already has a number of initiatives including a ‘takeaway toolkit’ and the ‘Lighter London’ pilot, a school and community project based initiative to improve health and attainment. This makes the proposals on takeaways effectively an extension of the mayor’s existing policies for London.
With the current mayor now being open about his national ambitions, he may hesitate to adopt the more radical of the London Health Commission’s proposals. This would be a serious error of judgement – something drastic needs to be done to improve public health. However, Darzi’s experience as a former Labour minister make him well-placed to argue the case with Johnson’s successor for a radical approach to improving public health in London.
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Fiona Twycross is a member of the London assembly
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