Britain’s weight problem is costing almost £100 billion a year and will scupper Rishi Sunak’s plans to get the sick back to work, analysis suggests.
The effect on national productivity from excess weight is nine times bigger than previously thought and threatens to leave Britain “a sick and impoverished nation”, Henry Dimbleby, the government’s former food adviser, said.
The cost of obesity is expected to grow by another £10 billion over the next 15 years as the nation’s population ages, according to a comprehensive report on the impact on the country’s finances.
Dimbleby is urging ministers to introduce smoking-style restrictions on junk food rather than continue with “hugely problematic” plans to put millions of people on weight-loss drugs.
Two thirds of British adults are now overweight or obese, up from half a generation ago, with the biggest increase seen in the heaviest categories. The average man now weighs 6kg more than in 1993 and the average woman is 5kg heavier.
Anti-obesity measures such as a 9pm junk food advertising watershed and a ban on buy-one-get-one-free deals on unhealthy products have been delayed until 2025 and Victoria Atkins, the health secretary, says she wants to give people “help and advice on how to be healthier” in a “way that is not nanny-statish”.
A Department of Health spokesman insisted it was “taking firm action to tackle obesity”, citing food-labelling guidelines, funding for school sports and healthy food vouchers for disadvantaged families.
However, the Tony Blair Institute commissioned Frontier Economics to update a 2020 analysis which put the cost of obesity to Britain at £58 billion a year, mainly through years of good quality life lost to weight-related conditions such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, strokes and joint problems.
The updated figures include a wider estimate of the economic consequences of obesity, such as an estimated 350,000 people aged 50-64 who are out of work because of their weight. It includes the effect of people who are overweight as well as those who are obese.
The cost to the NHS of obesity-related illness is now estimated at £19.2 billion a year, up from £10.8 billion, while the wider social costs include productivity losses of £15.1 billion, compared with £1.7 billion previously. The total cost of £98 billion, which includes the £63 billion cost of shorter, unhealthier lives, is equivalent to about 4 per cent of GDP.
In a speech to a Royal Society conference, Dimbleby will set out figures which he describes as “a disaster” and show that the hit to the NHS and the economy will leave governments “crippled” without action.
The NHS “will suck all the money out of the other public services” while “at the same time, economic growth and tax revenue will stagnate. We will end up both a sick and impoverished nation,” Dimbleby will warn.
Hermione Dace, of the Tony Blair Institute, said its analysis showed that “the health of the nation and our economic growth and prosperity depend” on dealing with obesity. “We need a fresh approach to give people real options, rebalancing the food system in favour of healthy, cost-effective choices and disincentivising profiteering from ultra-processed and junk food,” she said.
Blair has backed Dimbleby’s call for more sugar taxes, but ministers have rejected the suggestion.
Last month ministers launched a back-to-work plan aiming to get the long-term sick back into employment through a combination of sanctions and support schemes, after Sunak promised to end “the national scandal” of 2.5 million people of working age on incapacity benefits.
But Dimbleby points out that these long-term sick are often suffering from conditions such as joint and back pain, and mental health problems that are made worse by obesity.
Trials are under way to see whether a new generation of weight-loss drugs such as Wegovy can help people get off benefits and back to work, and privately ministers compare them to statins as preventative medication that will ultimately be given to millions of people.
However, Dimbleby will say we are heading for a future where a third of people take drugs which have side effects and whose long-term consequences are unclear. “Every doctor I have spoken to has said prescribing them to large proportions of the population would be hugely problematic,” he will say.
Stressing “there is time to take a different route” he will argue: “With the right policies, we can change culture. Just look at smoking: it’s become ever more socially unacceptable to smoke … If we have social and political will, we can do the same for obesity. Public spaces awash in junk food will one day be seen as just as outdated as the smoke-filled rooms of the past.”
Health secretary put in sticky position by husband’s job in sugar
The health secretary has promised to stand back from swathes of anti-obesity policy because of her husband’s job running a sugar company.
Atkins said she had “recused myself from sugar” and is understood not have attended any Department of Health meetings on food policy. Andrea Leadsom, appointed public health minister last month, has been put in charge of obesity policy.
• Meet Victoria Atkins, the new health secretary
Atkins also suggested Sunak’s pledge to cut NHS waiting lists was dependant on resolving doctors’ strikes as she broke with the government’s previous tough rhetoric to lavish praise on “extremely constructive” health unions.
Atkins is sceptical of what she has described as “nanny-statish” measures, and has focused on education on healthy eating as a way to tackle obesity.
She told Times Radio that obesity was “incredibly important” saying: “I’m going to be looking at this very carefully over the coming months to see what what we believe will work to help people be that little bit healthier.”
However, she stressed she was an “independently minded woman” who had voted “enthusiastically” for a tax on sugary drinks. Asked about potential conflicts of interest given the role of her husband Paul Kenward, chief executive of British Sugar, Atkins said: “I take it very seriously, and I’ve recused myself from sugar or anything — any policy that may have the perception of in any way being involved in that.”
Atkins warned of the risk of a “winter crisis” in the NHS, telling Sky News: “We’re trying to prepare for that. But I do acknowledge the challenges that everybody will be facing”.
NHS leaders have sounded the alarm about a winter in which strikes by junior and senior doctors are allowed to continue, saying industrial action will doom the prime minister’s pledge to bring down waiting lists.
Atkins suggested the promise would only be achieved if she succeeded in ending strikes. “We are looking to meet those targets, but I need please the consultants to pass this settlement that we’ve put forward,” she said.
She said there was “no easy answer” as waiting lists have climbed to a record 7.77 million. But she said was “really pleased” to have struck a deal with consultant leaders. “I very much hope that consultants will vote for this when it’s put to them, and I’ve by the way had a really constructive relationship with them so far, and I’m very much looking forward to having that sort of relationship with doctors in training,” she told the BBC.
While her predecessor, Steve Barclay, described junior doctors’ leaders as “militant” and politically motivated, Atkins refused to repeat the description, insisting she had a “very constructive” relation with the British Medical Association.
“We are doing everything we can, but we have an enormous amount of goodwill at the moment, from the BMA, and from others, and I am keen to encourage that,” she said.
Saying she had already met junior doctors twice, she said “they know that I won’t be able to meet some of their asks, but I’m very interested in having conversations with them, about, for example, the conditions in which they’re working”.
Junior doctors have asked for a 35 per cent pay increase, while consultants are now voting on a deal that will see some of them get pay rises of up to 19 per cent, including a 6 per cent rise already announced by the government.
