I thank the Member for his series of comments and questions and the broadly positive start, and I too look forward to seeing more learning from the survey as it undergoes more analysis to help inform where we are and where we want to be.

I’ll start with your point about e-cigarettes. Just to reiterate that we continue to keep the evidence on e-cigarette use under review, both in terms of their prevalence and the way that their used, their impact potentially on young people and the way in which they’re marketed and the flavourings, but in particular the impact of e-cigarette use. We’ve heard a number of reports about the impact of e-cigarette use itself, with the statement that they are 20 per cent less harmful than tobacco, but of course that doesn’t mean to say that they are harm free. So, there is a need to understand what they’re used for, the prevalence and what the impact is. We don’t yet understand what the long-term use of them will be, but we will continue to look at the evidence and be led by evidence on this issue.

I’ll deal with your points about food, nutrition and sugar together, if I may. Just to slightly tweak where we are, it wasn’t that we rubbished the idea of a sugar levy; it was the idea about how it could be hypothecated. We were never in favour of hypothecating the use of a sugar levy in the way that it was initially presented, but there was never any disagreement between our two parties that a levy on high-sugar-content products could and should be considered. What we have now is a sugar levy on drinks, but it doesn’t consider every other part of food as well. Part of the action my predecessor has urged the UK Government to undertake is to do more to promote alternatives to sugar, which we promote ourselves in Wales, but to also look again at regulation for sugar in more than just fizzy drinks.

This goes back to the point that food, nutrition and many of the regulatory powers over food and nutrition and nutrition standards are not devolved. There’s a balance of what we can and can’t do, which is why we do still need to work with the UK Government. I can confirm that there are conversations ongoing between Governments about the introduction of the levy that’s been proposed and how that might or might not work, and that work will be taken forward between both my department and also that of the Secretary for Finance and Local Government as well. I hope that we can come back and tell Assembly Members more when we’ve actually had more constructive conversations, to be able to tell you something more than the fact that we are talking at this point.

I want to deal with your point about obesity. We’ve recognised for some time as a country that we have a significant challenge with obesity—the impact on public health outcomes on a whole range of disease and health condition indicators and the impact it has on people’s day-to-day lives, the reality that it is more prevalent in more deprived communities than in others. So, there is no room for any complacency. Part of the difficulty is that it goes back to this point of how we use these results to understand what we need to do more of and how we work more successfully alongside the public to encourage them to make choices for themselves, but not in such a way that we seem to be preaching or nannying the public and telling them what they must do. We have to make healthier choices easier choices. If we look at children, for example, just over one in four children are either overweight or obese. That’s our understanding of the child measurement programme, which means that about 73 per cent are a healthy weight. But our problem is that we’ve not seen the sort of reductions in overweight and obese children that we wish to see, and to combat that we need to see what happens pre school, during school and outside school as well, and we need a culture change broadly across society and within families as well—so an understanding of what the impact is upon a child of an unhealthy diet and the impact on the child of not undertaking enough exercise. So, there is a range of different things for us to do, but just because the picture is complex, it does not mean that we should not wish to do something about it and that we will not wish to do something about it. It’s as I said at the end of my initial statement: this is about the public, voluntary organisations, the public and private sectors and individuals themselves understanding and reinforcing what they could and should do and how we make those choices easier for them and the fairly immediate health impacts and health gain that people can see in being a healthier weight.