Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:50 pm on 12 March 2019.
Let's delve a little deeper into particular aspects of what I certainly regard as a growing public health crisis here in Wales. Take the incidence of diabetes: the numbers diagnosed in Wales with diabetes is increasing and now higher than anywhere else in the UK. The highest number of all in Wales and among the worst in the UK—8 per cent of the population—is in Gwent. Only last week, the Assembly's health committee said that Wales is facing a national crisis in terms of our children's health. The latest figures from Public Health Wales show an increase in the numbers of obese four to five-year-olds over the last two years, with 27 per cent overall now overweight or obese, compared with just 23 per cent in England. The lack of physical activity among children is a primary factor, but surely among the key drivers of this worrying trend are the limited role of physical activity in the curriculum and the lack of wider public health interventions against obesity. And, surely, in this context, the biggest inactivity of all has been your own as a Government.