Diolch yn fawr. I'd like to thank Jenny Rathbone for keeping the spotlight on this important issue, from the work that she is doing on the cross-party group on food and the cross-party group on active travel as well as the work in her own constituency. She is continually highlighting the causes and consequences of obesity and is an important voice in our Senedd on these matters.

As she outlined in her speech, we already have around 600,000 adults aged 16 or over in Wales who are obese, and, more worryingly, 60,000 of those are severely obese. That number is increasing, with an estimated 10,000 more adults becoming obese each year. Over a quarter of the children in Wales aged four to five are overweight, including 12.4 per cent who are obese. These are disturbing figures. To directly answer the question that Jenny Rathbone has posed in this debate on whether obesity is a disease, that is a conclusion that the Royal College of Physicians have reached, as has the World Health Organization, which has classified obesity as a disease since 2016. So, in a sense, the question has been addressed by leading authorities.

We don't feel that recognising obesity here in Wales as a disease at this moment would lead to a different service response than we are already committed to taking forward. Our role is on the prevention and early intervention, as well as addressing some of the leading causes of obesity that Jenny Rathbone outlined, namely poverty, the environment and diet. For both adults and children, obesity rates rise with deprivation, with the prevalence 6 per cent higher among four to five-year-olds living in the most deprived areas, compared to the least deprived areas in Wales, rising to 13 per cent for adults.

Car-dominated streets contribute to our obesity crisis. Heavy traffic streets create what's become known as 'obesogenic environments'—places that discourage physical activity and contribute to the problem of sedentary lifestyles. One in four Welsh adults are now classed as obese, but that number drops significantly among those who are physically active. So, getting people out of their cars for short journeys produces multiple benefits, from cleaner air and less congested roads, to improved mental health and busier local shops.

And to try and answer the question that Jenny Rathbone posed about exclusion zones around schools, we have just refreshed the guidance for the Safe Routes in Communities project to put a far greater weighting on interventions that encourage behaviour change. And I've said that I met with all the road safety officers in Wales and set out my very clear expectations to them that we didn't simply want engineering-based solutions; we wanted solutions that were going to encourage modal shift and discourage car-based activities. It's now for them to come forward with proposals and we certainly would welcome proposals to have exclusion zones around schools where there's local support for that, and Jenny Rathbone is right: we do need to start thinking more radically about the type of interventions that we see around schools in particular. And it's my expectation, in the next round of maps—the individual network maps that local authorities produce next year for future active travel investment—that all schools in Wales be mapped on those plans, which will then result in infrastructure, linking them up to networks over the time of that planning period.

The food system, as Jenny Rathbone constantly reminds us, contributes to the obesity epidemic too. Easy access to cheap foods, high in salt, sugar, fats and additives, have encouraged a change in eating behaviour. So, to make a substantial impact will require a concerted and effective cross-Government approach, which is why we have set out in our 10-year strategy, 'Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales', published last October, themes around healthy environments and healthy settings. For example, we'll be consulting on legislation in the food environment over the summer, which will consider a range of future measures, such as price promotions, calorie labelling and drink purchasing. This is alongside investing in changing our physical environment in measures to encourage active travel and creating green spaces.

Obesity is significantly linked to health inequalities and we'll be looking at the role of behaviour change to encourage sustainable change. This is why we're developing targeted and tailored approaches, particularly with children and families. The risk of putting a disease label on obesity is that many people may feel that obesity will then be inevitable at a time when we want people to feel enabled to make healthy change—