The next statement is by the Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Well-being on 'Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales'. So, Lynne Neagle.

Thank you, Llywydd. I'm today launching the second of five delivery plans as part of our 10-year 'Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales' strategy. Our delivery plan for 2022-24 will utilise a combination of funding, policy and legislation to develop approaches that place a strong focus on prevention and making the healthy choice the easy choice.

The plan will support recovery from the pandemic and address the new challenges it has presented us. Many of us have found it hard to make and sustain positive healthy behaviours during lockdowns and the pandemic has deepened already existing health inequalities. We will deploy targeted approaches, particularly in areas of deprivation, and will assist those who are already overweight or obese through a range of prevention, early intervention and specialised services. Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, we have made progress over the last two years through our first delivery plan. This is despite many of our key partners rightly prioritising the COVID response. I would like to thank our partners for their continued and future support as we take forward our ambitious plan.

Obesity is a complex challenge, and there are no simple solutions. We know that no one part of Government or the NHS can solve this, so we will be taking action across Government, working with partners in the public, private and third sectors to drive delivery. I am today outlining our seven national priority areas, which incorporate a number of actions to remove barriers to reduce diet and health inequalities across the population. To enable delivery of these seven areas, I have allocated over £13 million of funding to deliver the programmes and projects identified through this plan.

The Deputy Presiding Officer (David Rees) took the Chair.

The plan will build approaches across a range of our environments, from the way we eat and buy food out of the home to our educational and recreational settings in order to identify how we can make the healthy choice the easy choice. However, we have to be clear: we are trying to roll back established ways of living our lives that have built up over time and are having a negative impact on our health and well-being. I will be introducing a consultation in May that will consider proposals to improve the healthy weight environment. This will include areas such as price promotions, calorie labelling, planning, licensing and banning the sale of energy drinks to children. I am committed to take this forward at pace and introducing legislation within the lifetime of this delivery plan. I am also committed to undertake work to scope options around taxation powers, which will build upon positive shifts we have seen through the sugar levy.

Schools make a vital contribution to support lifelong healthy behaviours and can help reduce health inequalities. Extending the provision of free school meals to all primary school pupils, with children having access to two healthy meals a day alongside the free breakfast initiative, will help to support our aims. We will also be reviewing the school food regulations to ensure that school meals are able to take on board the latest scientific nutrition advice to provide healthier options.

We know that many of us are more inactive than ever. We will continue to invest in active travel and within our natural environment to ensure that people have access to opportunities to move in their everyday lives. We will continue to invest in community facilities to increase opportunities to be active.

Tackling health inequalities is at the heart of our delivery plan. Through our children and families pilot programmes taking place in Cardiff, Merthyr Tydfil and Anglesey, we will work with families directly to provide parenting support on healthy practices and setting boundaries relating to food, as well as guidance on practical food preparation. The aim of these pilot projects is to demonstrate approaches that have shown evidence of success and are scalable.

A refreshed all-Wales weight management pathway will put in place equitable service provision across Wales. Investment will support health boards and partners to continue to build a multi-layered system, offering range of flexible support options for people to manage their weight. For the first time, there will be specialist level 3 children and families services, providing a multi-practitioner approach, including psychological support, to address the range of complex issues associated with obesity. In parallel to this support, there is ongoing development of services and approaches based upon early intervention, including specific approaches through maternity.

We will work closely with health boards on the delivery of services that offer the greatest impact and put in place a set of data requirements to measure change. I want to take the opportunity at this point to remind us all that tangible change around obesity will take time, but I am committed to putting in the structures to make the changes required.

We will also build a long-term behavioural change campaign. Work is already under way to develop an online, bilingual, trusted NHS website to provide weight management support to enable people to take more control over their own weight and health. This will align with the all-Wales weight management pathway.

The steps I've outlined today are just some of the examples of the depth of work taking place. I am committed to my central leadership role to drive the change we need. I will be chairing a revised national implementation board that will oversee delivery within the plan. This board will bring together key senior leaders from across Wales to ensure that we are delivering at pace and to provide the critical analysis we need to drive progress.

I am committed to drive change at all levels. We have to take a radical approach that will harness all of the levers at our disposal to help achieve the changes we need to see. Obesity is a serious threat to our nation's health that has been building for generations, and reversing this will not be an easy task. I intend to report back regularly to the Chamber on progress and am absolutely committed to working across parties to achieve our shared desire to see people live healthier, happier lives, wherever in Wales they live. 

Conservative spokesperson, James Evans. 

Diolch, Deputy Llywydd, and I thank the Deputy Minister for your statement and some of the comments that you've made. Obesity is a plague on the health of our nation. It's a problem; instead of declining, it's increasing. Worryingly, two thirds of the Welsh population are now overweight or obese, and, as you pointed out in your statement, the pandemic—many people have struggled to maintain healthy lifestyles, and it has deepened health inequalities. And it is welcome that you have allocated over £13 million to deliver on the 'Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales' strategy plan. However, I do agree with you that prevention is better than cure, and I want to know how are you going to ensure that the moneys allocated to health boards and other partners that you've mentioned are going to be monitored to ensure that they are delivering on the plan and the priorities that you have set out and ensure that that money is spent in the right places and it's not wasted on bureaucracy, which has happened in the past.

It's welcome to see in your statement that you're going to look at price promotions, calorie labelling, planning, licensing and banning energy drinks to children. I think that's very positive, and other measures are welcome. These are positive steps, but we need to have a targeted media campaign around healthy eating and better lifestyle choices. During the COVID pandemic, we were inundated with tv, radio, social media and leafleting campaigns by the Welsh Government to keep people safe, and you spent £4.6 million on social media adverts alone, and I want to know how much money is going to be allocated to a public awareness campaign around healthy lifestyle choices and healthy eating. And as you say, we are trying to roll back on established ways that people have lived our lives, and that's going to be extremely difficult to do.

I also saw in your statement about the roll-out of free school meal provision and you're looking to increase the nutritional benefits of the food, and I would like to know what extra support will the Government be providing to our local authorities to make sure that that good-quality food is fed to our children, because I do worry, if the funding is not provided, that local authorities will struggle to deliver on this.

It's positive also to see that there's going to be a website to help with people's weight management. I think that will massively help people who are struggling and people who do need support, and that's going to be bilingual as well. I think that's really, really positive.

I also agree that we need to see greater access to the natural environment and our sports facilities, and what discussions have you had with your deputy ministerial colleagues around helping boost participation in sport and physical activity across Wales, as physical activity is a great way to reduce obesity and also help with mental health problems, which I know you and I are very keen to see reduced?

Minister, one thing I think that was missing slightly from the statement is that the British Heart Foundation recently released the 'Bias and biology: The heart attack gender gap' paper. They identified that women are not being taken seriously when they're having heart attacks and in support for weight management services, so dealing with weight inequality I hope will be a top priority for you going forward. I hope you can raise that when you respond to me.

And finally, Minister, you ended your statement with saying that we need to take a radical approach, and I totally agree with you on that. This is a very deep-rooted problem in our society. I'd like to see us sometimes go further with further public interventions in certain areas, because if we are going to save millions of people suffering with obesity-related illnesses and diseases it's going to have to be a radical approach and it's going to have to be a very top priority for you and for the Welsh Government. Diolch, Deputy Llywydd.

Thank you to James Evans for that range of points, and also for your acknowledgement of the scale of the problem that we face and for your acknowledgement that that problem has become much worse due to the pandemic. And I entirely agree with you that prevention is better than cure, and this is a delivery plan, as part of our 'Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales' strategy, that is very much rooted in prevention.

I'm very grateful for your welcome for the legislative proposals that we will be bringing forward, and I will look forward to working with you and across party on those. Of course, there are not just our legislative proposals; we are also working closely with the UK Government around the changes that they are making around things like calorie labelling, restricting advertising, changes to the composition of infant food et cetera. So, there is a lot of work going on in that space.

You mentioned the targeted media campaign, and clearly this is an incredibly important area of work, but it is also a very complex area. So, there's a huge amount of work going on to make sure that we have the right type of behavioural campaign, because influencing behaviour, particularly behaviour that is so entrenched for many of us, is very, very challenging, but that is a priority for us along with developing this NHS resource, and further down the line we'll be in a position to say more about the funding of that, but we're absolutely committed to delivering on that agenda. 

You mentioned the free school meal provision, and obviously that is a costed commitment as part of our co-operation agreement with Plaid Cymru, but it's not just about giving children free school meals; we also want to make sure that what they have is nutritionally high quality, and that's why we've committed to reviewing the nutritional standards. So, I'm working in partnership and we're working across Government on this whole plan, with the education Minister on that, and in addition to that we're also introducing national buying standards, which will help with procuring more healthy food in the first place. So, we'll be able to look at the quantities of protein, et cetera, as part of what we're doing, so that will also help drive that work. 

You referred to the need for us to all be more active, which is obviously correct. We are continuing to invest in making sure that people can be more active. We have the healthy and active fund, which is £5.9 million, which has been available over four years, which is aiming to improve mental and physical health by enabling healthy and active lifestyles. I've been very lucky to go and see some of those projects and to see the way that they are working with people's physical and mental health to improve their quality of life. In addition to that, in this year, we've invested £4.5 million in community sports facilities, and there's a further £24 million being introduced over the next three years.

You referred to the British Heart Foundation report, and obviously the British Heart Foundation are a key stakeholder for us and we very much accept the recommendations that they're making. The idea with our all-Wales weight management plan is that those services will be available for everyone, but I do very much take on board what you're saying and I think we don't always understand the wide range of impacts that can come from having cardiac health problems. It's not just heart attacks; it's things like dementia, which is a risk that we all want to mitigate. So, we're very committed to continuing to work with the British Heart Foundation and key stakeholders on that work. Thank you.

Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Rhun ap Iorwerth. 

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I thank the Deputy Minister for the statement today.

I know that this is an issue that the Minister has a keen interest in. We both served on the health committee in the fifth Senedd as we were going through the passage of the Public Health (Wales) Bill. I tabled the amendment that led to the Government agreeing to introduce an obesity strategy, and I know the Minister and I were in agreement that this really has to be a priority for us. The health of the nation in physical terms, I think, is directly linked to our health as a nation in every possible tangible way. So, I think there's much to be welcomed in the statement today.

I do question the numbers, the sums of money that are being allocated. It's welcome to see £13 million being allocated towards this. I can't help feeling that there's a nought missing still when we're talking about the scale of the problem that we face. Some Welsh Government figures I've seen suggest that obesity maybe costs some £86 million annually to the Welsh NHS. I'd question that, actually, when you consider the effect that obesity can have on type 2 diabetes, which takes up as much as 10 per cent of the entire budget of the Welsh NHS. So, we really, if we want to reap the results, have to be putting in the investment on that preventative side that we, across parties here in the Siambr, can agree has to be prioritised. We've got to invest in that preventative side if we are to reap the long-term rewards. And I'd welcome the Minister's comments on whether she agrees with me, really, that the discussion she wants to be having around that Cabinet table in Government is to be adding that further nought to that sum, which is something that we should be aiming for.

I welcome the work being done on a pilot scheme in my constituency on health inequalities, working with families and children in particular. It is never too late in one's life, of course, to think in a healthy way. I joined the Nifty Sixties club at the Gym of Champions, the Holyhead and Anglesey Weightlifting and Fitness Centre in Holyhead yesterday. I'm not yet in my nifty 60s, though I will soon be entering my sixth decade later this year. I could barely keep up with those young-of-mind-and-body men and women who were there, who were keeping fit of body and mind. Of course, keeping our weight down is a big part of that. You could see through them the benefit that they were getting from that wonderful facility that we have in Holyhead, but it's taken investment to get it up and running—we need to see that kind of investment in all parts of Wales.

A couple of other questions on advertising. The original 'Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales' document stated that, by 2030, there'd be a ban on advertising, sponsorship and promotion of foods high in saturated fat, sugar and salt in public spaces, including bus and railway stations, sporting events, family attractions and so on. There has been a study that concluded that similar measures on London Underground advertising boards since 2019 really did have an impact. It contributed, perhaps, to a 1,000-calorie decrease in unhealthy purchases in people's weekly shopping—people who had come across those adverts. Could you just update us on where we're at with those measures?

And given, finally, that the Minister has indicated that she will ask officials to consider measures around taxation, when can we expect further detail around that? I was on these benches when we were laughed at for suggesting that we could introduce a levy on sugary drinks. That's happening now, it's been accepted. We need to move on now to unhealthy foods as well. And has the Minister also considered calls from charities, such as the British Heart Foundation, to restrict promotions—buy one, get one free and the like—on unhealthy food and drink?

Thank you very much, Rhun, and thank you for your welcome for the delivery plan that I've announced today. As you rightly highlight, the genesis of the 'Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales' strategy came from the Public Health (Wales) Bill, and it's been good to do the work that I've done on committees around tackling inactivity, et cetera—it has been really useful.

You referred to the funding and whether it is sufficient. In addition to the £13 million to support, directly, the delivery of the 'Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales' strategy for the two years, we've also reprioritised the £7.2 million annual prevention and early years funding from April 2022, and that's going to be used by directors of public health across local health boards to specifically support interventions in the obesity as well as the tobacco policy areas, in line with our strategies in both those areas. And we're working with health boards to ensure that plans for this funding are in line with the 'Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales' strategy, and we're in the process of finalising that. I've also referred to the other funding, such as healthy and active, and the money that goes out for sports facilities, which is, of course, in addition to that. The other thing that I'd say is that very thorough evaluation is being built in to the implementation of this delivery plan, and that will allow us to, obviously, look at whether we do need any more funding, and that's a really key part of what we are doing.

Thank you for your welcome for the children and families pilot—one of them is in your constituency. Also to remind the Member that we're continuing to invest significantly in funding for activity for the over-60s as well, so we're conscious that this is a life-course thing.

You referred to taxation: that is something that we have begun to work on. We commenced some initial work in 2019 when Public Health Wales published a report on this, and that looked at the international evidence and considered the potential powers that could be applied. That was a first-phase piece of work, and we're going to commission some further work on that to refine some potential proposals that we're going to take forward as part of this two-year delivery plan. I'm very happy to provide a further update on that in due course.

In terms of the price promotions, absolutely. I am launching a consultation in the spring that will look at a range of legislative options, and one of the things we will be looking at is limiting price promotions of foods that are high in sugar, fat and salt.

Thank you very much to the Minister for your statement, and thank you very much for your commitment to this area, because it really does require that level of persistence on this complex issue.

I was very grateful to the Farmers Union of Wales recently, who have promised to go into schools in my constituency and talk to children about where food comes from. I think that's a pretty basic starting point, and unfortunately, for many of them, it's a complete mystery. So, I would like to see market gardens in every school, particularly in areas of deprivation, and I very much support your approach, to focus on areas of deprivation. We've all met children pre COVID who have started school without ever having used a knife or fork or ever sat down around a family table to share a meal, so I appreciate that it's a really excellent opportunity to use the considerable investment the Welsh Government is making in free school meals for all primary school children to really try and change the culture around food, because it isn't like this in Italy. We have really lost the plot in this country. We have been completely dominated by the obesogenic food producers who want us all to eat stuff that's going to kill us.

Can you ask a question now, please?

My question really is on: if you're going to change the school meal regulations, I applaud that, but who will monitor the quality of school meals? Because at the moment we rely on school governors and for them, actually, it's a bit of a mystery, and I've not yet seen school governors as a whole who take an interest in this matter.

Also, what specific approaches do you plan for pregnant women? We put an awful lot of effort into helping women quit smoking, quite rightly, when they're pregnant, but isn't it a golden opportunity to get expectant families to really change their relationship with food? And, particularly, the benefits for the children of breastfeeding, and to the mother for losing weight after the birth, are just so huge and lifelong that I would like to see more investment in maternity assistants who are able to support women with breastfeeding, which is not the easiest thing in the world to do.

Thank you very much, Jenny, for your welcome, and thank you too for your continued commitment in this area of work. It is really very much appreciated, and I recognise that we've got a lot of work to do in terms of encouraging children and young people to eat more healthily.

Yesterday I was at Ysgol-y-Graig Primary School in Cefn Coed in Merthyr for the start of Veg Power's 'Eat Them To Defeat Them' series of lessons. I was able to watch the children having a variety of different lessons, right up from nursery all the way through the foundation phase, and they were learning about vegetables, obviously some of which they had never seen. We are continuing to support the Veg Power initiative, but also, of course, we've got our new curriculum coming on stream, which is a huge opportunity with our health and well-being area of learning and experience. The strength of that is that it won't just compartmentalise these things into specific lessons. This will be an approach across the curriculum to make sure that our children have the opportunity not just to learn about what's healthy, but also to implement some of those things as well.

You mentioned the commitment on free school meals; absolutely, we're committed to reviewing the nutritional standards. At the moment, Estyn are meant to look at how schools comply with the nutritional standards. As part of that work, I'd be very keen to have discussions with the education Minister to make sure that Estyn has a continued focus in this area, because it is incredibly important.

You mentioned the importance of maternity, and national priority area 3 in our delivery plan is designed to support the best start in life, to enable families to make positive choices from pre-pregnancy to early years. It's very much recognised as a priority in the plan, and as part of that, we're going to be strengthening the work to make sure that pregnant women can access the all-Wales weight management pathway to support maternal obesity. We've also got a range of initiatives to encourage and promote the importance of being a healthy weight before pregnancy, and of healthy weight gain during pregnancy, through the maternity key performance indicators, including ensuring access to a Foodwise in Pregnancy app.

You also referred to the importance of breastfeeding. That is now going to sit underneath as a key part of our 'Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales' strategy, and we've got a breastfeeding action plan. Some of the work on that was paused due to COVID, but that is now going to be recommencing. I'm really keen to see that delivered at pace, with targets and milestones that we can ensure that we meet. 

And finally, Ken Skates.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Can I first of all thank the Minister for making an incredibly important statement today? I welcome every word that she has spoken, particularly when she made reference just recently in her response to Jenny Rathbone about the importance of the new curriculum. My first question is seeking assurance: will the Minister assure Members that she'll continue to engage with the Minister for education in the development and roll-out of the new curriculum, so that it can offer the space and enabling power for teachers to be creative and innovative in the way that they support the physical development of young people?

Secondly, can I congratulate the Government's sharp focus on early years and children, not just in regard to the statement today, but across all areas of responsibilities in Government that concern children? Can I also have assurance that the Minister will remain focused on early years, given the overwhelming evidence that shows that the first 1,000 days of existence are hugely, hugely important for the development of individuals?

Thank you very much, Ken. I'm very happy to give you that assurance that I am really committed to the early years in the round. You'll have heard me as a backbencher raise many times the importance of the first 1,000 days. So, it is very much a priority for me. As you've heard me explain to Jenny Rathbone, the previous speaker, it is a key priority area as part of the delivery plan that we have published today. You're absolutely right to emphasise the importance of the new curriculum, and that, as I said, it's not compartmentalising these issues. This is embedding health and well-being across the whole curriculum, and also, vitally, making those linkages between physical and mental health. This plan today is a cross-Government plan. All Ministers have seen the plan, agreed the plan, and I will very much be working closely with the Minister for education around the delivery of the education aspects of the plan, as I already do around the whole-school approach to mental health and well-being. So, I'm very happy to provide that assurance today. Thank you. 

Thank you, Deputy Minister.