SNP recruiting new ‘obesity tsar’ to help tackle health crisis

IT is one of the biggest challenges facing the future of Scotland, costing £12.6million every day and threatening to overtake smoking as the biggest public health disaster of this generation.

But critics have savaged the Scottish Government’s latest move to tackle the country’s obesity crisis – a new quango costing nearly £500,000.

Ministers are now advertising for an ‘obesity tsar’ to be the face of their creation, the Scottish Obesity Unit (SOU).

Backed by medical experts, the quango will ‘ aim to change the way Scotland thinks’ about the severely overweight.

It will also promote legislation to tackle issues such as body image, and is even set to provide guidance to supermarkets and other retailers on store layouts and clothing sizes.

Scotland has the second highest level of obesity in the developed world, behind only the US. Each year, thousands of Scots are admitted to hospital with serious illnesses linked to their weight.

Huge bills are being run up for hospital treatment, obesity prevention and lost pro- ductivity caused by illness and unemployment. According to a Holyrood report earlier this year, obesity is costing up to £4.6billion annually – close to the country’s entire schools budget.

Scottish Tory health spokesman Jackson Carlaw yesterday called for action, not words to tackle the crisis. He said: ‘This is another example of the Scottish Government pouring money into a quango rather than confronting the issue head on. Direct, practical action is what is needed, not the creation of yet another unit under another guise.’

The Scottish Government-funded SOU, to be based in the offices of the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, is recruiting staff including a programme lead paid up to £42,000 a year.

The quango, which will be advised by specialists, dieticians, GPs and public health experts, ‘aims to change the way Scotland thinks about obesity and its consequences’, to ‘ challenge the understanding of obesity (and what a normal weight looks like) and associated risks’ and ‘to challenge other public and private sector interests that directly shape the obesogenic environment to help them understand the impact of their actions’.

The programme lead will communicate ‘research, policy development and practice to a range of stakeholders including public audiences’.

Dr Emilia Crighton. a consultant in public health medicine at Gartnavel Royal Hospital, Glasgow, who is a member of the steering group, said the unit’s role was to tell ‘unpalatable truths’. She added: ‘Being obese is not free of consequence, it is not just a matter of size, it actually affects people’s health. It shortens life. We do have to do something, and because we are in the front line seeing these things, we can actually say the way they are.’

A Scottish Government spokesman said: ‘The Scottish Government is committed to addressing obesity across Scotland.

‘We have introduced child healthy weight interventions and are supporting projects to encourage more physical activity and healthy eating.’

‘Direct, practical action

is what is needed’