Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he has taken to monitor implementation of the Chief Medical Officer's physical activity guidelines to ensure that members of the public are reaching the recommended levels of physical activity.

The Chief Medical Officer’s (CMO) guidelines were published in ‘Start Active Stay Active’ in 2011. There are five factsheets for each age group which accompanies the report and it sets out examples to meet the recommended levels of physical activity. This information is widely available.

In October 2014, Public Health England (PHE) published ‘Everybody Active Every Day’. This places physical activity at the heart of the public health message, building on the CMO’s guidelines and setting out the evidence base for what works to get people active at a population scale. PHE will monitor its progress and measure its impact over time. The Department has also recently commissioned PHE to look into how we can develop more effective messaging on physical activity so that more people are aware of the CMO’s guidelines.