Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to help ensure that public health campaigns on nutrition and obesity do not create stigma which can contribute to appearance-based bullying.

Public Health England (PHE) does not run any public health campaigns which focus on body shape and appearance-based bullying.

PHE runs a range of campaigns on nutrition and obesity including One You, our adult programme, and Change4Life which targets the families of primary school children. These campaigns are designed to communicate the positive benefits of healthier lifestyles.

Campaign messaging and imagery is developed in consultation with expert nutritionists and dieticians, clinicians and academics and is carefully tested with the target audience. Imagery used in our adult One You campaign is designed to reflect the diversity of the population, whilst Change4Life uses animated characters that are designed to be generic and to represent every family. More on One You and Change4Life can be viewed at the following links:

https://www.nhs.uk/oneyou/

https://www.nhs.uk/change4life