Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of trends in childhood obesity levels in (a) South Holland and The Deepings constituency and (b) Lincolnshire in each of the last three years.

The National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) collects data on children in Reception, aged four to five years old, and children in Year 6, aged 10 to 11 years old. It provides detailed trend data on children’s weight status, including childhood obesity. Data on obesity prevalence from the NCMP is available for the school years 2019/20, 2020/21, 2021/22, and 2022/23, with 2022/23 being the most recent year for which data is available. There is no data available for Lincolnshire for 2020/21 due the COVID-19 pandemic, with all of the data for 2019/20 having been collected before the COVID-19 pandemic. Data is not available at a constituency level, but is available at a local authority level. For Lincolnshire, the prevalence of obesity in 2022/23 for both children aged four to five years old and those aged 10 to 11 years old is similar to the pre-pandemic levels in 2019/20. The following table shows the obesity prevalence as a percentage for children in Reception and Year 6 in Lincolnshire, where the data is available, each year from 2019/20 to 2022/23: