Chris Rennard has been a member of the Liberal Democrat party for more than 40 years and was awarded a peerage in 1999. Chris Rennard has written his account of becoming involved with the Liberal Democrats with his book, “Winning Here”.
Lord Rennard in Parliament
Food, Diet and Obesity
Our debate has created much passion and many personal emotions for me, including in thinking about the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, and his experience of giving up alcohol 43 years ago. We have had a fairly wide consensus across the House on many measures that are needed to help reduce the large gap in life expectancy between the richest and the poorest in this country; to reduce the figure of two in every five children in England leaving primary school above a healthy weight; and to lessen the financial and other burdens placed on people who are overweight and on the nation as a whole. But we have also heard constant frustration about the Government’s very limited response to the excellent report. Indeed, I think the flavour of the debate has been largely to describe the response as pitiful.
Thirty years ago, I was 40 kilos heavier than I am now—or, to put it another way, I am now more than six stone lighter. My weight is still going down, but it has been an issue throughout my life and a source of depression. It made me a target for bullying from school onwards. I consider myself fortunate to now be classified as “overweight” rather than “obese”, but we cannot just hope for good fortune to reverse the escalating scale of the problem with obesity and its links, for people like me, to type 2 diabetes and other health conditions.
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