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1.31 pm
Mr. Hunter: The fact that my Bill received a Second Reading on the nod on 19 January and was considered in Committee in February has been commented upon, but there has been no shortage of debate or scrutiny today. The Bill has its origins in the advisory group's 1994 report, and it emerged following consideration and consultation. The Bill's merits are threefold. It acknowledges the need to simplify the byelaw system, which was not working effectively in dealing with dog fouling. The Bill concentrates its fire on the urban environment, where the problem is greatest. Finally, it recognises that dog fouling is a local problem and best dealt with locally, by local powers.
My Bill's purpose is to encourage and promote responsible dog ownership. I believe that it will be welcomed by dog owners and others. I commend it to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.
Order for Second Reading read.
Mrs. Alice Mahon (Halifax):
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
This is the second year that I have moved the Second Reading of my Bill. It is moderate, but it would ensure that all medicines claiming to aid would-be dieters be registered under the Medicines Act l968. All products or treatment would contain a warning that rapid weight loss may cause serious health problems. The qualifications of all providers--including personnel of weight-loss centres such as Weight Watchers--would be listed. The recommended duration of a weight-loss programme would have to be shown on all products and in all advertising.
Information about the potential health risks of any programme, its nutritional content and the psychological support and educational components must be made available on request. Customers should know the price of the treatment, including the price of any extra products, services, supplements or laboratory tests. A notice containing that information should be conspicuously posted in every room in which weight-loss people treat customers. The notice should also be prominently displayed on all products advertised and sold.
At present, the diet industry can claim almost anything it likes about its products. When those products fail, as they invariably do, the woman--it is usually a woman--blames herself and moves on to the next useless and usually expensive product.
The Bill is long overdue and very necessary. As any examination of this multi-million pound industry reveals, it is completely unregulated. It fails to warn potential clients of the health risks and adverse side effects associated with rapid weight-loss programmes. The customer is often not given information on the qualifications of staff, the details of research carried out into the weight-loss programme, if any, or the costs of the programme if it is prolonged for any length of time.
The Bill is intended to support the aims of Diet Breakers--an excellent organisation founded by Mary Evans Young, which is now international. On No Diet Day on 5 May, women throughout the world will celebrate from Helsinki to Australia to Canada. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman who is making remarks from a sedentary position could easily find out for himself that it is a growing movement.
Mr. Michael Fabricant (Mid-Staffordshire):
For all the people who will supposedly celebrate No Diet Day, how many will be dying because they are wildly obese? There are enough obese people in the House of Commons. All one has to do is look around the streets of the United Kingdom or Australia to see that more people will be dying than celebrating No Diet Day.
Mrs. Mahon:
I shall make that into a more serious point. I imagine that more people die in the third world because they do not get enough to eat and they are literally starving to death. That includes thousands and thousands of children every year.
When it celebrates No Diet Day, Diet Breakers will draw attention to the perils and futility of dieting other than for medical reasons such as diabetes. It will encourage a healthier way of living and point out that dieting undermines women's emotional and physical well-being, and is often the first step to far more serious eating disorders.
The truth is that, if one wishes to lose weight, there is no safe alternative to exercise and healthy eating. We all come in different shapes and sizes. It is not written on tablets of stone that we should all conform to a certain size. Yet the fashion industry and the image-makers put enormous pressures on women, girls and, increasingly, young men. One has only to look at the advertisements for jeans, where we see a requirement to have a certain sized bottom. The image-makers put enormous pressure on women and girls to be unhealthily thin. [Interruption.] I know that it causes great amusement on Conservative Benches, but there is a serious health problem. I never expect anything serious from the hon. Member for Mid-Staffordshire (Mr. Fabricant), so I am not surprised that I am not getting anything serious now.
Dieting has reached epidemic levels in the west. The figures show that 90 per cent. of women will diet at some time in their lives, and that, at any given time, 50 per cent. of women are dieting, including children as young as nine and women as old as 75. It is tragic that powerful image-makers are encouraging western women and girls to starve themselves by dieting, when, in other parts of the world, people are genuinely starving.
We in the west are being bombarded and subjected to what I call a tyranny of thinness. We see all the subliminal messages on billboards and television screens and in magazines--not forgetting the catwalks--trying to tell us that we cannot look nice unless we imitate models who are too thin anyway. These messages also imply that we are valued for our looks alone--a distressing idea. There seems to be a cult encouraging the oppression of fat people and disseminating wrong information about healthy eating and exercise.
An article in the local press recently brought home to me just how much this cult has influenced our way of thinking. Under the headline "You're too fat", there followed a story about a woman called Sharon Lynch, who was turned down for a job at the Royal Halifax infirmary because, she was told, she was too fat. She had sailed through her interview for the post of nursing auxiliary. She had passed a medical, and knew that she was quite fit, and she had already worked as a nursing auxiliary in a private nursing home. She said that being told she was too fat left her feeling angry and humiliated, and she suffered a loss of confidence. The doctor told her that he could do nothing and that, if she really wanted the job, she had better do as she had been advised and lose weight. That is gross discrimination against someone whom the manager of the trust deemed too fat. It was personally insulting, and bore no relation to the woman's fitness.
We know that obesity can cause health risks, but the answer is to visit a doctor and go on a properly controlled diet. It is no answer to go for one of the "miracle cures" available from quacks or for any of the useless products that are on display just about everywhere.
For most people, these diets do not work. We know, in fact, that 96 per cent. of them are not effective. Dieting can cause other serious problems. The Select Committee on Health is carrying out a major inquiry into the health of children, so I asked the Department of Health for some information about eating disorders, which are predominantly diseases of young females between the ages of 14 and 25. It is now becoming apparent, however, that a growing number of children suffer from serious slimming disorders such as bulimia and anorexia nervosa. Moreover, women sufferers outnumber their male counterparts by 10:1.
I have always believed that the epidemic of dieting in western society is responsible for the increase in slimming illnesses. Many people will rightly claim that some eating disorders are a result of a combination of factors; so they are, but social influences that encourage dieting and suggest an equation between beauty and slimness play an important part in the fact that women succumb to these illnesses.
Dr. Bridget Dolan, of St. George's medical school and the European Council on Eating Disorders, recently said:
A proportion of sufferers need psychiatric care. The services offered by the NHS in this respect are poor. According to the Department of Health, in 1992 the Royal College of Psychiatrists identified only 21 specialist centres, of which only 11 had in-patient beds. There were no NHS specialist centres for children. It is typical of the Government that the private sector is moving in to fill the gap.
I draw the attention of the House to an excellent organisation, the Eating Disorders Association, which includes people whose relatives--daughters, sisters, mothers and so on--suffer from these serious illnesses. It believes that the pressure on women to be thin causes them to diet, and that that leads to slimming illnesses and serious results. It is a voluntary organisation, giving information and advice about anorexia and bulimia, and has a huge database of knowledge on what has happened to sufferers of eating disorders. We should listen to people who have grass roots knowledge.
One important regulation that my Bill hopes to introduce is that pills, potions, patches--anything of that nature--should be included under the Medicines Act 1968. Something needs to be done about the scurrilous misuse of amphetamines and amphetamine-type drugs. The use of such drugs for slimming purposes can and does have devastating effects. In some cases, it has led to serious illness and deaths in young females.
Last year, in a similar debate at about this time, I asked about the progress of a study by the Medicines Control Agency--an executive agency of the Department of Health--into the use of these drugs. It has been consulting for some time with a view to restricting the use of certain amphetamines and amphetamine-type drugs and to banning them from being used for slimming purposes.
Yesterday, I had a reply from the Minister for Health. I asked about 10 days ago when he expected to make an announcement on the use of amphetamines for slimming purposes. We have waited more than a year now. The reply that I received said:
We have waited a long time. I am not sure how much longer we have to wait. While we wait, the misuse of these drugs continues to wreck lives. Slimming clinics and others continue to dish them out like Smarties. Last year, when the Minister for Health spoke in the debate, he appeared to be convinced that something needed to be done. I quote exactly what he said in a press release. These drugs are
We know that it is worse than that: people have died or have been made seriously ill. But still there has been no action. It is a coincidence that today in the Daily Mail is a major article, by Edward Verity and Jenny Hope, on the use of these pills by a well-known member of the royal family who has risked her health by taking pills to lose weight. I quote from what Jenny Hope has to say about the use of slimming pills:
that is not true--
Action has not yet been taken.
The article continues:
Today, 12 months since the last time that I brought such a Bill before the House, we are still talking about "considering" the use of those drugs. It is time we stopped considering and started doing something about it.
I put on record my thanks to the National Food Alliance working party on advertising, for publishing a report of its survey of slimming advertising, entitled "Slim Hopes". That is an excellent document, and I am really pleased that someone has taken seriously the role that advertising plays in that multi-million pound industry.
In fairness to the Advertising Standards Authority, it too has recognised that slimming advertising is a problem area, and its own survey found that a high percentage of advertisements for slimming products were in breach of the British code of advertising.
I shall summarise quickly what "Slim Hopes" found. The researchers examined 89 advertisements for 49 slimming products or services. Of those, 36 appeared in slimming magazines, 30 in women's monthly magazines,
14 in the popular press, and 18 in women's weekly magazines. Only one was found in a teen magazine, because slimming advertising is not allowed to be directed at the under-18s.
1.33 pm
"Dieting causes more problems than it solves and can lead to serious eating disorders. Anyone embarking on a diet should consider the long-term consequences."
"An announcement is expected to be made shortly concerning the availability for slimming purposes of a range of medicinal products known as anorectic agents."--[Official Report, 21 March 1996; Vol. 274, c. 318.]
"ruining people's lives. We know families that have broken up because of personality changes in people taking these pills."
"The use of slimming pills to generate quick weight loss is being reviewed by the Government following fears they are being abused.
Amphetamine and amphetamine-type drugs such as phentermine and fenfluramine are widely prescribed by private slimming clubs.
But a clampdown was announced last May by the Government"--
"which said some doctors were acting unethically by giving them to women who did not have a 'clear medical need'."
"The death of Christine Malik, 31, in 1994 was attributed to her use of slimming drugs. She died five days after being prescribed a cocktail of diuretics, appetite suppressants and hormone drugs at a private London clinic.
An inquest was told that she died from multi-system failure, which a medical expert said on the 'balance of probabilities' was brought on by the drugs. The General Medical Council has warned doctors not to prescribe the drugs except in rare cases where patients need to lose weight quickly."
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