Withholding sugar review will stifle input to obesity strategy, says MP

An MP and former GP has accused England’s health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, of hypocrisy for refusing to publish a review of the evidence on what measures could help to reduce people’s consumption on sugar while claiming that he supports data sharing.

In July Public Health England said that its review on what measures the government could take to reduce the population’s sugar consumption would be published at the end of the summer and would inform the government’s strategy on tackling childhood obesity.1 But this week the Department of Health said that the review and the strategy would be published simultaneously “in the coming months.”

In an article in the Daily Telegraph on 12 October Sarah Wollaston, the Conservative MP for Totnes and chair of the health select committee, called on Duncan Selbie, chief executive of Public Health England, to use his powers to insist that the report be made public.2 She said that when Public Health …