To ask the Secretary of State for Health what recent assessment she has made of the relationship between childhood obesity and (a) household income, (b) parental education level, (c) hours of television watched per week and (d) hours of sport provided at school per week. (74155)

The data draw on statistics from the Health Survey for England (HSE) from 1995 to 2004 and comparative work done by the Joint Health Surveys Unit on behalf of the Department.

Table 1, which represents household income, indicates that there is some social class gradient in childhood obesity but no clear trend. There is more obesity in the two lowest quintiles than the highest.

No data are available comparing obesity prevalence and parents' education levels. However, we can use the national statistics social-economic classification (NS-SEC) which provides a social classification system that classifies groups on the basis of employment relations, based on characteristics such as career prospects, autonomy, mode of payment and period of notice.

Table 2 shows that the children of parents in managerial and professional professions are less likely to be obese than those in semi-routine and routine professions, but there is no clear relationship between obese children and their parent's professions in other categories.

Table 3 illustrates that the upward long-term trends in obesity prevalence coincide with the upward long-term trends in time spent playing digital games, including television watching time. These trends cannot be considered in isolation as other activities, for example the number of children driven to school, which may contribute to obesity will also have changed during this time period.

The Department is aware of the research from North America, which demonstrates calorie consumption increasing with number of hours of television watched.

The HSE measures physical activity levels that are categorised as active (active for 60 minutes per day for seven days in the last week—the Government's recommended levels of physical activity) or insufficiently active (active at a lower level). This classification includes activities such as physical education and school sport, structured and unstructured play in and out of school time and active travel to and from school.

Table 4 shows that there is a weak correlation between obesity and physical activity levels, with small differences in the percentage of obese children classified as active or inactive.