NHS: Costs

Mr. Hoban
To ask the Secretary of State for Health what estimate he has made of the direct health care costs, in current prices, of obesity (a) in the most recent year for which figures are available and (b) in 2050 or the latest year for which an estimate is available.

Dawn Primarolo
In 2005 the Government asked the Government Office for Science’s Foresight programme to examine the scale of the obesity problem. They estimated that in 2007, the total cost to the national health service of diseases in which body mass index is a risk factor was £17.4 billion, of which obesity is estimated to account for £1 billion. The Foresight report anticipates that, at today’s prices, the NHS cost of overweight and obesity could rise to £6.5 billion by 2050.