Sharon Hodgson MP, Shadow Minister for Public Health, reacting to latest National Child Measurement Programme figures for 2015-16, said:

“The data published today by the National Child Measurement Programme shows exactly why we need to be doing more to address the burgeoning crisis of childhood obesity here in the UK.

“These figures clearly show that childhood obesity is on the rise and is most prevalent in children living in deprived areas, where child obesity rates were more than double those of children in the least deprived areas.

“These findings should spur the Government to rethink their approach on childhood obesity and come clean about why they failed to do more to support the health of our nation’s children when they published the Childhood Obesity Plan earlier in the summer.”