Earlier this week, health secretary Wes Streeting proposed to give over-weight unemployed people weight-loss injections to get them back to work.
The plans have been blasted as ‘fat shaming’ and ‘judgemental’, while intervening in peoples’ lives to suit the NHS.
Streeting will be rolling out a five-year trial of the weight loss drug Mounjaro in Greater Manchester.
The trial will involve 250,000 people and will look at whether using the drug will reduce worklessness and strain on the NHS
However the controversial policy has led to questions about how far the interventions could go.
Speaking on The Division Bell podcast, The Express’ Sam Lister said: “It feels a bit like fat shaming, and from a Labour health secretary…I do wonder if this had been a Conservative health minister…there’d be uproar from many on the Labour side.”
She continued: “There are so many factors in life that all contribute about health and actually a lot of them are quite middle-class choices. For example, horse riding or rugby or lots of sport leads to men of certain age ending up in hospital with all kinds of injuries. But there’s no suggestion that we will go down the route of banning sport.”
The latest NHS figures show that in 2022, 29 percent of adults in England were classed as obese, while a staggering 64 percent were overweight.
“The long-term benefits of these drugs could be monumental in our approach to tackling obesity,” Streeting wrote in a the Telegraph. He claimed illnesses relating to obesity cost the NHS £11bn a year.
However, Sam isn’t convinced by the plans.
She said: “You get into this whole kind of minefield if you talk about burdens on the NHS, where do those burdens stop? What enjoyment are you allowed in life? What’s allowed under a Labour government?”
“I just think you go down a really weird rabbit hole if you are talking about lifestyle burdens on the NHS, it’s quite judgemental I think.”
“I think there is a very judgemental streak at the moment with the Labour Government in terms of banning outdoor smoking and trying to get people back into work [this way].”
“The NHS is there to serve us. We’re not there to serve the NHS…the NHS was set up to look after people and not to kind of be the reason why we have to live a certain lifestyle.”
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