School menus are the latest scapegoat in Labour's sinister plan to control everything we do - Carole Malone

When I was at school, my favourite lunchtime haunt – after I’d had my school dinner - was Greggs the bakers, where my pals and I would buy a cheese onion pastie or a steak bake.

And if it wasn’t Greggs, it was the local shopping centre where we went for sweets and cakes. And guess what, I got fat.

What the hell’s wrong with this Government? It identifies a really serious problem, and instead of tackling it head-on, it introduces pointless schemes that just tinker around the edges and achieve nothing.

This Government and others have been talking about fighting childhood obesity for years - yet every year it gets worse. They’ve thrown money at it, instigated stupid initiatives, put together silly ad campaigns, yet all the while they’re doing that, they’re telling doctors not to tell kids they’re overweight in case it upsets or embarrasses them and their parents.

Well, tough if it does. We’re talking about children's lives here, and the reason tens of thousands are obese is that they have lazy parents who are feeding them junk. And so, they have to be told to stop it, whether or not it makes them feel angry or embarrassed.

And doctors aren’t helping. According to a new GP’s survey, almost half of GPs have seen boys and girls up to age seven suffering from obesity – some are even younger than a year old.

Yet still, four in five say they still find it difficult to talk to parents about their overweight kids in case it embarrasses them or makes them feel angry or ashamed.

But they must tell them. In fact, it isn’t just their job to tell them it’s their duty. Doctors take an oath that says “do no harm”, yet by not speaking out, they’re allowing children to be harmed by parents who don’t know- or care – about the best way to feed their kids and keep them healthy.

But the fact is if parents don’t care that their child might develop diabetes, heart conditions, lung problems, then someone has to. Children have to be protected from abuse, whether it be conscious abuse or otherwise, from their parents. And feeding your child the kind of junk that will lead to a lifetime of obesity and health problems IS abuse.

And why isn’t this Government saying that instead of messing around, taking the odd dessert and a few chips off the school menu?

I’ll tell you, because this latest initiative is like everything this Labour Government does - it’s all about making it look like it's doing something when it's doing nothing. In this case its trying to look like it gives a damn about the health of Britain’s children when the thing that really would make a difference – i.e. holding parents to account - they refuse to do.

I see obese parents with obese kids every day, and I want to scream because those parents know exactly the problems overweight causes – because they’re suffering them. But they’re quite happy to inflict the same suffering on their kids, which is cruel.

Children don’t have much choice over what they eat. They don’t go to the supermarket to buy food. They don’t decide what they’re having for breakfast or dinner. Their parents do.

So why would these parents put their lives and their health in danger by giving them food that’s very likely to leave them vulnerable to a whole host of killer conditions?

We keep being told that eating healthily is more expensive than eating junk, but it really isn’t. In the past, the Government’s narrative (and its excuse) for rocketing obesity was that people on low incomes can’t afford good food.

But it isn’t true - a fact backed up by Early Education minister, Olivia Bailey, who insists that putting healthier food on the school menus won’t be more expensive. "I don’t think healthier food has to be more expensive food," she said.

So, if it isn’t more expensive for schools, it can’t be more expensive for people at home either. So why does the Government keep using poverty as an excuse for rocketing obesity?

The fact is that any parents bring kids into the world now without realising it is the most important job they will ever do, and that it comes with enormous responsibilities.

And that’s borne out by the fact that many kids aren’t taught to brush their teeth (tooth decay is the leading cause of hospital admissions for children), and many start primary school wearing nappies because their parents couldn’t be bothered to toilet train them.

And neither of those things is to do with poverty- they’re to do with laziness.

It’s child neglect, pure and simple. As is feeding a growing child the kind of junk that will condemn them to a lifetime of obesity and the hellish problems that come with that.

As a Reform spokesperson said this week: “Banning foods from school menus won’t solve the problem of childhood obesity. It’s just another example of this Government trying to micromanage people’s lives.”

And he’s right. But it's micromanaging with no positive outcome.

If this Government and doctors are too scared to embarrass or upset the parents of obese children by telling them they are literally endangering their lives, then don’t tell me they care about those children’s lives.

Are we seriously at the point where causing embarrassment is more important than a child’s health and their life?

It feels like it if all this Government is prepared to do to fight childhood obesity is make a few piddling little changes to the school menu.