Primary school pupils identified as being overweight will automatically be offered a place on a state-funded diet and exercise scheme.
Although parents will have the right to refuse to send their children to the classes, ministers hope the majority will attend.
Parents groups said the new NHS rules meant Labour had moved "beyond a nanny state, to a dictatorship."
| Looks like the frog has finally noticed that the pot is at a near boil ... |
Under existing regulations, children are weighed when they start primary school -- aged four or five -- and again as they leave, at 10 or 11. Parents of all children receive a letter saying whether their children are healthy, overweight, underweight or very overweight. Latest figures show that by the time they leave school, one in three children is overweight.
When it was introduced three years ago, the weighing programme was met with a backlash from parents. In its first year, more than half withdrew their children from the scheme, for fear they would be bullied after the class weigh-in.
When families were advised that pupils would not be told their weights, nor singled out and told to diet, but that data would simply be used by local health planners to monitor the spread of obesity and to help them set up the right services, participation rates increased. Last year, nine out of ten children were measured.
The new guidance, slipped out to NHS Primary Care Trusts in England during the school holidays, orders an immediate change of approach.
| Now that the rubes have bought into the previous system, it's time to take the next step ... |
From this month, pupils whose weight is too high -- or too low -- will automatically be offered a referral to "weight management services" in areas which already run such programmes or can set them up quickly.
Existing NHS schemes range from 12-week weight loss courses taking place at weekends and on school nights, to six-week residential courses costing £3,000 a patient for the most obese.
| NHS doesn't have the money to replace Grand-mum's arthritic hip nor fix Grand-pop's bad heart, but for weight concentration camps there's plenty of money ... |
All PCTs have been "strongly encouraged" to have children's weight management services in place by next September, so that every overweight child in England can be referred for diet and exercise sessions.
Those identified as obese may be sent to paediatricians for specialist treatment, drugs or even surgery.
| So let's tie off Junior's stomach, or his lips. That'll teach him to eat his broccoli ... |
Margaret Morrissey, founder of family lobby group Parents Outloud, said it was "unforgivable" to promote schemes which would inevitably encourage humiliation to be heaped on those children bused off to fat camps. She said: "This has gone beyond a nanny state, beyond Big Brother."
| Nah, you ain't seen nothing yet ... |
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