Following a scathing report by MPs the FT reports that a new Cabinet committee is to meet next month in a bid to formulate a cross-cutting response to the growing obesity epidemic.

Both health secretary John Reid and culture secretary Tessa Jowell will sit on the new committee.

The Telegraph reports that ministers effectively put the problem on the back-burner when they removed the illness from a target list inherited from the previous Tory administration.

Meanwhile Tory peer Lord Tebbit has come under fire for linking obesity to homosexuality.

"Families now so seldom eat together. They don't prepare meals properly," he said.

"Wives are pressured into thinking they ought to go to work instead of looking after children. And it is the breakdown of family that is at the root of it."

He said ministers are doing nothing about this while promoting gay marriage.

"We not only have an epidemic of obesity, we have a huge problem of Aids and the government's attitude is to do all it can to promote buggery. Maybe those two are somewhat intimately connected," added the former Tory chairman.