Doctors 'paid for listing their obese patients'

Dr David Haslam, from Hertfordshire, said the system for paying doctors to track obesity was not working and did nothing to cut the number of fat people.

GPs receive "bonus" payments under the Quality and Outcomes Framework for work in several areas of disease, including diabetes, heart disease, asthma and obesity.

Yet Dr Haslam, chair of the National Obesity Forum, said this simply involved making lists and then weighing patients again a year later to ensure they were "still fat enough" for GPs to get paid.

Dr Haslam told the Tackling Obesity 2010 conference in central London that the payments system relating to obesity was "a joke".

Many people who are obese also have Type 2 diabetes and yet this could be going undiagnosed, he said.