Primary schools should be legally required to make children run for 15 minutes every day, Britain’s richest person has said.

The daily mile scheme aims to improve the physical, social, emotional and mental health of children by getting pupils to run or jog outside for 15 minutes a day.

The project, which was started in 2012 by Elaine Wyllie, then head of St Ninians Primary School in Stirling, has been praised by health secretary Jeremy Hunt.

However, according to the Sunday Times, only about 10 per cent of schools in England are signed up, compared to about 40 per cent of those in Scotland.

The paper says that industrialist Jim Ratcliffe, who it has named as Britain’s richest person, wants the government to pass a law to require all schools to take part.

He said: “I would make it mandatory for them to do that 15 minutes of exercise every day. It’s not good for a 10-year-old to be obese. You’re storing up problems. It leads to ill health and people who are not productive and probably not very happy.”