Health and Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Barker and Lord Grade of Yarmouth

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Report stage
Monday 7th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, at this late hour, I simply want to express my support for the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and Amendments 154 and 155 in his name by making three simple points. First, we are learning all the time about the importance of nutrition and health. We are also understanding increasingly how poor nutrition can have a devastating effect on recovery and health inequality. It is therefore remarkable that in both hospitals and, more particularly, care homes we have no standards or training for the people involved in the preparation and delivery of food. That is a serious omission.

Therefore, it is time for us to move away from the traditional way in which care catering has developed, which is by scandal and omission, turning it round into a positive by developing new standards of training. We also need to try to get particularly teachers in colleges to get young people to understand that catering in care settings is far more complex then catering in restaurants. Within the NHS we have the opportunity to drive some world-beating standards on nutrition and care, and that is all that we are asking for by asking for this framework and these amendments.

[Lord Grade of Yarmouth (Con)]

My Lords, I am tempted to express my concern that the computer of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, may have been hacked by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, with the coincidence of the Grenade bar being at the heart of their contributions to this debate.

That said, I offer a word of warning about the imposition of a hard deadline for the implementation of the advertising ban. However desirable a deadline, it is actually impractical. I do not seek here to delay anything; I accept totally that the argument about the futility of an advertising ban has been lost, and we move on to the implementation. A deadline of 1 April—and all the delegated powers—creates a huge number of time-related consequences following that. Advertising, as well as the delegated powers and the need to produce and consult on guidance on secondary legislation, is a consequence of this. Companies will have no time to assimilate what the new rules mean for their advertising campaigns. Advertising campaigns can take up to a year from conception to final production. The Government have yet to publish the secondary regulations consultation, which will lay out exemptions, such as how SMEs are defined for the purposes of the restrictions.

Once the Bill becomes law, which will not happen for several months, Ofcom—that wonderful organisation —will then need to delegate to the relevant regulator, which, according to the amendments, will not happen until two months after the Bill receives Royal Assent. The designated regulator—most likely the ASA, as we heard—will then need to hold a consultation on the details of the guidance and process the consultation responses before putting out final guidance, which will then take several months. Only once this final guidance is published will brands be able to implement it when it comes to their marketing campaigns.

Some noble Lords may argue that the Government have already made clear what are permissible and what are not identifiable HFSS products and that industry and businesses can prepare around this. The questions and detail of the guidance are far more complicated than that. Industry has a plethora of unanswered questions that need to be resolved and which will take time, covering everything from how liability will apply to third-party delivery companies to the definition of transactional content and what rules might mean for loyalty apps. I hope that your Lordships will reject Amendments 149, 151 and 153 to avoid a chaotic transition to the new rules.

I finish by speaking in support of my noble friend Lord Black’s Amendment 151A and the resulting amendments. My noble friend laid out the case extremely well and I hope he will seek the opinion of the House on this matter. I can add nothing to the arguments that he and other noble friends have laid out. If there is a vote, the simple choice of the House is: do we want to let these monolithic, monopolistic platform giants carry on getting away with murder in this country? They have been allowed to get away with stealing copyrights, they do not regard themselves as publishers, and they create more harm—which, one hopes, the online safety Bill will seek to amend.

This is discriminatory legislation, which makes a difference between two people doing the exactly the same thing: the broadcasters, who will be liable, and the online platforms, for which there is no parity at all. It is about time we recognised that we must deal with these people and regulate them properly and sensibly. This is a perfect opportunity, and I hope your Lordships will support the amendment.