Food, Diet and Obesity Committee Report
Baroness Boycott Excerpts(3 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie. I agree with every word that she said. I too had the great pleasure of being on the committee that was expertly chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. It genuinely felt like being on a jury, with 12 members, evidence being shown and someone taking evidence and notes, which our clerks did superbly. At the end of it, I think we were all informed and pretty much facing the same direction. Our verdict was straightforward.
I will use my few minutes to talk about one of our recommendations—the extent to which the food industry is involved in the policy of food at the moment. Take, for instance, the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition—SACN. It is the main adviser to the Government on food policy and, if you think it is unbiased, you would be wrong. Of the 16 members of SACN, 14 of them directly or indirectly take money from the food industry. They might brush it aside by saying, “I declare my interests”, but, if you take money, it changes minds.
SACN’s statement on ultra-processed food concluded that the associations between higher UPF consumption and adverse health outcomes was “concerning”. It is well known that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and I argued a bit about this in the committee. However, the noble Lord is highly respected, so I urge him to look at the overwhelming weight of evidence and stop quibbling at the edges about whether this is HFSS or UPF. The overwhelming body of evidence is that what we and our children are eating is bad for us and is making us fat and ill. We should all combine forces to understand that simple fact and park the quarrels.
Food policy must always be made without the industry being in the room, because we have two different aims. They want to make money; we want to make people well. It is very interesting to note that when George Osborne imposed the sugar tax, he made it completely on his own—not literally but with an incredibly tight, tiny team of civil servants and advisers. He then went out and told the industry, which got on with it.
Like many others, I have been interested this week to see the announcement of the newly created advisory board. There are 16 members and seven represent one or other face of big food. The press release states that this board will help to set the ambition, but the ambition of McCain Foods is to sell a lot more chips. Indeed, one of the shocking things that we heard on our committee came from one of the young people on Bite Back: when he buys a bus ticket to get to school, on the reverse of the ticket it offers free chips if he comes into McDonald’s with it.
Therefore, I cannot believe that McCain Foods is really after our help. Yes, it has some sterling people: Anna Taylor, who is CEO of the Food Foundation; Susan Jebb; Professor Chris Whitty; and Ravi Gurumurthy from Nesta. I am glad that they are there, but can they hold the line against the lobbying might of Greencore, Sofina Foods, Kerry Group, McCain Foods, Sainsbury’s, Cranswick, Bidcorp Group? A line on Bidcorp Group’s website says that:
“Bidfood has identified many opportunities for value-add light processing and bespoke manufacture to make our customers’ lives easier”.
Is that what we want in our food strategy? Of course, we must wait and see, but the industry must not be allowed to health-wash itself by sitting alongside people such as Anna.
Alongside the board, we have the Food and Drink Federation, which plays a very shadowy role within this setup. The noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, and I—who tabled the Motion for this committee and were so pleased when we got it and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley—went to a meeting where the Food and Drink Federation unveiled its new strategy. I do know how much this will be involved in the food strategy, but its idea was that all healthy foods across the country should have a new label: “Feel Better”. This could be plastered on to every packet of salad, brown rice or unprocessed meat. The British public would then happily change their ways. It would be a real win for the industry, because it would not have to label anything that is not quite so good. The federation is a famed lobbyist for big food and I think it offered to come before our committee.
However, it is worth the Food and Drink Federation and us noting that investors have a duty to cut the systemic risks in their systems. Yesterday I was talking to Sophie Lawrence of Greenbank. She told me that the Investor Coalition on Food Policy is calling for greater transparency around lobbying activities by the food industry. She said that during the previous Government, from January 2022 to June 2024, Ministers at Defra met with food businesses and their trade associations 1,408 times. That is 40 times more than they met with the food NGOs and people such as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, who might want to put the results of her report before them.
The food strategy is coming and we look forward to it, but what was wrong with the strategy that Henry Dimbleby wrote? It seemed an excellent strategy. When it was published, the Government only committed to doing four of its 14 recommendations, which have been delayed and forgotten. As all noble Lords have said, the response to our report has been equally weak.
I also recommend that when the Minister steps forward to help with food strategy, she spends some time talking to the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission, which is setting up citizens’ juries. There is no point in food policy being made if it does not change how things happen on the street. Wherever you live, however much you earn, whether you are disabled or not, you want to be able to walk to a shop that provides healthy, affordable food for you and your family. If you end up in a food desert, that will not work. People want this to happen. All the polling shows that people really care. They are heartbroken by the quality of some school meals and driven to despair by the endless adverts.
Health: Obesity
Baroness Boycott Excerpts(3 months, 1 week ago)
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Baroness Boycott
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the obstacles presented by industry to delivering policies to prevent obesity, and what steps they plan to avoid such obstacles.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Merron) (Lab)
My Lords, we will make the shift from sickness to prevention to tackle the obesity crisis, working with industry where necessary and finding the most effective approach between mandatory and voluntary action. Since July, we have implemented our manifesto commitment to limit advertising of junk food to children, uprated the soft drinks industry levy and given councils clearer powers to block fast food outlets near schools, and we will continue this momentum.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply, and it is great to hear the steps that the Government are taking, but when we held our recent inquiry into ultra-processed food, we found a considerable conflict of interest. Although this is a legal and declared conflict of interest, it happens between the scientists advising the Government on food policy and the food industry. As we and, indeed, The BMJ magazine, revealed, the majority of the members of the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition are either directly or indirectly in receipt of food industry money. Given that obesity rates continue to rise and, on the whole, government policies have either failed or been abandoned—there have been over 700 of them—do the Government think it is now time to insist that bodies such as SACN have no declared or otherwise financial links to food companies, which, after all, are the only ones to profit from the obesity epidemic?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
The noble Baroness refers to the report of the Food, Diet and Obesity Committee. I am grateful to her and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, for chairing that committee and for the report. We are looking forward to responding by the end of this month. On the very specific question, I will look into the matter that she raised. I emphasise that our work with industry is to seek the most effective way forward between mandatory and voluntary action. What matters to us is successful outcomes in tackling what we regard to be an obesity crisis in this country.
Food and Drink Industry: Processed Sugar
Baroness Boycott Excerpts(6 months ago)
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Baroness Merron (Lab)
The noble Lord makes some very good points. I can give the assurance that all sweeteners have undergone a rigorous safety assessment before being authorised for use. It is also worth drawing the attention of your Lordships’ House to the fact that the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition is currently considering the recent World Health Organization guideline, Use of Non-sugar Sweeteners, which has particularly suggested that achieving weight control may not necessarily be about replacing sugar with sweeteners. It is about acknowledging that sweeteners are more difficult—to use a non-technical term—to use in the reformulation of food than they are in drinks. There has been success in drinks, which has not been exactly mirrored in food, but there are technical and practical reasons for that.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, we all welcome the Government’s introduction of free breakfasts. However, at the moment, about 26% of kids are going into school obese and 46% are leaving school obese, so the question of what they eat in school is critical. At the moment, there seem to be no standards. Many of the breakfasts given are bagels and sugary cereals; they do not have fruit, porridge or vegetables. When is there going to be a standard, and what is it going to be?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
It is right that what children are given to eat in schools is absolutely crucial. The school food standards are in place, and they are meant to regulate and restrict food and drink that is provided in schools. It is important, and will be part of our move, following on from the Darzi review, towards the 10-year plan, to look at the quality of free school meals and ensure that they meet the requirements to support children and young people to eat healthily, not just for the immediate future but for forming good habits for the future.
NHS: Long-term Sustainability
Baroness Boycott Excerpts(1 year ago)
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Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this debate and, like everyone else, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Patel, for introducing it so brilliantly. I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsey, on a really good maiden speech.
This is an interesting week, in that we have decided to ban kids smoking. What we have not banned, and are in fact encouraging, is kids eating an appalling diet. We are flooded with unhealthy food, which is incredibly heavily advertised in all media. You only have to look at sport, and this year’s Olympics. The healthiest thing, everywhere, will be McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, yet we are worrying about our NHS. We must start having conversations with the food industry because if we do not, the NHS, which we all treasure and love, will creak under the strain.
I have lots of alarming statistics. I am not sure which ones to choose in the next four minutes, but here is one. Before the year 2000, there were no known cases of children in the UK with type 2 diabetes. There are now almost 10,000. All those children will be on the NHS books for the rest of their lives. They are also going to be ill. Let us look at it purely economically, rather than compassionately at what kind of life they will lead. They will not be working, not paying tax, not being good parents, not contributing to society. We can change this. I have been doing food politics for nearly two decades, and it amazes me that we have very little involvement with the NHS. We have very little involvement with doctors when talking about what people can do.
Do you know the main reason why most children under 10 go into hospital and have a general anaesthetic? It is to have all their teeth out because of the food they eat. We are also the lowest ranked country in the world for breastfeeding. My daughter, who has twins, managed to feed them for over a year. She had no help or support. I was astonished by the advertising she received from companies calling themselves “hungry baby” and stuff like that, absolutely trying to get under a mother’s skin and say, “Get off breastfeeding and get them on to formula foods”—foods which have higher sugar levels and set your sweet spot higher for the rest of your life. It is outrageous. There is almost no regulation. As for support with breastfeeding, for this young woman with twins, there was nothing. We paid for consultations to help her get through it and achieve that.
Is it any surprise that our kids are therefore growing up to be the most obese in Europe? As a country we are now the third most obese. No medical professional doubts what obesity does to our society, but they fail to connect it back to the food companies. Sticking with the baby food companies, all these little pouches they sell not only cost a lot of money but are extremely addictive to the kids because they are nice, they are handy and they convince mothers that they are doing the best for them, when in fact they are the root cause of them eating too much sugar.
The staggering profits made by the food companies every day are being paid for by the NHS. We are paying for it with our money and in the lack of care that nurses and doctors can give people. I am not saying that these people are not genuinely ill; they are, but from a preventable cause. The Government have had the balls to stand up to the tobacco companies this week. I know that this issue is more complicated than that—I can see the Minister looking at me—and of course we have to eat. However, there is a big difference between what we eat and how we eat it. We are just machines, like everything else. We need to put good stuff into the machine.
Unlike the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, I had an extraordinary experience with the NHS. I managed to scald my foot and had a blister the size of a tennis ball. I ended up getting sepsis and was in the burns unit in Bristol. It was impeccable. However, in the lobby there was Costa Coffee and the Friends Shop. In the Friends Shop there was not one piece of fruit. It was cakes and biscuits all the way.
I got transferred to the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for outpatient care. Again, the treatment was impeccable. Down in the lobby was bloody Costa Coffee—doughnuts and a long queue—and, in the Friends Shop, there was not even a grape. We have to start looking at this. As I say, no one would buy a Rolls-Royce, put Coca-Cola in the engine, and expect to go 100 miles down the motorway. We are not dissimilar, but we are even better than a Rolls-Royce. We deserve to put better stuff in. It is time the whole NHS and the country got this one straight.
Premature Deaths: Heart and Circulatory Conditions
Baroness Boycott Excerpts(1 year, 2 months ago)
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Lord Markham (Con)
I will need to come back in writing to my noble friend on this. I take this opportunity to thank him for his work on the Times Health Commission and for generally pushing forward the whole prevention agenda.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, following on from the Times Health Commission today, the Food Foundation has also produced a report on childhood obesity. The single biggest factor for preventing childhood obesity and thus adult obesity is breastfeeding. It reduces it by a figure of 25%, as the WHO has found from a worldwide study. To put that into context, all the reformulation of soft drinks has achieved only an 8.3% reduction in obesity in 11 year-olds. This is massive, yet as a country we have the lowest breastfeeding rate because we give the lowest amount of support to women when they have given birth. Not only do we get not that much time off work but there is very little support. My daughter has recently had twins, and the comparison between now and when I had her 40 years ago is really shocking.
Lord Markham (Con)
I agree with the noble Baroness. I am sure we all agree that breastfeeding is a really healthy start to life. I think the family hubs are trying to address these sorts of matters. Clearly, this is a point for education as well.
Ultra-processed Food
Baroness Boycott Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Lord Markham (Con)
Absolutely—we have to be understanding of the latest research in cause and effect. The evidence I have been shown so far is that it is about the features within those ultra-processed foods—are they high in fat, sugar or salt? Those are the things that are causing the harm. If we find links to the processing itself, we will act on that.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, a few years ago the Government introduced very good obesity policies on stopping the sale of “two for the price of one” on junk food and limiting junk food advertising during children’s television. These have been delayed until 2025. What was the Government’s reasoning? Can the Minister assure the House that it was not based on any lobbying from the food industry?
Lord Markham (Con)
The rationale was very clear. The measures that we introduced by the modelling showed that in what we were trying to do we were attacking the things that cause 95% of the reduction in calories—namely, the product positioning, which has the support of 78% of people to reduce the so-called pester power. Early evidence shows that it is working, because foods that are not high in the bad stuff have gone up by 16% and those with high sugar, salt and fat content have gone down by 6%, all through the product positioning. It is working, but the most important thing is that we have gone after the big numbers, those that effect 95% reductions in calorific intake.
Food: Two-For-One Offers
Baroness Boycott Excerpts(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Lord Markham (Con)
As I mentioned, the key is giving industry time to adjust so that it can reformulate. We would all agree that, if you can get the same taste but it is a lot healthier, with less fat, salt and sugar, that must be a good outcome. The examples that I just gave show that, and it is working.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
The NHS Food Scanner is promoting to children a number of ultra-processed food items. Do the Government not think that this is quite perverse given the new knowledge about what exactly ultra-processed food means? It is not just about the sugars, salts and fat but about the chemical destruction and reformulation of foodstuffs into something else.
Lord Markham (Con)
As I mentioned in answer to a Question on ultra-processed food yesterday, as a definition that is not particularly helpful because wholemeal bread, baked beans and cereals are all examples of ultra-processed food. The real point is the content of the food, and that is what our regulations should look to.
Ultra-processed Food
Baroness Boycott Excerpts(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Boycott
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the latest research into the effects of ultra-processed food on the mental and physical health of children and adults; and whether they plan to introduce any further restrictions on these foodstuffs.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Markham) (Con)
The Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition did not find evidence for a causal link between ultra-processed food and mental and physical health. It is unclear whether ultra-processed foods are inherently unhealthy, or whether it is more that those foods are typically high in calories, saturated fat, salt, and sugar. Therefore, the Government’s priority is continued action to reduce the consumption of foods high in calories, salt, sugar and saturated fat.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
I thank the noble Lord for his Answer, but I beg to disagree. The latest scientific evidence indeed shows that ultra-processed food, which is, in essence, not really food given that ordinary foodstuffs have been put through industrial processes that render them chemically different from what they were when they began, has had a massive impact on the nation’s health, especially in the past 30 years. Some 66% of our diet is ultra-processed food, and 16% of everything we eat every day goes to our brain. It seems to be no coincidence that instances of heart disease, cancer, obesity and many other illnesses, as well as mental illnesses, might have something to do with the food that we are eating, the fuel that we are putting in our cars. No noble Lord in this House would put Coca-Cola in his Rolls-Royce and expect it to do its best. I beg the Government to come back and have another look. I would be very happy to set up a meeting for the Minister with the newest experts in neuroscientific research to see whether we can take this forward.
Lord Markham (Con)
First, I thank the noble Baroness for the work she does and has done in this space for a number of years. The problem is the definition of “ultra-processed food”. It includes things such as wholemeal bread, baked beans and cereal. It is not a helpful definition. There are certain ultra-processed foods which are high in fat, salt and sugar. We completely agree that those things are bad for us and that we should do everything we can to discourage people from eating them. The label “ultra-processed food” is not helpful.
NHS Procurement: Palantir Contract
Baroness Boycott Excerpts(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Lord Markham (Con)
Actually, it is the opposite. It absolutely lets bidders know that, when we are assessing who the best bidder is, we are looking only at who is the best provider. We do not need to have any concerns at all about continuity or risks because we are giving them plenty of time to get their new contract and systems in place. We do not need to worry about any services being lost in the meantime.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, Palantir is a data analytical company. It wants our data. In cases where it has been in business with other people, it has used that data and sold it under the surveillance capital model. Is the Minister absolutely confident that we are safe in entrusting all of the NHS’s data to an American company? It seems to me that that is not in the best interests of a not-for-profit organisation such as the NHS.
Lord Markham (Con)
Yes. I really appreciate having this opportunity to state categorically that the NHS will remain the data user here. The data controller will remain in place for each individual institution; sometimes it is the GP and sometimes it is the hospital. Fundamentally, everyone’s data will be allowed to be used only by the NHS in these circumstances. There are no circumstances in which Palantir—or any other supplier should it win—will have access to see individuals’ data.
NHS Staff: Food Banks
Baroness Boycott Excerpts(2 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Markham (Con)
Again, April is very close; the pay review body will be looking at the facts then. The noble Lord is quite correct that the real change is inflation, and that is why the priority for all of us has to be to reduce inflation. It is pernicious in its impact on every single one of our pockets, and most of all on those people with the least money. That has to be the priority, but we will continue to support these people.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, back in 2008, there were only 26,000 people visiting food banks—they were brought in, really, as a response to the crash—but that figure is now 2.56 million people. Back in those days, Ministers were somewhat ashamed that we had them; now they seem to be handy photo opportunities for Prime Ministers. Where do food banks figure in how the Government look at the economics of this country? It seems to me that they count on them a great deal more than they should.
Lord Markham (Con)
Clearly, food banks should be a last resort for people; that is definitely my hope. I am glad to say that there are some good examples of where hospitals have thought that this is the appropriate thing to do and have set them up to help people in that circumstance. However, the biggest increase has been in energy bills, which we have sought to protect people from. I am glad to see that prices are forecast to reduce in future. Actually, gas futures prices are down 71% for next year, so things are starting to get better. Is it challenging right now? Yes.