Ultra-processed Foods

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB) [V]]

My Lords, there is no doubt that HFSS foods are unhealthy, particularly for young children, who are showing such alarming rates of obesity. We also know that advertising works. However, recent research by Cancer Research UK shows that over half of all food adverts on TV during children’s peak viewing hours, 6 to 9, are for processed foods that are high in sugar and fat, while fewer than one in 15 are for fruit and vegetables. The consultation on whether the Government would introduce a nine o’clock watershed for such adverts was completed and delivered in June 2019. Can the Minister update the House on the progress of that consultation and tell us when we are likely to have the Government’s response?

[Lord Bethell [V]]

The noble Baroness is right to say that the consultation is an important one and we take it very seriously. Covid has been disruptive, but I reassure her that we will respond to the consultation on extending advertising restrictions as soon as we can.

Dental Care

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Wednesday 20th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell]

My Lords, at present there are restrictions on private dentists opening; the guidelines are clear on that. We are putting in place provision of PPE for when those guidelines are amended to allow the reopening of dental practices. We are also giving thought to how we will get through the large backlog of dentists’ work that will need to be done to catch up on those missed appointments.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

It was pointed out recently by Public Health England that snack buying has gone up hugely in the past few weeks of the crisis. As Ministers know, the main reason that children go into hospital and have anaesthetics is to have all their teeth out as a result of eating sugary foods. Will the Minister guarantee that, when the crisis is over, the Government will bring the obesity Bill back to Parliament and get it through this time, because this is a tragedy for our youngsters?

[Lord Bethell]

The noble Baroness is entirely right. I confess to having a profound biscuit habit through the Covid epidemic which I am wrestling to get over. On a serious note, the Covid epidemic has put a spotlight on the health of the nation. There seems to be some evidence that we have suffered badly from the epidemic partly because of obesity. The Prime Minister has commented personally on this issue. It will be a priority of the Government to address this point once the epidemic is over to restore the health of the nation and to tackle obesity.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble Lord and his 12 very good and challenging points. I want to make some points about the principles we must abide by if we want to secure this happy and healthy economy that has been laid out in the gracious Speech.

Our three-day debate raises interesting questions about what policy considerations we should cluster together. Today we have the economy, business and public services, yet, if we want a successful economy, we must consider it alongside the things that threaten to weaken it. Climate change is surely the greatest of these, affecting our business interests, the delivery of our public services, and our health, jobs, skills and infrastructure. I could go on; the truth is, it will affect everything.

We cannot think about our economy without also thinking about how we achieve our net-zero emission target. The food sector, which noble Lords will know is the one I work in, is just one sector, but a very good example, because the link between our economic well-being, climate change and food is huge. Food is a massive economic contributor. The food and farming sector is worth almost £122 billion to the UK economy, and the number of people employed in the UK agri-food sector is now well over 4 million. But if we do not look at our food economy through a climate lens, we will be in big trouble, because food contributes so much to global warming.

Global food loss and waste generate about 8% of humankind’s annual greenhouse gas emissions, and deforestation and forest degradation—a significant proportion of which is due to food-related farming— account for 10% to 11% of greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, climate change will seriously threaten the food economy. According to the IPPC, crop yield declines of 10% to 25% will be widespread by 2050, and rising temperatures are predicted to wipe out up to 40% of the world’s fish. So much of what we eat is threatened and we cannot rely endlessly on other countries to feed us—whatever Mr Fox used to say.

If these scenarios play out, we will severely damage our health and economy, not enhance them, and food represents just one slice of them. I am in no doubt about the complexity of this challenge. But, as all the great systems thinkers know, tackling complex challenges requires us to think about the guiding principles of the whole system. We have an opportunity to do this through the legislative and policy agenda that the Government have just announced.

First, the planned Green Budget is a critical opportunity for the Government to reconsider the economy and fiscal policy through a climate lens. Perhaps the Minister can say a little more about what we can expect. For instance, will we adopt the laws that New Zealand has that say there must be climate consideration in every piece of legislation, including on things such as housing? Secondly, will there be sector-specific legislation where all these principles can be embedded? In my sector, the planned shift in the agriculture Bill from a system that incentivises poor stewardship to one based on public money for public good is extremely welcome, but Ministers will know that there are many problems with how it will be administered.

Thirdly, we need to make sure that unilateral environmental principles govern all our decision-making. Despite indications from HMG, the last Environment Bill, introduced to Parliament in October 2019, did not enshrine environmental principles in law. It also specifically excluded public spending and taxation from their application, and it did not ensure that critical principles would apply to all public bodies. So, given the urgency, will HMG ensure that this is rectified in the forthcoming Bill?

To wrap it up, we cannot consider the economy any more without considering climate. We cannot consider business and we cannot consider public services, either. We should be operating on 10-year or 20-year plans. We cannot just look to the next electoral cycle—even five years now is too long.

I had the privilege of working with the Prime Minister when he was Mayor of London on many green projects, and he was tremendously enthusiastic about delivering everything from community gardens to trying to lower carbon gas emissions from the food system in the City. I feel very optimistic that the optimism that he showed and the popularity it brought him will go forward in his reign at No. 10. I would like to see him, when we get to the end of the year, step on to the stage in Glasgow and treat it as the Olympics of his prime ministership, and say that we in Britain will lead the world on this. We may not be the biggest country and we may be small emitters, but my gosh we can show the way as to how you can make climate and the environment completely part of all you think about. Quite frankly, if we do not, the future we leave our children will not be fit for purpose.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lord, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, and I was very pleased to hear about the Welsh dairy farmers. As far as I know, Stoke Newington was an area where the milk for London used to be produced and where the cows lived.

Although it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, the Queen’s Speech was certainly not a pleasure to hear on my area of passion, which is our food system. As ever with the Government, there was little to do with food policy and our need to change. Every day, we hear stories about how our food system does not work. Take the first thing of the day—breakfast. Every day, 1.8 million children are at risk of starting the day hungry. Hungry children cannot concentrate. They miss out on hours of valuable learning. By the time they leave school, children eligible for free school meals are, on average, 19.3 months behind their wealthier peers. This is data recently collected from Magic Breakfast. This is not just gross inequality; it is also economic madness. It is certainly not unlocking our children’s full potential.

Children from the poorest households also struggle to eat healthily, which in part explains why children with severe obesity are four times more likely to live in deprived areas than in less deprived areas. The Chief Medical Officer’s report two weeks ago told us about the devastating consequences of childhood obesity, to which other noble Lords have referred. There are 100 new cases of childhood type 2 diabetes every year. There are 650,000 children with fatty liver disease and 90,000 children eligible for bariatric surgery, of whom less than 10 get the operations every year. Sally Davies was right to say this is a blatant contravention of children’s right to health.

Food is not only fundamental to health; it is also fundamental to the climate emergency. Currently, a third of greenhouse gas emissions derive from deforestation, as we grow palm oil for processed food and cut down rainforests to grow soy to feed livestock—possibly the most inefficient way of obtaining proteins that we could manage. It drives species extinction, as well as ill health.

Yet, in the gracious Speech, there was silence on all of this. The Agriculture Bill, which is making its way through Parliament very slowly—after the news tonight, I have no idea when it might arrive here, so I would be grateful if any noble Lord has a clue—concentrates a lot on the environmental goods that farmers need to provide. It promises public funds for public goods and nobody wants to disagree with that, but we need this Bill to help support farmers to deliver health goods as well.

Support for the horticulture sector is a case in point. Much neglected by the common agricultural policy, we could grow a great deal more of our fruit and veg in the UK. With the right mix of marketing and demand-side incentives, including public procurement, we could help our farmers improve our diets. It is a staggering fact that, for every one of your five a day you eat, your risk of early mortality decreases by 5%. Yet, according to the Food Foundation, of which I am a trustee, 30% of our children eat no vegetables at all, unless you count chips from McDonald’s.

Food is an incredibly complicated area. We need much more than the right support for farmers. Food is in almost every ministry; it touches health, trade and the environment—right across the board—and we have not, since the war, had a national food strategy. But one is being worked on right now, and I am very proud to say that I am an adviser on it. Over in Defra, Henry Dimbleby and a fantastic team are pulling together a strategy that will bring all these different elements together to try to give us a food system that really is fit for purpose and works for the future. It is so important that every noble Lord in this place supports it. We must not let this golden opportunity pass; we need to start debating all these key issues.

“Business as usual” is no longer good enough. Our food system runs, basically, for profit, like our agriculture system. It does not run to protect our health or the environment. In my years running the London Food Board—eight of them for our current Prime Minister and two of them for Mayor Sadiq Khan—I used to say, “Every day in London, we dish up 30 million meals”. As anyone who knows it can be quite difficult dishing up dinner for two, 30 million is mind-boggling. I understand why it is very hard for politicians to get their heads around this. It truly is awesome. But if we carry on with our small piecemeal policies and relying on the wonders of companies such as Magic Breakfast, which feeds 48,000 children every day through charity and raising money, then we really only have ourselves to blame for an environmental crisis and a health crisis, both of which could be prevented.

I would like the Minister to assure me that, whatever happens—I understand that she or anyone else is probably not in the position to give a definite answer to this—that her Government will continue to support the work of the food strategy and, hopefully, usher it into life, regardless of who sits in No. 10.

Restaurants: Calorie Labelling

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Tuesday 9th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

Based on the weather, I cannot really answer that, but I absolutely reject the premise that the Government are losing their grip on this issue. We have seen some real successes since the publication of the 2016 plan. The soft drinks levy has resulted in the equivalent of 45 million kilograms of sugar being taken out of soft drinks, which is a genuine success. Some products in the sugar reduction programme have exceeded their first-year targets: a 6% reduction in sugar in yoghurts has been achieved. As I mentioned, significant investments are being made in schools to promote physical activity and healthy eating. We accept, however, given the obesity crisis, that much more needs to be done and the noble Baroness will be glad to hear that the Secretary of State has, as I said, commissioned the CMO to urgently review and drive this agenda forward, which is exactly what we intend to do.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I urge the Government to follow up on the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, about how many of these places are small companies. When I ran the London Food Board, we did research in Tower Hamlets and I found one single takeaway where a portion of chips—a large one, admittedly—was 1,800 calories. That is completely insane, and parents and children do not know about it. I would be grateful to hear the Government’s view on how we might publicise that fact.

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

I thank the noble Baroness for her point. As I said, we remain committed to exploring what additional opportunities leaving the EU presents for food labelling. At the moment, we have some world-leading simple nutritional information, but we want to work with the devolved nations and Administrations to explore the potential for common approaches. Obviously, the consultation on mandated calorie labelling has received a high level of interest—there were over 1,000 responses—and that is partly why we are in the process of going through that at the moment.

Children: Oral Health

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

I thank the noble Baroness for her question. I shall write to her on the exact amount of investment, but there are some reassuring figures coming forward: 77% of all five year-olds now have no visible decay, compared to 69% in 2008; there has been a fall in the number of extractions per 100,000 finished consultant episodes for the first time in the last decade; and more children accessed dentistry over the last year. All this is reassuring and we are committed to improving access and equality of access to dental care—that is what the Children’s Oral Health Improvement Programme Board, led by PHE, is intended to do. It brings together 20 stakeholder organisations specifically focused on oral health. There is a significant amount of activity targeting exactly the issue the noble Baroness raises.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, children get tooth decay because they eat too much sugar and too many sweets. How far are the Government getting with the commitments they made in chapter 2 of the obesity plan to restrict advertising of high-sugar products on TV before the watershed, and price and location promotions in supermarkets?

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

The noble Baroness is exactly right, in that improving children’s oral health is a wider picture: it is about not just access to dentistry but a preventive approach, which is a core government priority. This is exactly why we introduced the children’s obesity plan, one aspect of which is a consultation on advertising. Proposals on that will be brought forward shortly.

Human Fertilisation and Embryology: Frozen Eggs Storage

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Wednesday 20th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

I would never argue with the noble Lord, Lord Patel, on any scientific matter. My information is that there was no scientific or biological basis for the 10-year limit. It was based on debate and discussion of societal, ethical and cultural considerations, and on the concern that without a maximum limit, there would be questions about storage banks. Vitrification techniques are far more effective now than the slow-freezing techniques, so it is appropriate that these scientific questions are taken into account as this remains under review in the department.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, is this not just a case of discrimination? Practically every man in this room could still father a child, but none of the women could. This is very similar to when the pill was brought into our lives. This is about extending women’s rights to their fertility, women’s rights to work and women’s rights to plan their lives. As we have heard from many noble Lords, the science is with us; it is only the culture and the politics that are against us.

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

I have a great deal of sympathy with the position the noble Baroness has just presented. As I say, the 10-year limit remains under review but I do not think that replacing it through regulation in the simple way the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, suggested would be appropriate. It would need to be dealt with in primary legislation and we would need to make time for that in the House. At the moment, that is not a realistic prospect.

Childhood Obesity

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

I absolutely recognise the problem that the noble Baroness has pointed out. The prevalence of childhood obesity doubles between the least deprived and the most deprived areas. The Government are committed to reducing that deprivation gap and taking a broad range of actions to combat poverty, none more so than making sure that everybody has the chance to work, which is why we have more people in employment than has ever been the case.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, following that point, more than a quarter of year 6 children in the most deprived areas are now obese, compared with just 11% in our richest communities. Poorer people cannot afford the Government’s Eatwell plate. What will the Government do post Brexit? Every document I have read has promised rises of between 4% and 20% in food prices and not one has said that food will get cheaper. We already know that we have a deep problem here. What are the Government doing to help, whether through Early Start, by subsidising fruit and vegetable consumption, or through doctor prescribing, to ensure that poorer children can get the food they need to ensure that they do not become—looking at it economically—a time bomb for us later?

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

The noble Baroness is quite right about the scale of the problem. It is worth pointing out that obesity and overweight issues cost the NHS alone £5 billion a year. There are two parts to the answer. First, the Government are making sure that plans are in place to ensure the continuity of food supply as we leave the EU, whatever the outcome of the negotiations. Secondly, there are two aspects to her key points: about £26 million is going into breakfast clubs as a result of the sugar levy, and of course free fruit and veg are available to young children in primary school.

Antimicrobial Resistance

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

I do not know specifically about pigs, although in my briefing there was a quote from Pig World, which is not a periodical I read very often. Antibiotic use in the veterinary environment has gone down by 40%. It is one of the big successes of the strategy.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, today the European Parliament is voting to ban all prophylactic use of antibiotics in farming, which will mean that they can no longer routinely be fed to groups. While British farmers have done magnificently in reducing antibiotics, I gather that the UK’s Veterinary Medicine Directorate is not minded to adopt this ban. Can I have an assurance from the Government that, in any new legislation now and post Brexit, a total ban on prophylactic use will be installed and that food standards will be maintained so that, if we ever start taking American meat imports, we will not accept them because of their unacceptable use of antibiotics?

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

I join the noble Baroness in congratulating farmers on fantastic action in reducing the use of antibiotics. The specific issue the noble Baroness asked about is in the competence of Defra, so I will have to speak to my colleagues in that department about their opinion on the prophylactic use of antibiotics. On food standards, we have some of the highest food standards and animal welfare standards in the world, as the noble Baroness knows, and we have no intention of lowering them in any trade deal.

Personal Social Care: Funding

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I completely agree with my noble friend. It is right that we have a sustainable system that delivers what it says it will.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

Do the Government have any plans to reintroduce a proper meals-on-wheels service? When I worked for the City of London, it came to light that only five boroughs were left providing a rudimentary service, yet malnutrition and dehydration are among the main reasons why old people go into hospital. So we save 15 quid a day maximum and end up with a £700-a-day bed from which you cannot go home. The simple provision of a meal would be both humane and healthy.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The noble Baroness makes an excellent point. I do not know about the distribution of such services, but she is absolutely right that what everybody wants—the cared-for person and those looking after them—is to stay in their homes and remain independent for as long as possible, which is why so much more care must be delivered in the home. I will write to her on the specifics of meals-on-wheels services.