Food (Promotion and Placement) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Lords Chamber

Tabled by

[Baroness Walmsley]

That this House regrets that the Food (Promotion and Placement) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2022 (SI 2022/1007) will delay without sufficient justification the implementation of the ban on promoting high fat, sugar and salt products through “buy-one-get-one-free” offers in England, which was expected to deliver public health benefits and significant savings to the NHS.

Relevant document: 15th Report of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the instrument)

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on a really good try. I thank him very much. The problem is that we live in an obesogenic environment.

The Minister mentioned four ways in which we can try to help people to not eat too many calories. He talked about education. It has not worked, or we would not be where we are now. He talked about information. We have had lots of different systems of food labelling—some people like one and some another. The jury is out on menu labelling, because it has not been in place for very long. He talked about reformulation—absolutely. Bravo to the Government: reformulation has worked really well. Unfortunately, its application is very narrow, and things like this need incentives and enforcement. Of course, the incentive that worked so well with reformulation was you would pay the tax if you did not —that was really good. Lastly, he talked about restrictions on promotions. We are talking about that now, but we need implementation. It is in the statute.

The only thing the Minister could say was that the industry needs time to adjust. Well, Tesco and Sainsbury’s did not need time to adjust, and they have hundreds of shops. They have done it and bravo to them; I congratulate them for doing it. They have taken the moral high ground and they have done it. I do not see why everybody else cannot either. If they can do it, why not the rest?

I echo my noble friend Lady Brinton’s concerns about the shortness of time, the lack of scrutiny and all the other things that the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee criticised. I am grateful to hear the Minister say that that is not going to continue on his watch. That is good news and I thank him very much for it. In the meantime, I shall not press the Motion.

Motion not moved.