Health: Public Health Responsibility Deal

Lord Rea Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Rea]

My Lords, I must apologise for not putting my name down in time last night; I forgot that that would have to be done early.

I will plunge straight in with my question to the noble Earl, Lord Howe. A recently published scoping review, which has been referred to by two other speakers this afternoon, states in its conclusion that,

“targets should be ambitious and a robust monitoring system should be in place … some of the most effective voluntary agreements are those with substantial disincentives for non participation and costly sanctions for non compliance”.

Does the noble Earl feel that the responsibility deal measures up to those requirements? How will non-compliance be measured and assessed?

It would be interesting if the noble Earl could name a few of the targets of the responsibility deal and describe the process of defining them. Are meetings where they are discussed open, or does the industry cite commercial confidentiality? Can he write to me giving the names of all the manufacturers and retailers who have signed up to the different sections of the responsibility deal and the pledges to which they have agreed? Were any suggestions for pledges made by the Department of Health but not agreed to by participating firms? For example, we know that the drinks industry was opposed to minimum pricing. Once the pledge is made, how legally binding is it and what penalties, if any, are there for breaching it?

In closing, I declare an interest as a trustee of Health Forum UK, which is a well known health policy group concerned with the prevention of non-communicable disease, which gives rise to the greatest cost to the NHS and social services and greatest suffering to the population.