Draft Food (Promotion and Placement) (England) Regulations 2021

Alex Norris Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2021 General Committees

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Stringer.

The regulations are the latest part of the Government’s obesity strategy to come through the system. The official Opposition have so far been quite gentle with the Government about the strategy because, although it is modest and misses many impactful elements, we want it to happen, so we have sought not to scare off the Government from acting. That is also true for issues of promotion and placement, but it is hard not be a little disappointed, as I shall set out shortly.

The case for change in this area is strong. The UK has among the highest childhood obesity rates in western Europe. One in four children is overweight or obese when starting primary school, and the number is one in three by the time they move on to secondary school. These children are more likely to become obese adults—at present, one in four adults is obese—and therefore to be at risk of diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver disease, cancers and mental health conditions. The situation is worse in poorer communities such as mine. Indeed, one in three adults in the most deprived areas is obese, compared with one in five in the least deprived. The discrepancy among children is even more alarming: more than twice as many children are obese in the most deprived communities compared with the least, and that gap has nearly doubled under this Government.

It is important to state that any health improvements arising from the regulations, or indeed from the entire obesity strategy, will be knocked into a cocked hat by the impact of the cut to universal credit, which will push those with the least back on to cheaper and less healthy food options. There is therefore a disconnect between the regulations and the rest of the Government’s policies.

The regulations control high fat, sugar and salt food and drink. Such products can be part of a balanced diet, but their regular overconsumption has a significant impact on people’s health and wellbeing and leads to the diseases that I listed. There is no doubt that in-store promotions are incredibly effective in influencing what people buy. As the Minister said, people buy 20% more than they intended due to promotions. Again, that hits the poorest hardest, because they do not realise savings from that approach; they just consume more.

Cancer Research UK has shown that greater volumes of HFSS are likely to be purchased by those who are overweight or living with obesity, so there is a direct correlation between promotions and obesity. It is therefore right to take action to address the situation, not by limiting people’s freedom of choice, but instead by supporting them to make healthier choices. The public are aware of the issue and support change. I note from the regulations’ impact assessment that the majority of consultation responses were positive about such an approach, and academic evidence supports it.

I want to explore some practicalities with the Minister. First, this is to be enforced by local authority trading standards. The Government have slashed resources for trading standards over the last 11 years, including only three weeks ago in last month’s Budget, so I hope the Minister will tell us what assessment she and her officials have made of the capacity of local authority trading standards to enforce any of this. Similarly, I have received many concerns—I am sure other Members have too—from representatives of the business sector about questions that they think the Government have not yet addressed. Indeed, the Food and Drink Federation, the British Retail Consortium and the Association of Convenience Stores have compiled a list of 25 priority questions. I hope the Minister will commit today to engage properly with those organisations and to address each of those questions.

I have some questions of my own for the Minister. The new rules will apply, as she said, to medium and large entities. This is a mirroring caveat to those introduced in the Calorie Labelling (Out of Home Sector) (England) Regulations 2021, which we dealt with in the summer. They made sense in that case because requiring smaller businesses to calculate the calories in their products and provide bespoke menus to demonstrate that would have been an onerous responsibility. That would apply to the placement element of these regulations, because if a business is smaller it will be harder not to have things near the till. That seems fair. But why does it apply to promotions? Why is it more onerous for small businesses rather than medium businesses or franchises to not provide a three-for-two or a buy one, get one free? I think of my own childhood: if we wanted to buy cigarettes before we were allowed to, we knew the shops that would sell them to us. Similarly, I fear that children will know, because they are crafty, the difference between an independent shop that can sell two for one and a chain shop that cannot. That will create a market disruption that will undermine the goals of the regulations. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s thoughts on that.

On the timeline, the Minister said that she wants to support businesses to make sure that they can do this. There is a strong sense from the sector that October 2022—less than a year away—will be too soon to implement it. It will be costly and complex, and businesses are asking for a six-month delay. Normally, my instinct would be to say, “Well, in the case of health and wellbeing, we need to get on with it and business will be creative and find a way.” But in this case, we have asked these same businesses in the last year to reconfigure their stores to make them covid secure for staff and for customers, and they have stepped up and done a magnificent job. We are now asking them to do a secondary configuration, still within the covid-secure measures, and perhaps then another reconfiguration after covid security is no longer needed. That is quite a big ask, and I am keen to hear from the Minister whether the Department has considered that. If not, will she engage with the industry to talk about the timelines?

The detail of the regulations will be in the guidance. We respect that some of the more technical issues, such as what constitutes a specialist store or what is a meal deal—an existential question for the 21st century—will not be on the face of the regulations, but we are asking business to make a really significant change in 11 months’ time and we still cannot tell them now what changes we will ask them to make. They will need to know the details to give them even a fighting chance of making that deadline. In which case, can the Minister say when the guidance will be published, because the sooner that can be done the better?

My final point is one of great frustration that the regulations are not as good as they could be for many of the reasons that I have just mentioned, including handling the issue through secondary legislation. Recently, I and other colleagues—including the Minister, for a while—spent weeks just down the corridor dealing with the Health and Care Bill in Committee for sitting after sitting between the beginning of September and the end of October. Part 5 of the Bill included elements of the obesity strategy, especially the advertising ban, and that gave us the opportunity to table amendments, take evidence and have full discussions of those provisions. We will have similar opportunities to improve them in the remaining stages and in the Lords. Why were these draft regulations not treated in that manner? If we had done that, we would have pursued many amendments, because there are holes in the regulations. Instead, however, we have been given a take-it-or-leave-it proposition.

We will not vote against something that we think will have a positive impact on the public’s health, but I hope the Minister—she is relatively new to her role and I know her well from our east midlands work—will be reflective about her practices and those of her Department. The ban on flavoured tobacco was pushed through in a similar manner, but fundamental questions were not really addressed. There was not an awful lot of engagement with business or political colleagues, and the thing has not worked—there are workarounds—because the regulations contained gaps that Ministers could easily have been helped with. However, due to a lack of flexibility and pragmatism those gaps were not closed and the ban has not worked, and Ministers will eventually have to return to the matter. I fear that today’s draft regulations will face the same fate, because the workarounds are quite clear.

I will not impede the proposal’s progress today, but the Opposition are disappointed, and I hope the Minister may address some of our disappointments in her closing remarks.