Health and Care Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 4th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

The noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, should be taking part remotely. If the noble Lord is there, would he like to speak? We will continue with the debate and when we can get hold of him, we will bring him in.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests—there are a lot of them in terms of food, but this is for a specific reason: I am a trustee of the Food Foundation, chair of Feeding Britain, a patron of Sustain, an adviser on the national food strategy and chair of VegPower. I also work with Cancer Research and the Obesity Health Alliance.

We welcome the Health and Care Bill, which contains provisions to limit adverts of unhealthy food and drink on TV and online to protect children’s health. I also support the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, on alcohol, which is not covered in my amendment. She is completely right about the fact that such advertising encourages people to drink—something I know a lot about, to my cost—and put on weight.

These provisions are found in Schedule 17 of the Bill. All the different charities and NGOs I have worked with have argued for this for many years and we are incredibly pleased that the Government have made these provisions part of the Bill. They have been supported by all of us, and the Obesity Health Alliance and all cancer charities. So, I am shocked—we all are—and puzzled that during this Committee, quite a lot of amendments have been tabled in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Moylan and Lord Vaizey of Didcot, that would directly weaken or delay these proposals. As far as I know, and I have worked in the food business for a long time, I have not seen their names associated with campaigns to do with children’s health—in particular, around obesity.

I want quickly to explain what these amendments would do. Amendments 245, 255, 256, 257 and 317 would delay implementation of the various restrictions—for example, blocking the 9 pm TV watershed until a full calendar year after Ofcom publishes the technical guidance. This would delay the planned implementation by at least six months. We all appreciate that the food and advertising industries will need time to review the technical guidance, but this is just too long.

Amendments 245A and 250ZA would limit the restrictions, so that they apply only at weekends, but kids do not watch TV only at weekends. Amendments 247, 250A and 253A would enshrine exemptions for brand adverts if specific products are not displayed; for example, McDonald’s could advertise lettuce. The Government have already stated that brand advertising will be exempt from some of these restrictions, so why do we have to go further?

Amendments 248 and 251 would exempt certain unhealthy products from the restrictions, including

“chocolate confectionery in portion sizes smaller than 200 kcal”.

The amendments conflict entirely with the purposes of the policy, which is to limit children’s exposure to the advertising of products that are high in fat, sugar and salt. Quite frankly, some products of under 200 calories can contain more than half of a child’s recommended daily sugar limit.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

I never said—and other noble Lords who oppose these amendments never said—that the single act of banning junk food advertising at certain times on television will solve the obesity problem. When McKinsey did a survey on what needed to be done, eight or nine years ago, it came up with 81 different measures the Government needed to undertake. This is just one of them. It happens to be an important one that the Government have put forward, and I believe the Committee should support it.

[Lord Grade of Yarmouth (Con)]

I will continue. Successive Governments throughout my too many years in the media, faced with intractable social problems, have turned to bashing television, television advertising, violence on television, the Troubles and so on. I remember Prime Minister Thatcher introducing a measure that banned direct speech by duly elected Members of Sinn Féin, thinking that it would in some way contribute to the end of the Troubles. The list is endless, and this is yet another one.

The Government have missed the target. The target is the manufacturers of unhealthy foods. I ask the Minister whether, at the end, she will kindly give us a sense of what the Government are doing to get to the heart of the problem, which is the reformulation of these unhealthy foods. It is no good blaming the messenger and the media; you have to get to the heart of the problem, and at the heart of the problem are products that have too much sugar and other harmful—maybe even addictive—contents in them.

I will conclude, in the interests of brevity, by expressing my great sympathy for the Front Bench in having to defend this ghastly piece of legislation.

Health and Care Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Report stage
Monday 7th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Black, has put a convincing and comprehensive case for his amendments, which I have signed. He has knocked back nearly every argument made by the Government in this House and in correspondence against a level playing field being established for platform liability.

In his letter after Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, said:

“The scale and speed of advertising online, as well as the personalised nature of advertising and the lack of transparency in this system, makes it difficult for platforms to have control over what is placed on them.”


They have far more control than the broadcasters. They run their own digital advertising agencies. Facebook and Google have massive market share in their own individual digital markets.

It is extraordinary that the Government are buying these arguments from the social media platforms. They are on extremely thin ground. If the noble Lord, Lord Black of Brentwood, pushes these amendments to a vote, we will support him.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I support noble Lord, Lord Bethell, in his amendments demanding a timescale for the ban on such adverts. Advertising is the only business in the world that spends an enormous amount of money and then suggests that it does not work. It is a curious state of affairs that the advertising industry, as well as the food industry, which spends upwards of £0.5 billion a year on advertising HFSS food, says that advertising does not work, but the fact is that it does.

Research has shown that half of all food ads shown in September on ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky One were for HFSS products. That number rose to nearly 60% between 6 pm and 9 pm. Ofcom research also suggests that children’s viewing peaks in the hours after school, with the largest number of child viewers concentrated around family viewing time, between 6 pm and 9 pm. People in food policy have worked, as I have worked, for a very long time for this ban. We thoroughly applaud the Government for doing it. I also applaud my noble friend Lord Krebs for taking apart that protein bar, because it illustrates the way in which the food industry works. I have heard all too often, especially when I first came into this House—albeit not so much now—people saying, “All you need to do is exercise to get rid of the excess weight.” We know that that is a line put out by the industry. The industry is very clever. Yes, they have managed to sell the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, their protein bar, but they have not sold it properly. I hope that, with this ban, the Government will look at all the other sneaky ways in which food companies put things through, whether it is high-energy drinks or whatever, that are incredibly destructive to our health. As my noble friend Lord Krebs, said, we have an unenviable first position in the scale of obesity around the world, and we need to end it now.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, I should declare that I am chairman of the Communications and Digital Select Committee. I support Amendment 151A and the others in the name of my noble friend Lord Black of Brentwood. I do so because this is a matter of fairness.

Following on from what the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, has just said, the broadcasters have accepted that a pre-watershed ban on junk food advertising is coming. They and I also understand that the online platforms face a complete ban. However, once again, the legacy or heritage media businesses are the only ones which will face serious financial penalties if they make a mistake and, for whatever reason, allow a non-compliant piece of advertising to slip through and appear on air. I am sure that my noble friend the Minister will emphasise that the difference between the online platforms and broadcasters is only therefore about regulatory burdens and sanctions, but that is the point, and it is why this is unfair.

Why should the media businesses which will be significantly disadvantaged commercially by the ad ban be the only ones fined if something goes wrong? Why should the media businesses which continue to lose ad revenue to online platforms stand by and watch as those same platforms—Google, Facebook, YouTube—are not yet subject to any statutory regulatory regime to prevent their unfair market dominance? How can it be right that they shrug their shoulders when it comes to liability for the ads they profit from? They profit from them to a much larger degree than the broadcasters profit from the ads they run.

When I spoke in Committee, the Minister said in reply that all this would be dealt with via the online advertising programme and that a consultation would start shortly. Any progress on that will be welcome, but there is a limit to how much consultation the media industry can take. What it needs is action, which means legislation to deal with these various digital market and competition issues that currently favour big online platforms and are detrimental to everyone else, including consumers. To fail to do that while prioritising legislation that hits the traditional broadcasters more harshly than online platforms is unfair.

As I have said, those of us who support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Black do not want to delay the ban on junk food advertising, but in introducing it, we should make sure that liability for mistakes and failures to comply with regulations is fair. The Bill as it stands is not. I am very grateful to the Minister for the time she has given to hearing these arguments, but urge her to reconsider the merits of these amendments, especially bearing in mind that we are still a long way from new legislation that will finally level the playing field across the media sector. If my noble friend divides the House, I will vote with him.