Food, Diet and Obesity Committee Report

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Friday 28th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie. I agree with every word that she said. I too had the great pleasure of being on the committee that was expertly chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. It genuinely felt like being on a jury, with 12 members, evidence being shown and someone taking evidence and notes, which our clerks did superbly. At the end of it, I think we were all informed and pretty much facing the same direction. Our verdict was straightforward.

I will use my few minutes to talk about one of our recommendations—the extent to which the food industry is involved in the policy of food at the moment. Take, for instance, the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition—SACN. It is the main adviser to the Government on food policy and, if you think it is unbiased, you would be wrong. Of the 16 members of SACN, 14 of them directly or indirectly take money from the food industry. They might brush it aside by saying, “I declare my interests”, but, if you take money, it changes minds.

SACN’s statement on ultra-processed food concluded that the associations between higher UPF consumption and adverse health outcomes was “concerning”. It is well known that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and I argued a bit about this in the committee. However, the noble Lord is highly respected, so I urge him to look at the overwhelming weight of evidence and stop quibbling at the edges about whether this is HFSS or UPF. The overwhelming body of evidence is that what we and our children are eating is bad for us and is making us fat and ill. We should all combine forces to understand that simple fact and park the quarrels.

Food policy must always be made without the industry being in the room, because we have two different aims. They want to make money; we want to make people well. It is very interesting to note that when George Osborne imposed the sugar tax, he made it completely on his own—not literally but with an incredibly tight, tiny team of civil servants and advisers. He then went out and told the industry, which got on with it.

Like many others, I have been interested this week to see the announcement of the newly created advisory board. There are 16 members and seven represent one or other face of big food. The press release states that this board will help to set the ambition, but the ambition of McCain Foods is to sell a lot more chips. Indeed, one of the shocking things that we heard on our committee came from one of the young people on Bite Back: when he buys a bus ticket to get to school, on the reverse of the ticket it offers free chips if he comes into McDonald’s with it.

Therefore, I cannot believe that McCain Foods is really after our help. Yes, it has some sterling people: Anna Taylor, who is CEO of the Food Foundation; Susan Jebb; Professor Chris Whitty; and Ravi Gurumurthy from Nesta. I am glad that they are there, but can they hold the line against the lobbying might of Greencore, Sofina Foods, Kerry Group, McCain Foods, Sainsbury’s, Cranswick, Bidcorp Group? A line on Bidcorp Group’s website says that:

“Bidfood has identified many opportunities for value-add light processing and bespoke manufacture to make our customers’ lives easier”.


Is that what we want in our food strategy? Of course, we must wait and see, but the industry must not be allowed to health-wash itself by sitting alongside people such as Anna.

Alongside the board, we have the Food and Drink Federation, which plays a very shadowy role within this setup. The noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, and I—who tabled the Motion for this committee and were so pleased when we got it and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley—went to a meeting where the Food and Drink Federation unveiled its new strategy. I do know how much this will be involved in the food strategy, but its idea was that all healthy foods across the country should have a new label: “Feel Better”. This could be plastered on to every packet of salad, brown rice or unprocessed meat. The British public would then happily change their ways. It would be a real win for the industry, because it would not have to label anything that is not quite so good. The federation is a famed lobbyist for big food and I think it offered to come before our committee.

However, it is worth the Food and Drink Federation and us noting that investors have a duty to cut the systemic risks in their systems. Yesterday I was talking to Sophie Lawrence of Greenbank. She told me that the Investor Coalition on Food Policy is calling for greater transparency around lobbying activities by the food industry. She said that during the previous Government, from January 2022 to June 2024, Ministers at Defra met with food businesses and their trade associations 1,408 times. That is 40 times more than they met with the food NGOs and people such as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, who might want to put the results of her report before them.

The food strategy is coming and we look forward to it, but what was wrong with the strategy that Henry Dimbleby wrote? It seemed an excellent strategy. When it was published, the Government only committed to doing four of its 14 recommendations, which have been delayed and forgotten. As all noble Lords have said, the response to our report has been equally weak.

I also recommend that when the Minister steps forward to help with food strategy, she spends some time talking to the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission, which is setting up citizens’ juries. There is no point in food policy being made if it does not change how things happen on the street. Wherever you live, however much you earn, whether you are disabled or not, you want to be able to walk to a shop that provides healthy, affordable food for you and your family. If you end up in a food desert, that will not work. People want this to happen. All the polling shows that people really care. They are heartbroken by the quality of some school meals and driven to despair by the endless adverts.