Communications Act 2003 (Restrictions on the Advertising of Less Healthy Food) (Effective Date) (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, who set out so clearly that we have to get away from blaming individuals for the fact that we have, as a society, a deeply damaging and disastrous relationship with food. Perhaps going even further than the noble Baroness, I stress that what is behind that is a broken food system—that what is supplied into the system is deeply unhealthy and damaging in all kinds of ways. It is both what is presented to people and what comes into the system that are problems.

It might be fairly said, as the noble Baroness just did, that tonight we are talking about partial, inadequate measures—and I offer the Green group’s support for both these regret Motions—but they are, at least, measures to do something. We can look at another partial, inadequate measure that has come into effect and we are starting to see the results of: the Soft Drinks Industry Levy Regulations 2018. It is very small and partial, but a recent study published in PLOS Medicine showed that we have seen an 8% reduction in obesity in girls aged 10 and 11 as a result of that. There is a gender aspect that I do not think anyone yet fully understands. It is a limited state of progress, but it is better than heading in the opposite direction.

Looking where we are now, here is one figure that is truly shocking: last year, 660 under-fives were admitted to hospital with obesity given as the primary cause of their admission. That is what our broken food system is doing. Restrictions on advertising were hard fought for and much discussed during the Health and Social Care Bill, and I remember sitting in your Lordships’ Chamber over what I suspect was many hours. Yet here we are today, and I cannot help reflecting on an earlier discussion in your Lordships’ House in which it was suggested that the Scottish Government were bringing in the bottle return scheme far too quickly. That was a three-year delivery from the regulations being passed to them being implemented. That was something Westminster could not imagine.

Looking to the general public, one of the things I have found again and again on that issue and issues tackling obesity is that people say, “We heard the government announcement, but it does not seem to have happened.” People think that once the Government have announced something it is happening, and the Government use that, announcing things again and again that never get delivered. It really is past time that we should be seeing the delivery here. I will finish with a question to the Minister: what is the higher priority here, the health of the nation or the profits of broadcasters?

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I am afraid I am a weary veteran of discussions about these regulations. As your Lordships know, the House’s Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has absolutely slated them and the information provided with them. It mentions:

“The Explanatory Memorandum (EM) states that in 2019”—


that is a year after the industry was first warned that this sort of ban was going to be implemented—

“under current voluntary restrictions, children were exposed to 2.9 billion ‘less healthy food and drink TV impacts and 11 billion less healthy food and drink impressions online’”.

That is 13.9 billion hits. That was four years ago. In the four years between the measures first being announced and us legislating for the ban last summer, there were 13.9 billion every year, coming to 55.6 billion hits for unhealthy foods, which is an existential scale of influence on children’s food choices. Now we are being told there is going to be another three years of it; at the same rate, that is another 41.7 billion hits to persuade children to eat unhealthily. That comes to 97.3 billion adverts—a figure 12 times the population of the world. There cannot be a child in this country over that period of time who has not seen hundreds and thousands of adverts persuading them to make the wrong food choices.

We are told that the industry needs longer to prepare and the Government need longer to consult. The Government are consulting on simple technical issues that should not take many weeks, let alone another three years. Indeed, I understand there is an idea of changing the definition of these foods, but we already have a clear mechanism for deciding what these foods are. It is called the nutrient profiling model, and the industry knows it perfectly well, because since 2007, it has not been able to advertise those foods around children’s television programmes. So why do we have to wait another three years? How on earth do these delays line up with the Government’s strategy to halve childhood obesity by 2030? These things simply do not match up.