Advertising Restrictions on Less Healthy Food

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Monday 14th July 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Walmsley]

To ask His Majesty’s Government how many advertisements for less healthy food will be shown on television as a result of their recent delay in implementing planned advertising restrictions; and whether they will publish an impact statement about the effect on children’s health of their plan to exempt brand advertising.

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)]

My Lords, on 22 May, the Government announced that we will bring in restrictions on junk food advertising in January 2026. We have secured a unique agreement from advertisers and broadcasters to comply voluntarily from 1 October 2025. A new impact assessment is not needed, as brand advertising was always exempted from the policy. We are committed to implementing the restrictions, which we expect to remove up to 7.2 billion calories from UK children’s diets per year.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

I thank the Minister, but she clearly does not have the answer to my Question. Does she accept that voluntary measures have been shown not to work? What is more, they provide no evidence to inform future policy development, because they are not monitored. Can she reassure the House that the Government will support independent research into the effect of brand advertising for companies that make unhealthy food on children’s health and their consumption of unhealthy food, compared to the specific advertising of unhealthy products themselves?

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

First, I commend the work done by the noble Baroness, the committee and everyone in this House who is passionate about this agenda. We are not weakening our stance on this. It is absolutely imperative that everyone understands that we are determined to tackle this issue. We felt strongly that there was a need for legal clarity on the existing policy, so that we could bring in the restrictions in January, which we are committed to doing. I repeat that brand advertising was always out of scope for the policy. That was confirmed during parliamentary scrutiny of the Health and Care Act 2022. This is an important area. We have laid out our determination to move forward on it and we intend to do so.