Health and Care Bill

Debate between Lord Bethell and Lord Vinson

Lords Hansard _ Part 1 & Report stage
Wednesday 16th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I too support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. I declare my interest as my wife is a director of Diageo. There is no doubt that mandatory calorie labelling of alcohol is one of the most basic steps we need to take to make this country healthier. We have a moral obligation to give people the information they need to make an informed choice. We must take reasonable steps to prevent illness so that we can keep our spiralling health costs down. We must address the health inequalities the Minister has spoken about so thoughtfully on previous occasions. We should do all we can to nudge drinks companies to bring down the calorie levels of some drinks.

As the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, said, these measures have been promised for years. They were made in Tackling obesity: empowering adults and children to live healthier lives, published in July 2020. In October 2020, the then Minister responded to a Written Question, saying:

“we are committed to consult before the end of the year on our intention to make companies provide calorie labelling on all pre-packaged alcohol they sell. The consultation will also cover introducing calorie labelling on alcoholic drinks sold in the out of home sector, for example bought on draught or by the glass.”

The then Minister wrote on June 21 2021:

“We are committed to consult shortly on our intention to make companies provide calorie labelling on all pre-packaged alcohol they sell. The consultation will include further details about the proposed timescale for implementation of the policy.”


In the debate on calorie labelling regulation on 22 July 2021, when alcohol labelling was left off at the last minute by the then Minster, he said—well, the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, said what the Minister said and I will not repeat it, but it was pretty emphatic.

As the Minister who said and wrote all those words, I ask the current Minister to make the very specific time commitment the amendment seeks.

[Lord Vinson (Con)]

My Lords, there is a sheer impracticality to this suggestion. Whatever the need to get people to drink less, there is the actual practicality of getting millions of bottles of wine shipped from all over the world pre-packaged with this label stuck on them, quite apart from the number of drinks, as has been mentioned, served in carafes or over the counter freely. This is not the way to tackle the problem. It goes to the heart of people’s freedom of choice. They may be overdoing it, but labelling like this is expensive, impractical and it does not work.