Childhood Obesity

Lord Krebs Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I thank and agree with my noble friend. He is correct. The cost of obesity to the NHS amounts to around £6.5 billion a year; obviously, this is in addition to not being very good for the people concerned in terms of healthy lifestyles. That is why we have a programme of action, as I outlined. This is something we feel it is important for us to get on with, not just for children but, as the noble Lord referred to, to help adults in this area as well.

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

My Lords, last year, the Government published a report on the promotion of food. I shall quote a few sentences from it:

“Although promotions appear to be mechanisms to help consumers save money, data shows that they increase consumer spending by encouraging people to buy more than they intended to buy in the first place … The latest data shows that we buy almost 20% more as a direct result of promotions. Consumers typically do not stockpile these extra purchases to take advantage of the lower price, instead they increase their consumption.”


It went on to say that the latest data

“shows that shoppers who buy more of their food and drink on promotion tend to purchase more HFSS”—

high-fat, sugar and salt—

“products, in greater volume, and are more likely to be overweight or living with obesity.”

Does the Minister agree with this analysis, published by his Government last year? If so, what are the Government doing about it in policy terms?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord. The figures to which he refers are a mixture of the pricing of these so-called “buy one, get one free”-type promotions and their positioning in a supermarket. In fact, the data shows that as much as a 50% increase in sales can be driven by where these promotions are placed in a supermarket. That is why the focus now is on what changes will be made on 1 October to reduce the purchase of a lot of the types of food groups we are talking about by moving them away from prominent areas. Once we see the results of those changes, we will be in a position to review some of the pricing and promotions to which the noble Lord refers.