Draft Food (Promotion and Placement) (England) Regulations 2021

Maggie Throup Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2021 General Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maggie Throup)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Food (Promotion and Placement) (England) Regulations 2021.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. This statutory instrument introduces restrictions on promotions of less healthy products sold in-store and online in England. It requires businesses in England with over 50 employees to restrict promotions of less healthy products. Promotions of less healthy products will be restricted by location, which will apply to store entrances, aisle ends and checkouts, and their online equivalents. Promotions of less healthy products will also be restricted by volume price, which will restrict buy-one-get-one-free and three-for-two offers. The restrictions apply to the products that are of most concern in relation to childhood obesity, while allowing the healthiest products within categories in scope to be excluded.

The aim of this policy is to reduce the overconsumption of products that contribute to children being overweight or living with obesity. We aim to achieve this by shifting the balance of promotions towards healthier options and maximising the accessibility of healthier promotions.

The instrument applies only to businesses in England. However, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have been engaged throughout the consultations. Subject to Parliament’s approval, the regulations will come into force from 1 October 2022. The Government announced their decision to introduce legislation to restrict promotions in our healthy weight strategy in July 2020. These regulations and other proposed measures will support people in achieving and maintaining a healthy weight. The policy will play a vital role in ensuring that we achieve our ambition of halving childhood obesity by 2030.

Obesity has huge costs to society. The indirect cost to the UK economy of obesity-related conditions is an estimated £27 billion each year. Improving poor health outcomes is a key part of the Government’s levelling-up agenda. Children living in the most deprived areas are more than twice as likely to be obese than those living in the least deprived areas. We know that tackling obesity will have a positive impact on children’s health, and may therefore help in improving health disparities across the country.

The covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the impact that obesity can have on people’s health. People who contract covid-19 are more likely to suffer worse symptoms and are at increased risk of dying if they live with obesity. This demonstrates why tackling obesity is an immediate priority to support individuals and the NHS. Data shows that children and adults in the UK are consuming too much sugar, saturated fat, salt and calories. However, they are not consuming enough fibre, fruit and vegetables.

The shopping environment plays an important part in the way that products are marketed to us, with simple factors such as the location of products significantly affecting purchases. UK food and drink promotions reached record levels in 2015 and were the highest in Europe, with 40% of the food and drink people purchased being on promotion. The latest data shows that we buy almost 20% more as a direct result of promotions. Less than 1% of food and drink products promoted in high-profile locations are fruit or vegetables. Research shows that promotions can influence food purchases and often determine eating habits. Currently, such offers tend to be widespread for less healthy, processed and treat-type products, at the expense of healthier choices.

Children are vulnerable to the techniques used to promote sales. Although promotions appear to be mechanisms to help consumers to save money, the data shows that they increase consumer spending by encouraging people to buy more than they had intended. Consumers typically do not stockpile their extra purchases to take advantage of the lower price; instead they increase their consumption.

Some businesses already have policies in place to restrict promotions. While we are grateful for their action, such commitments are not implemented consistently or at scale, so they do not support a level playing field for either businesses or consumers.

The introduction of legislation will help to ensure that healthier food is more accessible, ultimately saving families money and supporting people to lead healthier lives. We recognise that smaller businesses may find implementing the restrictions more challenging, which is why we are requiring only medium and large businesses to restrict promotions. Guidance to support the regulations is being developed with input from businesses and local authorities, and will be published to support implementation after Parliament has approved the regulations. We understand that the change is significant and want to ensure that businesses are supported to comply.

One in three children leaves primary school overweight or obese, and around two thirds of adults are above a healthy weight. The need for action is clear. We know that people struggle to choose healthier options in the face of endless prompts to consume less healthy food. We are tempted to buy foods that are not on the shopping list, but hard to resist. These promotion restrictions mark the start of a change in this environment to empower people to make healthier choices.

--- Later in debate ---

[Maggie Throup]

I thank the hon. Member for Nottingham North for his contribution and support and my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey for his query.

The hon. Member for Nottingham North asked several questions. On the cost to the consumer, as I said in my speech, promotions tend to be a mechanism to help consumers save money, but data shows time and again that they increase consumer spending by encouraging people to buy more than they intended and to buy items that they did not intend to purchase, which also increases their consumption.

On enforcement, the Government are committed to ensure that enforcement of regulated policies is proportionate and fair and to support local authorities and the judicial system with any additional costs they incur as a result of enforcing these powers.

On striking a balance, this is about trying to support the consumer while also supporting businesses, which is why we felt it was fair to exempt smaller and microbusinesses and apply the regulations to medium and larger businesses only, basing the definition on floor space as well. That approach is more measured than having something apply across the board. It is important that we get this right, as the hon. Gentleman said, to ensure that we have an impact on the nation’s health while allowing businesses to implement the measures proportionately.

The hon. Gentleman asked about implementation and the guidelines. Obviously, we will publish the guidelines once the legislation has been passed, and it is important to ensure that we continue to involve the different parties to get things right. There has been a lot of engagement already, and we must ensure that it continues.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey asked about prepacked products. Such products have the contents printed on their packaging, whereas it is hard to know the contents of some non-prepacked products. Once again, this is about taking a measured approach.

As the hon. Member for Nottingham North said, this legislation is part of a range of measures that form part of our healthy weight strategy, which will empower people to live healthier lives. They want to do that, and the strategy will help them. This policy is a critical part of that strategy.

Our published impact assessment shows a positive net present value for the policy, outlining how the health benefits outweigh the costs to business, which I hope reassures the hon. Gentleman. Our estimates show that the policy will have a net benefit to society of around £7 billion pounds over the next 25 years. The location restrictions alone would provide NHS savings of over £4 billion pounds. It is estimated that an average person will consume 50 to 70 fewer calories a day as a result of the restrictions. Small reductions in calorie intake, sustained over time, can help to address the significant incidence of overweight and obesity. We are committed to making the healthier choice the easy choice for families.

I understand that these are novel requirements, and we want to ensure that we are supporting businesses to implement them. We took the decision to extend the implementation date from April 2022 to October 2022 as we believe that strikes the best balance between allowing businesses enough time to prepare while not significantly delaying the health benefits, so the implementation date has already been extended once. We will continue to work closely with stakeholders in preparation for implementation, as I have indicated, and further evaluate the impact of the promotion restrictions to ensure that they achieves the health benefits and policy aims effectively.

Our ambition is to halve childhood obesity by 2030 and reduce the gap in obesity between children from the most and least deprived areas. All of us need to get behind that ambition and play our part in making and facilitating healthier decisions, providing healthier options, and creating healthier environments. I commend the draft regulations to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.