Government Food Strategy

Steve Brine Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

I think the hon. Lady is wrong on food prices for this reason: EU-produced food can still enter the UK completely tariff-free, and at the moment we are not even requiring export health certificates or other paperwork. The impact on food prices of leaving the European Union and the single market is negligible; the real driver of food prices is oil prices and exchange rates, and that has always been the case.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

The Government are to be commended on a thoughtful piece of work, specifically on farming and domestic production. The approach on meat-eating and methane is right, too—technology is our friend in that—but I have to say that on salt and sugar I am a wee bit disappointed. The Secretary of State will know that I put together the prevention Green Paper in the Department of Health and Social Care. That built on the sugar tax, which led to the sensible reformulation of soft drinks. It did not push up costs to the consumer, because the industry reformulated its products. That document, agreed across Government, had proposals to extend that winning formula to other products high in fat, salt and sugar. We can kick the idea into the long grass, and many will be pleased that we have done that—I concede that—but we are storing up obesity, type 2 diabetes and stroke, which we are increasingly seeing in younger people, for the future. Surely as a publicly funded health system, we have a right, and I would argue a responsibility, not to kick the issue into the long grass.

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend highlights an important issue and I can assure him that we are not kicking it into the long grass. The soft drinks levy was indeed a tremendous success, but only because it was relatively easy to take sugar out of soft drinks, because it is only a sweetener and reformulation can be driven quite simply. With some other products, such as chocolate, cakes and so on, sugar is a different type of ingredient that is harder to reformulate and take out. Later this year, we are taking forward new point-of-sale restrictions on foods that are high in salt, fat or sugar. I can tell my hon. Friend that that is already driving reformulation and changes in retailer supply chains.