Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to restrict the sale of high-sugar food and drink products at the point of sale.

As part of our plan to tackle childhood obesity we launched a broad, structured and independently monitored sugar reduction programme, led by Public Health England (PHE), to remove sugar from the products children eat most. This can be achieved through reduction of sugar levels in products, reducing portion size or shifting purchasing towards lower sugar alternatives.

Since March 2017, PHE has engaged with all of the food industry (retailers, manufacturers and the out of home sector) to discuss what industry could do to meet the 20% reduction in sugar by 2020. PHE will continue these discussions and will publish regular updates on progress towards the 20% sugar reduction.

A list of PHE’s industry and other stakeholder engagement on this agenda was published in March and can be viewed here:

www.gov.uk/government/publications/sugar-reduction-and-wider-reformulation-stakeholder-engagement