Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to help ensure that infant feeding advice provided in healthcare settings is independent of commercial influence.

Infant feeding is critical to a baby’s healthy growth and development. The Government is committed to giving every child the best start in life and that includes helping families to access support to feed their baby.

The Department has policy responsibility for infant formula regulations in England.  Legislation covers the composition, labelling, and standards, including marketing, to ensure infant formulas provide all the nutrients a healthy baby needs for development and growth and to ensure consumers are informed correctly about their contents so that families receive clear, accurate, and non-misleading information about their use. The legislation makes clear that any infant formula used in health care settings must be provided without any form of commercial promotion. Labels or information supplied to healthcare professionals must be strictly factual and scientific, with no marketing claims.

The majority of maternity services are either accredited under or are working towards the quality standards of UNICEF-UK’s Baby Friendly Initiative (BFI). The BFI sets out quality standards for complying with the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes. This includes requiring maternity services to avoid commercial influence and prohibit promotion of substitutes to families.

The Department is also taking action to ensure parents and carers receive proactive information on the nutritional sufficiency of infant formula, regardless of its price. In response to the Competition and Markets Authority’s recommendations on the infant and follow-on formula market, the four governments of the United Kingdom will work with the National Health Service in England, Scotland, and Wales, the Public Health Agency in Northern Ireland, and other relevant bodies to develop and test clear, impartial messaging on the nutritional sufficiency of infant formula. This will include reviewing existing channels used in healthcare settings, such as online content and supporting materials provided to parents, to ensure messaging is delivered effectively and consistently.