Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will ban the sale of energy drinks to children under 16 years old on NHS premises.

There are provisions within the National Health Service standard contract to ban the sale of sugary drinks on NHS premises from July 2018. Within the voluntary scheme, NHS trusts and soft drinks suppliers are committed to taking action to reduce the sales of sugary drinks, with a target of less than 10% of all sales. The NHS is currently monitoring sales information from the voluntary scheme and in April it will be able to analyse progress made from nine months of data. From this information NHS England will make a decision whether to enforce the ban or not, and what policy decisions to take as a result. Future action may include a focus specific to energy drinks sold to under-16s, but the current policy is taking action on sugary drinks as a whole.