Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, with reference to findings from Bite Back that young people in the UK are exposed to 15 billion junk food adverts a year online, if the Government will bring forward legislative proposals to introduce statutory online advertising restrictions on junk food, as proposed in its original consultation, at the same time as those for television.

The Covid-19 health crisis has underlined the need to reduce levels of obesity in the general population, and that it is critically important that we encourage healthy eating habits, particularly for our young people. The Prime Minister is clear that this is a priority.

The Biteback 2030 campaign has helped to inform our work to understand the impacts of junk food advertising on young people. Government officials recently attended a session hosted by the Bite Back campaign, and were able to hear first hand from the Biteback Youth Ambassadors on the problem of junk food advertising and its effects in particular on young people.

In 2019 and 2020, the government consulted on bold proposals to restrict HFSS advertising on TV and online, and we will soon publish our response to both consultations. As the government set out in its Tackling Obesity strategy (published in July 2020), we intend to simultaneously legislate for an online restriction and a TV watershed by the end of 2022.