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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, when he plans to publish proposals to tackle the online advertising of products that are high in fat, sugar and salt to ensure equivalence between traditional broadcasting platforms and online content providers.

The Government published on 24 June 2021 its response to the 2019 and 2020 consultations on introducing restrictions for high fat, salt and sugar (HFSS) advertising across TV and online. The response outlined our intentions to introduce a 9pm TV watershed for HFSS products and a restriction of paid-for HFSS advertising online. These restrictions are being legislated for in the Health and Care Bill currently in Parliament. The restrictions are intended to come into force at the end of 2022.

The Government will appoint Ofcom as the statutory regulatory authority who will then be able to appoint a day-to-day regulator to carry out frontline regulation. Enforcement of advertising standards by front-line and statutory regulators is an arrangement already established for broadcast advertising. In order to ensure that HFSS advertising policy is proportionate and there is parity across media, we will introduce the same enforcement arrangement online.