Food Allergens

Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath]

To ask His Majesty’s Government, following recent reports of a restaurant serving a meal containing nuts to a severely allergic customer in Stoke-on-Trent, what plans they have to promote information on allergens in England and Wales.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Food Standards Agency works with businesses and consumers across England, Wales and Northern Ireland to improve allergen management and information, including offering free training and running awareness campaigns. It has recently published new guidance to help people with allergies eat out safely. The guidance sets out how businesses can provide clear allergen information, encourage communication about allergens between staff and consumers, and ensure that a consumer with allergies receives the right meal.

[Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)]

Too many food-allergic customers are still being put at risk when eating out or ordering food from an online platform. New research by the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation has found that more than a quarter—26%—of young adults have had, or know someone who has had, an allergic reaction to takeaway food. I understand that the Food Standards Agency has produced much-welcomed guidelines asking businesses to ensure they provide written and verbal allergen information to customers, but they are just guidelines. I therefore ask my noble friend: do the Government agree with me and the FSA that its new guidelines should be mandatory? Will she meet me and Natasha’s foundation, for which I am a parliamentary ambassador, to discuss this and its new research into the issues faced by those with food allergies when using food delivery apps?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I applaud my noble friend for her dedication and passionate advocacy on this issue. As she said, we published the best practice guidance in March this year and, as noble Lords will appreciate, any new guidance requires time to embed and be adopted by businesses. We hope to carry out an evaluation one year after the implementation of the guidance to assess both its uptake and its impact, and to better inform Ministers on the need for any potential legislation. This means that our evaluation work is likely to begin in spring 2026, and the gap between the launch and when the impact of the guidance can be meaningfully assessed ensures that our evaluation is based on a representative and reliable picture of how the guidance is actually working in practice. This will be very helpful in our understanding of the need for and any potential impact of any future legislative options. We very much welcome the opportunity to meet and to review the new research, which we have not yet had sight of. It would be invaluable to examine these findings alongside the FSA’s research in this area.