Sugary Drinks Tax

Geraint Davies Excerpts

Monday 30th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Helen Jones]

If we were dealing with a level playing field, the hon. Lady might be right, but we are not. We are dealing with goods that are heavily marketed, especially to children. I am sure she cannot really be arguing that it is great for hospitals to profit from unhealthy food and then for the other end of the hospital to deal with the consequences of that.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Helen Jones]

I will take one more intervention, then I am going to make some progress, because other Members need to speak.

[Geraint Davies]

On the issue of personal responsibility and consumer choice, as my hon. Friend will know, the World Health Organisation says that men should have up to nine teaspoons of sugar a day and that women should have up to six. Would it not be helpful if, in addition to the poison of sugar being taxed, all products were labelled in teaspoonfuls so that everybody knew what they were eating and could make empowered choices?

[Helen Jones]

That is right. I have already said that clearer labelling has a role to play, but the Government need to understand and recognise the link between obesity and food poverty, which is not—before anyone misquotes me—to say that all poor people are obese or that all obese people are poor. The children who are most at risk are concentrated in the most deprived areas of the country. The same is true of adults. Figures provided to me by the Library show that there is a stark division. For instance, 32.7% of adults in Hartlepool are obese; in the Chilterns, it is 17.7%. In Barnsley, 35% of people are obese; in Cambridge, it is 14.7%.

The noble Lord Prior recently said in the other place that he found it puzzling that obesity is growing while people are using food banks. Let me try to explain it simply to him. If people live in an area where shops do not sell reasonably priced food, fruit and veg, and they cannot afford the bus fare into town, they are more likely to buy cheap, fatty products. If people are fuel-poor, it is difficult to cook healthy meals, as it is if they are time-poor. I have just said at a public engagement event that there are women in my constituency who are working two or three part-time jobs, trying to make ends meet. Most poor families are good at managing their budgets, but if they do not have time to cook and are worried about waste, they are more likely to buy easy things that can be cooked quickly—we need to recognise that. I would do the same in that situation, and it is why we need to invest more in preventive measures and to subsidise healthy foods, rather than unhealthy foods.

If we look at the detail of the Chancellor’s autumn statement, however, the public health grant will continue to fall. Some 25% of the grant goes on sexual health services, and 30% goes on drug and alcohol services, which are demand-led statutory services that cannot be cut. If we add the child measurement programme, child medical examinations and health protection, there is not much left over. That is why the Local Government Association has said

“councils don’t have enough…to do the preventive work needed to tackle one of the biggest challenges we face.”

The Government also need to look carefully at what has happened to their obesity strategy. The strategy was launched with great fanfare in 2011, but since then, as the National Obesity Forum has said,

“little has been heard of the strategy”.

The National Obesity Forum has asked for a “much more determined approach”. Even the Change4Life programme, which does not address obesity but helps to prevent people from becoming obese in the first place, has found its budget cut. We have heard much about the public health responsibility deal, which is currently under review. I hope the Government will seriously look at the deal, because all the indications are that, as presently constituted, it is not working.

Simon Capewell, professor of public health and policy at Liverpool University, called the public health responsibility deal a “predictable failure” and

“a successful strategy for food companies who wanted to maximise profits.”

It is right to work with the industry as one strand of our approach, but it is not right to give industry the final say on what happens because, as the Health Committee said in the last Parliament,

“those with a financial interest must not be allowed to set the agenda for health improvement.”

We need a much tougher responsibility deal.

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[Dr Wollaston]

Yes. As I pointed out, we could end up inadvertently widening health inequalities. The hon. Lady is absolutely right that a tax would send a clear message—right in front of people, on the shelf—that certain products are cheaper because they are not as harmful. That is the clear beauty of it.

I ask Members to consider what could be achieved with such a levy. If it might raise between £300 million and even £1 billion a year, the possibilities are extraordinary in terms of what we could do to improve the health and wellbeing of the nation’s children. We should not miss that opportunity. I hope that the Government will accept all the points and concerns raised by hon. Members and reconsider their policy, giving serious consideration to how much could be achieved for the benefit of our nation’s children and their health.

[Geraint Davies]

I support a sugar tax. In Mexico, the average person has half a litre of Coke every day. Did the hon. Lady consider the possibility of a tax on sugar as an input into other products? After all, if I was making Hobnobs and the tax was at 10%, and 50% of a Hobnob was sugar, I would only have to make a slight change to the price, the formulation, or the number of biscuits. Would it not be better instead to have a tax on all sugar inputs, to give the right incentives to both consumers and producers?

[Dr Wollaston]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but the point is that we wanted to respond to the issue about whether a sugar tax is regressive. It is much more challenging to use a direct replacement for the sugar, which would mean zero sugar for those kinds of products. That was partly why we took that view.

However, the approach that we recommend for the kind of products that the hon. Gentleman has mentioned is one of reformulation. During the last decade, there has been a successful programme of reformulating salt within our processed foods, but such a change takes time, because we have to adjust the nation’s palate gradually. Yes, we can make bigger step changes if we replace part of the sugar in one go, but there is sometimes something about the chemistry of sugar within cookery that means a sugar substitute does not do the same job. We wanted a tax where a sugar substitute did the same job as sugar, in effect.

I am confident that reformulation will be part of the Government’s response, because there is clear evidence that it works. Having said that, we know that it works better when there is some teeth to it, so I urge the Minister to go further than the responsibility deal and have something with real teeth. Things worked better when we had the Food Standards Agency and a bit of a stick in the background to make such changes happen, and industry wants a level playing field.

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[Dr Wollaston]

I am sure that will be part of it, but as I have said, I am not here to beat industry over the head. I want to bring industry with us. I celebrate what it has done, but it needs to go further. What we heard on our Committee was that industry needs a level playing field, and that a bit of regulation helps, because then everybody goes together. For example, take the chicanes of sugar that we have at checkout aisles, and the fact that we are being flogged a kilogram of chocolate when we go to buy a newspaper. With those types of things, we need a level playing field, so that we do not have any industry going down that route.

My view is not that we should not have discount promotions; we need those discounts and promotions to happen for healthier foods. The argument is often made that we will hit people in their wallets if we take these promotions away, but what we want is for people to be able to afford healthier, quality food. I would love that type of food to be the focus of deep discounting and promotions.

We then come on to the issue of clearer labelling. Jamie Oliver, in his presentation to us, made a compelling case about labelling. Let us put the number of teaspoons of sugar on drinks. This morning, I was trying to look at drinks labels, and I found them confusing. We need clear information that says whether the product contains 12, 13, or six teaspoons of sugar. To answer the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) made about industry, it helps industry if people can clearly see that companies have made an effort to make a lower-sugar product. Let us allow that within clear labelling.

Let me come on to improved education. I would love to see more education about food in school, including proper cookery lessons, and for schools to have the resources to be able to do so much more in that regard. That is where I see one of the benefits of this levy going; it could go to support those kinds of lessons, not only in schools but in the wider community, and school sport. All those things are important. If we are to have school food standards, they should apply to all schools. Do we not care about every child in school?

[Geraint Davies]

The hon. Lady will know that I put forward a sugar Bill supporting sugar being denominated in spoonfuls. Does she accept that if there were two pasta sauces that were clearly labelled—one with six teaspoonfuls and one with three—there would clearly be an incentive for consumers to pick the lower-sugar one and that manufacturers would compete to get sugar content down, rather than up, in order to get people to buy their products?

[Dr Wollaston]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman. We have seen that where companies want products to be marketed as “healthier”, there is an incentive for them to reformulate, although we need honesty about that; sometimes, products can be marketed as “healthy” because they are low-fat, when they are packed full of sugar. We need to be clear about that.

Also, look at advertising: some products are allowed to be marketed to children, including breakfast cereals whose contents are 22.5% sugar; that was the rather shocking evidence that we heard. We need clearer guidance as to what constitutes a “healthy” product.

On that point about advertising, we felt that there was a clear case to have the watershed of 9 pm apply, so that we do not see junk food being marketed to children when they are watching very popular programmes. We were also very concerned about the pervasive nature of advergames on the internet: children think they are playing a game but, in fact, the games are the product of marketing companies, and the children are being sold particular items.

We are absolutely clear that all these things are very important and, as I said at the beginning, there is no one single piece of the jigsaw that will complete the picture. Indeed, the more pieces of the jigsaw that are put in place, the more effective a strategy there will be around childhood obesity.

I return to the point I made at the start: this issue matters and we cannot continue as we are. Also, although we did not go into this in great depth in our report, I urge the Minister to consider what interventions can be put in place for those children who are already affected by obesity. We were very supportive of the child measurement programme, but we were told by local authorities that funds are tight. As for extending the programme to bring in children from earlier years and pick them up before they get to primary school and run into difficulties, authorities do not have the resources to both put in place another year of monitoring and do what we need to in order to help those children who are already affected by obesity. Resources matter. I again urge the Minister, when she discusses this issue with colleagues, to consider what we can achieve, because we should not take the view that that nothing can be done about childhood obesity. We can do extraordinary good for the health of our children, and I really hope that when the Government bring forward their obesity strategy, they will be bold and brave, and recognise the urgency of this health emergency.

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[Paul Flynn]

Yes, Sir. Thank you, Mr Chairman. I was unfortunately—inadvertently—diverted from the point involved, but I shall return to it.

[Geraint Davies]

Is my hon. Friend aware that last night on Welsh television the Welsh Minister for Health and Social Services, Mark Drakeford, said that there should be much greater control over the advertising of sugary drinks to children until after 9 pm? The Minister would, I am sure, welcome the devolved power that is implicitly being called for to be able to tax sugar in Wales and do the other things we are talking about.

[Paul Flynn]

I did see the programme; it was the Welsh segment of the “Politics Show”. That is why I find the account-giving of the view in Wales to be not plausible—Mark Drakeford is a splendid Health Minister.

Last year, a Daily Mail investigation revealed that the food industry lobby had been given unprecedented access to the Government. The Prime Minister hosted Coca-Cola, Mars, Nestlé, McDonald’s, Pepsi, Nando’s and Tesco. They were all welcomed to No. 10 Downing Street, and given big hugs no doubt—they are great pals. Those are the ones the Government are listening to, not the needs and the health of young children.

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[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in the debate with you in the Chair, Mr McCabe. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) for the excellent way in which she opened the debate. In fact, we have had some excellent speeches. There was a bit of discord in some of the interventions and speeches, but broadly we have settled on a similar set of views. I want to emphasise that the causes of obesity are complex and that a number of factors can be involved.

We need to tackle the problem at both ends. We have talked extensively about the supply side and the drink companies, but we also need to talk about the demand side. We need far better education about how we can look after ourselves. We also need to give people the means of eating better food. In addition, we need to encourage them to take more exercise—we have touched on that, but I will talk about it a bit more later.

To tackle obesity—I am sure that this is the consensus that is developing—we need a comprehensive and broad approach that helps families, schools and children to make the right decisions. That might include people seeking medical help—I have had constituents in this situation—to get them started on the path away from obesity. That might include a programme or a summer camp—some way of starting to have a different diet and lots of exercise.

Many Members have referred to the statistics on obesity. The Health and Social Care Information Centre statistics are quite frightening: one in five children leaving primary school is classified as obese, and one in every three children is obese or overweight. There has been a significant move towards healthier, more nutritious meals in schools, and that is vital. However, I have concerns about how children and their families manage in the school holidays, when those healthier school meals are not available.

[Geraint Davies]

On a point of order, Mr McCabe. Like you, I sit on the Panel of Chairs. I was here for the first one and a half hours of the debate, and I had to leave the room for 20 minutes. I have introduced a Bill on sugar, and I was wondering whether I could crave your indulgence and make a small contribution, given that the debate is meant to go on until 7.30 pm.

[Steve McCabe (in the Chair)]

You are welcome to intervene in the debate, Mr Davies, but we have moved on to the winding-up speeches.

[Geraint Davies]

I appreciate that, but I was wondering whether you might exercise some discretion.

[Steve McCabe (in the Chair)]

No, we are going to continue with the winding-up speeches.

[Barbara Keeley]

I was saying that I have concerns about how children and their families manage in the school holidays. For anyone who has not heard about it, I want to commend the Feeding Birkenhead project, and the work done on it by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field). The project makes sure that children have healthy food in the school holidays. It is sad that we need to think about that issue, but we do.

Between April and September 2015, Trussell Trust food banks in Greater Manchester gave more than 22,000 lots of three-day emergency food supplies to people in crisis. Of those, nearly 9,000 were directed to children. We have talked about choice, but if we think this through, we realise that, if families rely on food banks to feed their children, that will limit the number of healthy meals they can make with fresh food. Clearly, for people in the upsetting circumstances of not managing financially, feeding their child with something is better than seeing them go hungry.

At the start of the debate, we heard about people who do not have local shops that sell healthy food, and we have to take that into account, too. Some people are also fuel-poor, while others work a number of jobs, which leaves them with little time to cook. We must not, therefore, jump to conclusions about why people are in this situation.

We should look at the wider issues around poverty, which must be addressed to ensure that people can access a good-quality diet. There is an awful lot more to achieving a good-quality diet than just wanting to do that. How, therefore, does the Minister plan to help families that have to rely on food banks? Next weekend, I will be helping the Trussell Trust food bank to collect food in my local supermarkets. On a previous occasion, one donor gave me lots of vegetables—onions and things like that. I thought they were part of her shopping, so I ran after her to give them back. However, she said, “That is just to liven the donations up. All the packet food seems a bit dull.” However, that is not the way Trussell Trust food banks operate—they have to have packet and tinned food. We have to think through what is happening in families where there is a reliance on donated food, which will not always contribute to a good enough diet.

Education must play a significant role. We want to provide children and adults with information about how they can achieve a healthy diet. One of the most interesting things Jamie Oliver has done—it was not his recent interventions here in the House—was his programme showing people how to cook. There were families that existed entirely on one or two sorts of takeaway.

[Geraint Davies]

Does my hon. Friend accept that, if one wanted to make money out of a potato, the easiest way to do that would be not to sell it, but to smash it up, mix it with salt, sugar and fat, reshape it into something called “Dennis’s Dinosaurs”, freeze them, give them a jingle and sell them cheaper than a potato to get addicts of sugar and other additives for manufacturers? Should we not, therefore, focus on providing lower-priced fresh food, and on increasing the price of sugar-impregnated food?

[Barbara Keeley]

As I was saying, we should look at the whole range of options. I want to talk about health campaigns. The Public Health England campaign Change4Life is an excellent example of providing families with information about small changes they can make to improve their health, as well as with advice on healthy recipes, diet and exercise. However, I fear that the announcement of a 25% cut to the non-NHS part of the Department of Health’s budget will have a significant impact on Public Health England. I want public health bodies to be able to continue campaigns to tackle obesity, but I am worried that their ability to do so will be damaged by these significant cuts. I am concerned that we will not in future be able to fund campaigns such as Change4Life, and that they may just not happen.

We must also be careful that the huge cuts to the public health grant given to local authorities do not reduce the advice and support available to those wanting to lose weight. At many community events in Salford, I have seen health improvement staff working with community groups and running all kinds of sessions. I fear that we will not have that in future.

Although the debate is about a sugar tax, I want to mention the importance of increasing physical activity among adults and children. I was a member of the all-party commission on physical activity, which published its report “Tackling Physical Inactivity—A Coordinated Approach” in 2014. We have discussed various aspects of our children’s health, but inactivity is a key factor, which is why a number of Members have referred to it. It is important that we encourage children to maintain active lifestyles from an early age.

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[Barbara Keeley]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention, but I think it is a bit too easy to lose sight of physical activity, and that is why I have raised the issue. I hope we can be brave and bold about these issues too—it is good to be brave and bold about children’s health, but let us cover all the issues.

It has been said that treating obesity and its consequences alone costs the NHS more than £5 billion a year. It is great that we are having this debate, because we are past the point where we can just let things trundle along. Let me come to the crucial point in the debate. Public figures such as Jamie Oliver have come out in support of a tax on sugar, and he has added stardust to the debate. However, this is a complex issue, and the solutions must deal with that complexity. We know that something must be done, but what is that something?

The problem goes deeper than the demand side. The food and drink industry has not been dealing with the real problems. A number of hon. Members have talked about the Government’s responsibility deal, which has not worked. Firms have made promises and then failed to carry out their pledges. We have talked about labelling, which I will come on to. Many of the suggested interventions involve better labelling of products, but research by a team at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine suggests that interventions that improve information about and awareness of the risks do not necessarily translate into positive behavioural change.

As has been touched on, the responsibility deal focused mostly on salt, which was perhaps welcome. There have been real moves in that area, although every time I have a bowl of tomato soup these days, I regret that it does not taste like it used to. It is clear that salt is being taken out of our diets, but not sugar, which is the focus of our debate. The research team also found that although responsibility deal partners claim there has been “considerable sugar reduction” under their calorie reduction pledge,

“the current progress reports do not substantiate these claims.”

In fact, responsibility deal partners say they have reduced sugar levels under the calorie reduction pledge, but they have not.

[Geraint Davies]

On the relationship between sugar and calories, is my hon. Friend aware of emerging science showing that if two people both eat, for argument’s sake, 2,000 calories a day, and one has a history of eating a lot of sugar, that person will be predisposed to convert more of the sugar to fat than the other person, irrespective of the amount of exercise they do? That is a particular reason we should target sugar.

[Barbara Keeley]

I did not know that; my hon. Friend clearly has background knowledge and experience that I do not.

I want to come back to the responsibility deal, which is important in terms of the Government’s approach. That deal is seen as flawed because firms were allowed to decide what pledges they signed up to, and there were no penalties for those that did not honour their promises or, indeed, take part at all. At the time of the responsibility deal’s introduction, organisations such as the BMA, the Royal College of Physicians and Alcohol Concern complained that the pledges were not specific or measurable and that, in fact, the food and drink industry had simply dictated the Government’s policy. We have to get away from that.

The Minister will tell us more about a sugar tax, but it seems that the Prime Minister has ruled out action on sugar, despite the independent report commissioned by the Department of Health. That leaves me wondering whether the Government are listening to vested interests, instead of the experts whom they commissioned to write the report. The corporations that make the bulk of sales of sugary drinks in the United Kingdom want to maximise profits for their shareholders. They will not voluntarily lower the amount of sugar in their drinks unless there is something in it for them, or unless they are required to do so by law. Likewise, they will not reduce the amount or nature of advertising of sugary drinks—not voluntarily, anyway.

We must look back to what happened with the tobacco industry, which consistently pushed for a voluntary approach to avoid legislation. The industry trundled along, smoking continued unabated and profits were left alone. In my local authority, Salford, smoking was increasing at levels that really concerned me, particularly among young people. However, once specific regulations were introduced, such as warnings on cigarette packets and the blanket ban on smoking in enclosed spaces, smoking levels started to decline. I am therefore inclined to think that one of the most effective remedies would be a modest but compulsory reduction in the amount of sugar in soft drinks. A fiscal solution such as a sugar tax could well form part of the solution, but the Opposition retain a concern about the impact that extra taxes will have on the pockets of parents, as has been mentioned, particularly in low-income families. If we have learned any lessons from what happened with the tobacco industry, it is that intervention will need to involve legislation.

The report produced by Public Health England makes a number of recommendations, which Opposition Members will study in full. We believe a fiscal solution such as a sugar tax may be necessary, but we are not yet fully convinced. As a number of Members have said, we should not focus on one thing as a silver bullet. The Opposition will consider all the evidence on what can be done to tackle childhood obesity as we review our policy over the coming weeks and months.

This has been a high-quality debate. I hope that the petition and the debate will ensure that the Government do not repeat past mistakes with voluntary approaches such as the responsibility deal, which has generally been seen to have failed. I urge the Minister to look at a wide range of activities to tackle childhood obesity, including doing much more on physical inactivity.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)]

What an excellent debate we have had. It has been a real pleasure to listen to so many extremely well-informed contributions. Let me start by acknowledging the strength of public feeling about the issue. We are responding today to an e-petition with a great many signatories, and I thank everyone who signed it. I also praise the passion and commitment shown by Jamie Oliver, as other Members have, in raising the profile of healthy eating and, in particular, the impact of sugar on our diets and health. I will attempt to respond to most of the specific points made, but I am a little constrained by the timing of the debate.

Let me reflect on where we start from. A number of Members have cited the current obesity statistics. The most recent figures, published only last Thursday, show that there has been a relatively small overall change in overweight and obesity prevalence in the past five years. In that sense, levels remain unacceptably high, but there is a degree of stability. We saw some slight encouragement in the figures for children in reception, but we then see obesity prevalence more than double between reception and year 6. As the Chair of the Health Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), and others have rightly underlined, there is a very wide gap in obesity prevalence between the most deprived and the least deprived areas. I share the deep concerns expressed in all parts of the Chamber about that.

We have seen some good progress made on school food in recent times, so there are reasons to think this is a good moment to move forward, as there are areas in which we have encouraging building blocks. This debate, alongside the Health Select Committee report published today, is a valuable and timely opportunity for Members to make their views known at a critical juncture in the development of our comprehensive cross-Government childhood obesity strategy. That is a perfectly sensible reason for the timing of this debate and the publication of the Committee’s report; it is extremely helpful to have them.

Earlier in the debate, one Member wondered whether I was feeling isolated. Far from it: it has been wonderful to spend the past few hours with Members from across the House who feel as passionately as I do about tackling this issue and, in particular, to hear the challenge of tackling childhood obesity framed in the context of improving the life chances of so many children, particularly those from the most deprived communities. That is certainly a strong strand of my thinking as I look at this issue. I have listened carefully to the comments made and will look in greater detail at the Select Committee’s report, to further inform our ongoing policy development.

It is no secret that the Government have no plans to introduce a tax on sugar, although all taxes are kept under review. Such decisions are a matter for the Chancellor, as part of the Budget process. That being said, driving sustained behaviour change will require broad-ranging and concerted action of the kind we have discussed. It is extremely welcome that, whatever Members’ views on a sugar tax, there is consensus across the House on the fact that there are no silver bullets in this debate. That is a really important point.

[Geraint Davies]

I happen to have introduced econometric modelling to Unilever. Would the Minister accept that if a sugar tax is introduced, less sugar will be consumed, and the Government will make money and save money on the health service? Is it not a no-brainer? What is the justification for her resistance to this obviously sensible measure?

[Jane Ellison]

I will touch on some of those points, but I want to take this opportunity to update the House on what we are already doing, to give some sense of our direction of travel and, in particular, to reassure people who have been urging us to look widely at a whole range of things beyond the silver bullet arguments. I hope to give some reassurance in the course of my remarks that we are, indeed, doing that.

[Geraint Davies]

What is the Minister’s justification for not introducing this measure?

[Jane Ellison]

Unless the hon. Gentleman continues to chunter at me from a sedentary position, I will come to the vital issue of teaspoons, about which he and I have spoken before, and upon which a number of Members have remarked.

Today, I will principally talk about some of the steps the Government are already taking to improve children’s health, particularly in relation to food and diet. I fear my response is rather limited in its scope by the proximity to the publication of our strategy, but I want to reassure Members that this is a major priority and a manifesto commitment of the Government. There is no argument from us about the scale of the challenge, which has been outlined well in a number of speeches today. As I said, I passionately agree with the Chairman of the Health Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes, about the impact on health inequalities of childhood obesity, so there is no argument there either.

We can all agree, and have all agreed, that as a society we are eating too much sugar. It is bad for our health and can lead to excess weight gain. That, in turn, increases the risk of heart disease, as other have said, as well as type 2 diabetes—my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) gave a very good speech about that—stroke and some cancers. The link to tooth decay has also been brought out in a number of very good speeches.

I was interested to hear the, as ever, extremely well informed contribution from the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford). As a very distinguished clinician, she will be aware of the links between obesity and many of the big health challenges of our age, but I think that is less well understood more generally in the population. We need to talk more about that—I have challenged a lot of our major charities to talk about it more—so that people become as understanding of that as they have of the link between tobacco and some of the very significant disease groups.

However, public awareness is increasing. In recent evidence, 92% of people said that they were trying to manage or reduce the amount of sugar in the foods that they buy, while 26% of households were very concerned about sugar in food and 30% reported being more concerned than they were a year ago. Concern was higher for sugar than for fat or salt.

Before I talk about the report by the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition, I would just say that I regret the comments made by the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), who is not in his place. He spoke about some extremely respected clinicians—members of that committee—who have done great service not just to the committee, but to the nation’s nutrition more generally. The point was made very well by the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) about transparency and the need for people to declare their interest. That is all done by the members of that committee, and I want to thank them, on behalf of the Government again, for the work they have done for the committee’s report on carbohydrates and health, which it published in July. I accepted, on the Government’s behalf, the report’s recommendations, which were that no more than 5% of energy in our daily diet should be from sugar. That is the equivalent of about seven sugar cubes or five or six teaspoons and there are wider implications for the general dietary advice from the Government from that policy shift. We are working through those with Public Health England.

As the House knows, and as many speeches have touched on, we are currently consuming more than double the recommended limit for sugar, and teenagers’ consumption is nearly three times the recommended level. Again, we are under no illusion that we need to take action in this area. Earlier in the year, I requested that Public Health England prepare evidence for the Government on effective approaches for reducing sugar consumption. That is the report that the Health Committee has had chance to respond to.

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[Geraint Davies]

As the Minister would accept, there is an elasticity of demand for any product—namely a relationship between the price and the demand. Will she focus a few comments on why precisely she is resisting simply putting up the price of sugar through a tax? I appreciate what she said about my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), but if no reasons are being given, he probably cannot understand why. If there is no rational reason for doing so, he is assuming it is because of the lobbyists.

[Jane Ellison]

That is not right. Again, I come back to the point stressed in the report by Public Health England—indeed, the Health Committee’s excellent report underlines it—that there is no silver bullet. It is really important that we address the fact that a number of wide-ranging issues need to be tackled and that several options are available to us in policy terms. PHE concluded that no single action on its own will be effective in reducing the nation’s sugar intakes. Its report shows evidence to suggest that higher prices in targeted high-sugar products, such as sugar-sweetened drinks, tend to reduce the purchases of such products in the short term.

Mention was made of the possibility of Cochrane reviews in coming years. An interesting article in the current issue of The Economist notes that the longer-term effect on public health is as yet unknown. Obviously that is because in most cases these measures have not been in place long enough, but it is an important concern—and the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) will have noted a degree of reticence on the part of those on his own Front Bench about the evidence, but anyway. We are, of course, well aware of what Public Health England said in its report about the evidence on higher prices. However, its report also argued strongly for implementing a broad, structured programme of parallel measures across all sectors, if we are likely to achieve meaningful reductions in sugar intakes across the population. As we have heard, it identified areas for action that include restrictions on marketing, advertising and price promotion, and work to reduce levels of sugar in food and drinks—I welcome the focus of a number of speeches on reformulation of product, as we think it has a significant role to play. Areas for action also included improving public food procurement and improving knowledge about diet and nutrition. We are considering all the evidence and working closely with Public Health England to develop our policies.

A number of Members have talked about education. This debate provides the opportunity for me to talk in more detail than I generally can in such debates about the Change4Life programme, in which we continue to invest significant sums. The Change4Life campaign has provided motivation and support for families to make small but significant improvements to their diets and activity levels. Last January, Change4Life’s Sugar Swaps campaign encouraged families to cut back on sugar through two TV advertisements focusing on sugary drinks and after-school snacks. That campaign also included radio, digital and outdoor advertising.

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[Jane Ellison]

As the hon. Lady will see, the campaign is going to be very significant again this coming January, so as I say, we continue to invest significant sums. It is a very important campaign and a very important brand that is being developed, and we see it as something we want to build on.

[Geraint Davies]

Will the Minister give way?

[Jane Ellison]

I am going to make some progress and develop my point about Change4Life, because Members have asked questions about that.

The campaign included radio, digital and outdoor advertising; public relations and media partnerships; work with 25 national food retailers and manufacturing partners; community events and schools programmes; and, importantly, work with all 152 local authorities. More than 410,000 families registered with the last campaign. Families who signed up purchased 6% less sugary snacks by volume and 6% less sugary puddings by volume, while increasing consumption of lower-sugar snacks and puddings. For each person who signed up, another two in the general population said they had also made a food swap.

The Change4Life team is developing the next Sugar Smart campaign, to launch in early January 2016. The campaign will alert families to the problems of consuming too much sugar, reveal the amount of sugar in the most popular food and drink and tell them about the new guideline daily amounts. It will encourage people to download the Sugar Smart app, which I have seen being used and is very impressive—hidden sugars no more, I can assure the House. People will be able to see for themselves how much sugar is in the products they are buying. The campaign will include advertising on TV and online and posters, in addition to social media activity and PR. Five million information packs will be given to families through schools, commercial partners and local authorities, and there will be digital support to help families who want to cut back on sugar.

However, obesity is a complex issue, which the Government cannot tackle alone.

[Geraint Davies]

Will the Minister give way?

[Jane Ellison]

I am going to come on to teaspoons, and I do not want to run out of time before I do so. I will make a bit more progress and then see how we are getting on for interventions.

The Government cannot tackle obesity alone. I welcome the fact that we have consensus across the House on that, and the Committee draws that point out in its report. Businesses, health professionals, schools, local authorities, families and individuals have a role to play, as my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) brought out.

I want to talk about some of the industry action that has been taken. There has been progress in recent years on reducing sugar consumption. The focus under the voluntary partnership arrangements, which have been discussed, has been on overall calorie reduction, of which sugar can form a part. Billions of calories and tonnes of sugar have been removed from products and portion sizes have been reduced in some areas. Some major confectionery manufacturers have committed to a cap on single-serving confectionery at 250 calories, which is an important step.

We have to be realistic about consumer relations, which are important. Before I was an MP, I worked for the John Lewis Partnership—John Lewis and Waitrose—and I know only too well the important role that retail relationships play in an average family’s life. We need to involve those partners. Some retailers have played a part, for example by removing sweets from checkouts. Interestingly, they did so after asking their customers in surveys what support they wanted, as family shoppers, from industry to help them to make healthier choices. Much of the action that retailers have taken was in response to that.

I was very interested in the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) made in an intervention about consumer power. There is much greater consumer power to be unleashed, but the challenge to the industry to make further substantial progress remains. Like the Chair of the Health Committee, I have had some encouraging conversations in that regard, but we need to make more progress.

Providing clear information to consumers to help them make healthier choices is important, as a number of hon. Members have set out. The voluntary front-of-pack nutrition labelling scheme, introduced in 2013, plays a vital part in our work to encourage healthier eating and to reduce levels of obesity and other conditions. The scheme enables consumers to make healthier and more balanced choices by helping them better to understand the nutrient content of foods and drinks.

I turn to the issue of teaspoons of sugar, which has come up a lot in the debate. It is more complicated than something so simple should be; “teaspoons” sounds straightforward, but labelling is an EU competence, so member states cannot mandate additional forms of expression, such as spoonfuls of sugar, for pre-packed food. Under EU legislation, it would be possible for companies to represent sugar content in the form of spoons of sugar or sugar cubes on a voluntary basis, as long that met a number of EU criteria—I will outline what some of them are. It would sit alongside front-of-pack nutrition information, which I remind the House is voluntary, not mandated, in order to meet the same criteria.

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[Jane Ellison]

As we approach the transposition of the new EU tobacco directive, the hon. Lady will see that the measures being taken are EU-wide, but those are two slightly different things. I am happy to come back to her in more detail after the debate, but generally speaking, packaging and labelling are EU competences.

I was delighted to hear so many hon. Members say that front-of-pack labelling was important. The scheme is popular with consumers. It provides information on calories and levels of specific nutrients in an easy-to-read, intuitive format. Businesses that have adopted the scheme account for two thirds of the market for pre-packed foods and drinks. Within the Change4Life programme, front-of-pack colour-coded nutrition labelling will continue to be included as a key message whenever there is a campaign focused on healthy eating. We use that in all the Change4Life materials, across a wide range of formats.

I want to reassure the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), who spoke from the Opposition Front Bench, that there will indeed be a physical activity strand in our childhood obesity strategy. I agree with the balance that the Health Committee struck on tackling childhood obesity, which is an important strand of the work. The great news about physical activity, as the Committee’s report underlined, is that it is good for everyone, whatever their weight. There is no downside to being more physically active, so of course we will want to reflect that.

This has not been touched on much this afternoon, but there is also a significant role for the family of health professionals in giving advice and supporting families to make changes to their lives. That relates particularly to families in more deprived communities. Only this morning I was talking about the role of health visitors, for example, in family education and family support. Again, a strand of our strategy will develop that.

[Geraint Davies]

Will the Minister give way?

[Jane Ellison]

Yes, but this will be the last intervention I take, because I want to leave time for the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) to respond at the end of the debate.

[Geraint Davies]

I simply want to ask whether there will be any space for views to be heard on restricting advertising, whether that relates to high-sugar products being described as low-fat products, to watersheds or whatever. In the same way as we imposed restrictions on the advertising and pricing of cigarettes, will the Minister come forward with any suggestion on restricting advertising in this case?

[Jane Ellison]

We have already said that the childhood obesity strategy will be a comprehensive, cross-Government strategy. I commissioned advice from Public Health England, and of course I have been working closely with that organisation on policy development for many months now. I am paying close regard to the advice that it has provided us with, and I welcome the fact that the Health Committee found it so useful in producing its report.

I welcome the debate as an opportunity to respond to the important campaign on the e-petition and the important new Select Committee report. It is a timely opportunity. I want to reassure the House that the Government are considering a wide range of options for tackling obesity, and particularly for reducing sugar consumption among children and the wider population. I hope the House agrees that all of us—central Government, local government, the industry, schools, families, communities and individuals—have a part to play. I will reflect carefully on the speeches that I have heard today, on the Committee’s recommendations and on its overarching challenge to us to be “brave and bold”—a message that I have heard loud and clear this afternoon. I look forward to making progress, and I very much look forward to publishing our childhood obesity strategy in the new year and making progress throughout this Parliament, and indeed well beyond it, on one of the greatest health challenges of our age.

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[Geraint Davies]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Helen Jones]

No, I am winding up; I am sorry. The health of our children demands action now. If we do not take such action, we will see much more illness in our society, much more drain on the NHS and a poorer life for all of us in the future.

Question put and agreed to,

Resolved,

That this House has considered e-petition 106651 relating to a tax on sugary drinks.