Asked by: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, with reference to his Department's press release of 27 February 2024 entitled UK businesses welcome protection for iconic British food and drink in Japan, what the outcome was of the application by the Japanese authorities to award geographical indication status in the UK to Iwate Mokutan/Iwate Kirizumi, as published for consultation by the Department for International Trade on 21 December 2021.
Answered by Greg Hands - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
Kikuchi Suiden Gobo was added onto the UK GI register as a protected product on 8 March 2024. The department has amended the press release of 27 February 2024 to include Kikuchi Suiden Gobo. The updated press release can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-businesses-welcome-protection-for-iconic-british-food-and-drink-in-japan.
The entry for Yatsushiro Tokusan Banpeiyu was delayed but has now been completed and is listed alongside the other 37 first tranche products from Japan.
The UK was unable to register Iwate Mokutan as a GI because there is no classification under current UK domestic legislation which could include charcoal. The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs wrote to the Japanese authorities in 2022 to explain this decision, which they accepted.
Asked by: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, pursuant to the Answer of 4 March 2024 to Question 15852 on Scallops: Isle of Man, whether (a) Isle of Man queenies, (b) Isle of Man manx loaghtan lamb and (c) Jersey royal potatoes were included in the original list of 77 food and drink products submitted by the Department for International Trade to the Japanese authorities on 30 April 2021 for which it was seeking geographical indication protection in Japan under the terms of the UK-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership.
Answered by Greg Hands - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
I refer the Honourable Member to the response provided to Question UIN 15852 published on 4 March 2024.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what advertising campaigns directed at local businesses have been undertaken by her Department's trade hub in Northern Ireland since 1 January 2024.
Answered by Greg Hands - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
Engaging with businesses in Northern Ireland (NI) is a key priority for the Department for Business and Trade. The “Made in the UK, Sold to the World” campaign continues to raise awareness of export benefits and the free UK government support available to help businesses grow internationally.
This year, the department’s Northern Ireland team has promoted specific opportunities to NI businesses through the Australia and New Zealand Roadshow and the Food and Drink Export Council’s Peer-to-Peer event in Cookstown. Businesses are encouraged to use the department’s services like the UK Export Academy and provide peer support via our Export Champion programme.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government, following concerns raised by farmers regarding changes to the standard of food imports, what steps they are taking to address the impact of post-Brexit trade deals on British farmers.
Answered by Lord Douglas-Miller - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
All food and drink products imported into the UK, including those from countries we have trade agreements with, must comply with the UK’s import requirements and standards. The independent Trade and Agriculture Commission concluded that our Free Trade Agreements with Australia, New Zealand and CPTPP are consistent with the maintenance of UK statutory protections in relation to animal and plant health, animal welfare and the environment.
Supporting UK food and agriculture is an integral part of the UK’s trade strategy. The Prime Minister made this clear at the Farm to Fork Summit in May 2023 and in his open letter to farmers. This letter, alongside the 2022 National Food Strategy, sets out the principles that guide our approach to agriculture and trade. We are putting farmers at the heart of British trade by delivering new export opportunities, protecting our sensitive sectors and our high food safety standards, upholding UK production standards and removing market access barriers.
Asked by: Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government why no reason is given to inward travellers for being held for 6 hours; why they are offered no food or drink during such detention; and why no apology is offered when nothing untoward has been found in their travel to the UK.
Answered by Lord Sharpe of Epsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
A passenger remains liable to examination on arrival in the United Kingdom until all necessary enquiries have been concluded and a decision is made on their application for permission to enter or admission.
Anyone detained beyond two hours is detained in compliance with the relevant guidance and legislation (notably The Short Term Holding Facility Rules 2018). The detained person is informed of their bail rights and reasons for their detention, and this is explained in a language that they understand.
Temperature controlled food was temporarily withdrawn from BF managed facilities during 2023 whilst we implemented a new training and governance procedure to ensure we were complaint with current food standards. Throughout this period, we followed Government guidance, continuing to serve water, hot drinks and snacks.
We always look to minimise detention as far as possible; however, the power to detain must be retained in the interests of maintaining effective immigration control.
It would not be appropriate for Border Force to apologise for conducting legitimate border security checks.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she is taking steps to include information about the benefits of eating (a) wholemeal and (b) traditionally made bread in the school curriculum to promote healthier eating habits.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
The government wants to support the health and well-being of everyone. The department recognises the importance of education in delivering this aim and is supporting schools in a number of ways to provide high-quality healthy eating education for their students.
The department does not specify how schools should teach the curriculum. It is a framework setting out the content of what the department expects schools to cover in each subject and trusts that teachers will develop the right approach for pupils in their particular school.
Cooking and nutrition are a discrete strand of the national curriculum for design and technology and is compulsory for key stages 1 to 3. The curriculum aims to teach children how to cook and how to apply the principles of healthy eating and nutrition. Students should become competent in a range of cooking techniques, as well as understanding the characteristics of a broad range of ingredients. The curriculum does not specify bread, but teachers may choose to include it among the foods they study.
A food preparation and nutrition GCSE, introduced in September 2016, requires pupils to understand and apply the principles of food science, nutrition and healthy eating when preparing and cooking food. Pupils learn about bread when studying food groups, where they could learn about the nutritional benefits of wholemeal. Similarly, they develop dough making skills in the preparation section of the course, allowing them to learn about traditional bread making.
The importance of healthy eating is also included in the science curriculum for both primary and secondary schools. Healthy eating is covered through topics relating to nutrition and digestion, which cover the content of a healthy diet and the impact of diet on how the body functions.
The statutory guidance for Relationships, Sex and Health Education includes content on the importance of daily exercise, good nutrition and the risks associated with an inactive lifestyle, including obesity.
Oak National Academy will be providing a fully resourced curriculum for key stage 1 to key stage 3 for food and nutrition. This will align with the national curriculum and also Oak’s guiding principles, which focus on the knowledge and skills specific to food and nutrition.
In addition, the standards for school food are set out in the requirements for school food regulations 2014, which can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/standards-for-school-food-in-england. These regulations are to ensure that schools provide children with healthy food and drink options, and to make sure that children get the energy and nutrition they need across the school day. The standards require bread, with no added fat or oil, to be available every day. The ‘School food standards practical guide’ encourages use of wholegrain varieties of starchy foods, as well as using at least half wholemeal or granary flour when making bread, puddings, cakes, biscuits, batters and sauces. The ‘School food standards practical guide’ can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-food-standards-resources-for-schools/school-food-standards-practical-guide#the-standards-for-school-lunch.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of bringing forward further policies to help reduce the (a) sugar, (b) fat and (c) salt content in diets.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Restrictions on the advertising and volume price promotions, such as buy-one-get-one free or three for £2 offers, for less healthy foods will come into force on 1 October 2025. The advertising legislation will lead to the introduction of a 9:00pm television watershed and restrict paid-for advertising of less healthy products online, United Kingdom wide.
Impact assessments already published for these measures show that the volume price promotions restrictions are expected to accrue health benefits of £2 billion, and National Health Service savings of £180 million over 25 years. The advertising restrictions are expected to deliver health benefits of £2 billion, and NHS savings of £50 million over the next 100 years.
Voluntary guidelines to reduce levels of sugar and salt in, and improve the labelling of, commercial baby food and drink aimed at those aged up to 36 months old, are currently being finalised and will be published in the spring.
Businesses are being given until the end of 2025 to deliver the sugar and calorie reduction targets through the voluntary reformulation programme. These targets were due to be delivered earlier than this, but businesses have been given additional time because of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the food system. The Government will continue to monitor this area, but will explore other levers if progress is not made. Through the sugar reduction workstream of the overarching reformulation programme, between 2015 and 2020 reductions in sugar levels were delivered in breakfast cereals, yogurts, and pre-packed flavoured milk based drinks of 14.9%, 13.5%, and 29.7%, respectively.
Discussions are also underway to establish a Food Data Transparency Partnership (FDTP). This is a multi-year partnership between the Government, industry, and civil society to improve access to, and the availability of, data to build consistent reporting requirements for businesses on key health and sustainability objectives.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment she has made of the implications for her policies of trends in the level of obesity; and what steps her Department is taking to help tackle obesity.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is delivering a wide range of measures to reduce the numbers of both adults and children who are overweight, or living with obesity. To date this includes legislative measures to limit the advertising, and location and price promotion, of less healthy products, and to ensure calorie levels are provided on menus when eating out of the home. Impact assessments for the legislated measures suggest there will be substantial health benefits, as well as savings to the National Health Service, accrued.
We have seen important successes through the Soft Drinks Industry Levy (SDIL), which between 2015 and 2020 has seen sugar levels reduced by 46% in, and over 46,000 tonnes of sugar removed from, products in scope of the levy. Data from the National Diet and Nutrition Survey from 2019 shows that sugar intakes have fallen for some age groups. In older children and adolescents, this appears to be partly driven by soft drinks contributing less to sugar intakes, likely as a result of the changes made to drinks included in the SDIL. Further information from the survey is available at the following link:
A paper on the association of obesity in primary school children and the SDIL suggests that the reduction in the sugar content of soft drinks delivered by the SDIL could have prevented up to 5,000 cases of obesity in girls in the last year of primary school. Reductions were greatest in girls who attended schools in the 40% of the most deprived areas. Further information from the paper is available at the following link:
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1004160
The voluntary reformulation programme requires businesses reduce levels of sugar, salt, and calories in everyday food and drink. Levels of sugar have reduced in breakfast cereals, yogurts, and pre-packed milk-based drinks by 15%, 13.5%, and 29.7% respectively, between 2015 and 2020. Levels of salt have reduced in some products by 20%.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has had recent discussions with the food and drink sector on taking steps to provide healthy alternatives to products that are high in (a) fat, (b) sugar and (c) salt.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Discussions have been held by officials with the food and drink sector on taking steps to provide healthier alternatives to products that are high in salt since 2004, high in sugar since 2014, and high in calories since 2017. Provision of healthier alternatives to products that are high in saturated fat have been part of those discussions.
My Rt hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care meets regularly with external stakeholders on a variety of issues. These ministerial meetings are routinely published on a quarterly basis in arrears on the GOV.UK website. However, my Rt hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care will recuse herself on departmental issues relating to outside interests, all of which have been declared to the House and under the Ministerial Code.
Asked by: Mark Hendrick (Labour (Co-op) - Preston)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of levels of plastic pollution per capita in the UK; what steps his Department is taking to tackle those levels; and what plans he has to reduce plastic waste generation in the long-term.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
We have banned the use of microbeads in rinse-off personal care products. Our single-use plastic carrier bag charge, now 10p, has reduced the number of such bags given out by the main supermarkets by over 98%. We brought in measures to restrict the supply of single-use plastic straws and single-use plastic stemmed cotton buds and ban the supply of plastic drink stirrers in 2020. In October 2023, we also banned the supply of single-use plastic plates, bowls, and trays to the end-user and banned the supply of single-use plastic cutlery and single-use plastic balloon sticks and expanded and foamed extruded polystyrene food and drinks containers, including cups. In April 2022, we brought in the Plastic Packaging Tax, a tax of £200 per tonne on plastic packaging manufactured in, or imported into the UK, that does not contain at least 30% recycled plastic. From April 2023, it has increased in line with inflation to £210.82/tonne.
Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging (pEPR) will make producers responsible for the costs of collecting and managing packaging they place on the market when it is no longer used and becomes waste. This will encourage businesses to think carefully about how much packaging they use, to design and use packaging that is easily recyclable, and to use reusable and refillable packaging. This will contribute to our goals of a more circular economy, in which resources are kept in use for longer, minimising the waste we create, and cutting carbon emissions.
As one of the founding members of the high ambition coalition of countries calling for an end to plastic pollution by 2040, the UK will do all we can to press for the agreement of a high ambition Treaty by the end of 2024.