The fight against child obesity has been left in the hands of food companies in a watering down of ministers’ promises after lobbying by the industry.
Manufacturers will not be forced to make products healthier and no concrete measures to curb marketing of unhealthy products have been included in a long-delayed blueprint on tackling obesity.
A ban on junk food at shop checkouts has been dropped and an end to advertisements for unhealthy food before the 9pm watershed has not been included in leaked drafts seen by The Times.
Jeremy Hunt, who kept his job as health secretary yesterday, faces a battle with his new cabinet colleagues to “put the teeth back” in the plan, which was due to be published next week after wrangling between the culture and business departments as well as No 10.
The documents show how pledges of strict action were removed from the strategy amid industry pressure and the distraction of the EU referendum. Companies will now simply be “challenged” and “consulted” over their pushing of unhealthy food, they suggest. Health experts condemned the move as “business as usual” that would fail to stem the obesity epidemic.
Already a third of children are too fat by the time they leave primary school. Senior doctors said that without a tougher strategy children would be condemned to a lifetime of illness ranging from heart disease to cancer.
Sources in the Department of Health emphasised that they hoped to persuade the new cabinet to strengthen the plan, even at the cost of delaying it until after the summer.
Action against child obesity was promised in the Conservative manifesto last year and Mr Hunt said that it would be “draconian”. A clampdown on junk food advertising and forcing food companies to take sugar out of their products were singled out as priorities by advisers at Public Health England.
However, specific measures to restrict promotions, such as buy-one-get-one-free deals on unhealthy snacks, were blocked by other Whitehall departments, it is understood. Instead the latest draft circulating in Whitehall says simply that “we will put in place additional targeted and proportionate measures to further reduce families’ exposure to adverts for unhealthy foods”, adding: “We will consult shortly on options for action.”
In January the draft strategy had stated: “The food and drinks industry will be given six months to come up with plans to reduce overall sugar in products consumed by children by around 20 per cent in five years, including a 5 per cent reduction in year one.” A legal maximum level of sugar in products was among the measures threatened if companies fell short.
The latest draft, circulated this week, removes any threats and says only that “the food and drinks industry will be challenged to reduce overall sugar in products that contribute to children’s sugar intakes”.
Sources said that lobbying efforts had become more successful with senior ministers distracted by the EU, while the industry became less co-operative after it was angered by the surprise announcement of a sugar tax in March.
Graham MacGregor, director of Action on Sugar, said: “It’s a pathetic plan and it won’t have any effect on childhood obesity. Last year it was a really good plan but it’s been gradually eroded. Theresa May has got to go back and revise this completely.”
Neena Modi, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, urged Mr Hunt to “put the teeth back” in the plans. “If we’re going to rely on the goodwill of industry then I have grave concerns that the strategy is likely to be ineffective,” she said. Susan Jebb, who led efforts to broker a voluntary deal with the industry under the coalition, said that the strategy lacked a “plan B” if companies did not comply. “It sounds like business as usual,” she said.
The Department of Health said: “Any suggestion that we are diminishing the ambition or measures we will take to reduce child obesity would be quite wrong at this point.”
Hunt defies the doctors
Doctors’ cheers were silenced when Jeremy Hunt was reappointed as health secretary after rumours that he had been sacked. But there was gloating at the BBC when John Whittingdale, the culture secretary who clashed with the corporation, lost his job to Karen Bradley.
Mr Hunt arrived at No 10 with the BBC reporting that his tenure as health secretary was about to end.
NHS workers greeted the reports as “the news 50,000 junior doctors have been waiting for” and cries of “break out the champagne”. One said he was “doing a little jig around the room in joy”. Mr Hunt later tweeted: “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
A “spontaneous cheer went up in the BBC newsroom when word of Whittingdale’s sacking came through”, Raymond Snoddy, a media commentator, reported.
