Labour may use the “heavy hand of regulation” to enhance individuals’s diets, the shadow well being secretary has mentioned.
Wes Streeting mentioned he doesn’t “significantly wish to go round banning issues”, however instructed his occasion would act to protect children from corporations pushing unhealthy choices.
He mentioned Labour would anticipate a “higher diploma of accountability” from the foods and drinks business in the case of encouraging “better choices” as a part of a wider drive in the direction of illness prevention.
He additionally refused to rule out minimal pricing for alcohol, a coverage he backed when he was president of the Nationwide Union of College students (NUS).
Mr Streeting has beforehand pledged to ban junk food advertising aimed toward youngsters by 2025 and praised the sugar tax on comfortable drinks as a “profitable intervention and a mannequin to comply with”.
‘A higher diploma of accountability’
Talking to the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg, he mentioned he would wish to work with the foods and drinks business to look at product formulation and “how we enhance individuals’s weight-reduction plan”.
“I would relatively try this with out the heavy hand of state regulation. I do not significantly wish to go round banning issues,” he mentioned.
“However you then see Nestle advertising new KitKat cereal to youngsters, and even having the audacity to assert it is nutritious. This isn’t severe from Nestle.
“So I anticipate a higher diploma of accountability on the a part of the foods and drinks business to have a look at how they can assist us to offer individuals the prospect to make more healthy decisions, higher decisions in order that we are able to scale back the incidence of persistent illness.”
Nestle has mentioned it by no means used the phrase “nutritious” in UK promoting for its KitKat cereal. It admitted to eradicating the time period from materials on its world web site after coming beneath hearth from the Authorities’s former well being tsar Henry Dimbleby.
Requested if he was contemplating bringing in minimum alcohol prices, Mr Streeting mentioned: “There are a variety of issues we’re taking a look at in relation to prevention measures, public well being measures.
“We wish to make it possible for we’re not simply residing longer, however residing extra healthily for longer, and that does imply doing every thing we are able to to sort out what are often called the social determinants of in poor health well being in addition to these components that influence on issues like persistent illness.
“We’re taking a look at a spread of measures. I am not ready to make any commitments a method or one other.”
He additionally promised to go “rather a lot additional” than the Authorities on smoking and vaping, coming down on corporations who promote to youngsters and younger individuals “like a tonne of bricks”.
