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Select committee: Health and Social Care Committee

Government Response to the Committee's Eighth: Childhood obesity: Time for action

Published 30 January 2019

Health and Social Care Committee Childhood obesity inquiry Report on parliament.uk ↗

At a glance

The government's response

This document responds to 8th Report - Childhood obesity: Time for action.

This is the government's response, published 30 January 2019.

Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.

The government agrees that an effective childhood obesity plan needs a joined-up, whole systems approach, and responds to the Committee's other recommendations by consulting, reviewing or declining, with a stated ambition to halve childhood obesity by 2030.

  • On advertising, it has committed to consult on a 9pm watershed for TV HFSS advertising and similar protection online, but says there are "no current plans" to ban brand equity and licensed characters.
  • On price promotions and placement, it is consulting on legislation to ban price promotions of HFSS products that encourage overconsumption and their placement at key selling locations. The consultation runs until 6 April.
  • On additional child measurement points, it believes they would provide "minimal insight" at substantial cost, so has "no plans to mandate additional measurements".
  • On fiscal measures, it says it "will not shy away from further action, including mandatory and fiscal levers" if industry fails to act through voluntary programmes. It disputes that levy revenue was diverted into core schools budgets.

Read the government's response ↗ Report an error

Sources