It’s almost a year since The Grocer reported the Department of Health was bringing in researchers to gather evidence to back up the effectiveness of its under-fire Responsibility Deal.

The research was launched amid growing disquiet from retailers and suppliers that the department was allowing the health lobby a free rein to attack the Deal because of the lack of hard data.

However, health campaigners are likely to seize on the issue now that its initial findings have been reported, with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical medicine suggesting that a voluntary agreement is no more likely to achieve results than regulation.

The report goes further than that, suggesting there should be “robust independent monitoring” rather than the system of voluntary reporting currently in place, as well as sanctions for companies who either fail to sign up or those that do and miss targets on areas such as calorie or salt reduction.

With Labour already baying for blood, on issues such as the amount of sugar in soft drinks, this is bound to ramp up the pressure on the DH to be seen to get tough and increases the pressure on the industry to encourage those who have failed to get their house in order to act.

The next phase of the study will seek to unearth more detailed evidence of the Responsibility Deal in practice but the irony is it may well not have time to run its course before the government makes a call.

Regulation, or at the very least a toughening of the Responsibility Deal and its targets, would seem to be looming ever closer.

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