Any lingering thoughts that health secretary Jeremy Hunt has taken on Andrew Lansley’s mantle as Mr Responsibility Deal were put to bed yesterday, as food and drink companies were left in no doubt who the new person on the block is.
Anna Soubry’s address to an FDF event in London not only promoted the latest pledge by companies, including the likes of GSK, AG Barr and Britvic, to slash sugar content from their products, but also made it clear she is now the main government protagonist.
Soubry was both hard-hitting and entertaining, as she remarked how it is now possible to spot those from an underprivileged background-not because they are too thin - but because they are likely to be obese from an unhealthy diet of too much junk food.
Food and drinks companies, she argued, had a moral responsibility to act.
However, the health minister was also at pains to point out that she was no “food fascist”, remarking that she was more worried about being discovered wolfing down a pie and a pint at a Leicester Tigers game than lecturing to food companies.
Soubry was also refreshingly honest in recognising that Labour’s shadow health secretary Andy Burnham has upped the ante on health by calling for bans on food containing what he claims are “horrific” levels of salt, sugar and sat fats.
Her overriding message was that she opposes regulation, both in principle and practicality - mocking Burnham’s call for a ban on children’s cereals loaded with excess sugar, by pointing out that supermarkets would have to start interrogating shoppers with sentries at the tills, asking just who their Sugar Puffs were intended for.
But she also was clear in a warning to the industry that more movement was expected soon and from a much broader spectrum of companies.
“”I know what will happen otherwise,” she said. “In a reasonably short period of time my boss will ask how the Responsibility Deal is delivering. He’ll want to know and the PM will want to know? I want to be able to go to my prime minister and my secretary of state and say this very important industry is delivering and here is the tangible evidence.”
In this week’s issue of The Grocer we will have more news on the Responsibility Deal and indeed a lot more on cereals.
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