Supermarkets will be “set free to do what they think will work” in the fight against obesity under a system of new mandatory health reporting and targets to be announced soon by the government.
Health secretary Wes Streeting today said that under his plans for regulation under a new healthy food standard, retailers would be permitted to use promotions how they see fit to achieve the greatest results on making baskets healthier.
Today’s announcement comes after The Grocer revealed in July that under Streeting’s 10-year strategy for the NHS, he plans to repeal the previous government’s HFSS promotions ban, which will outlaw multibuy deals from next month.
Speaking today at a policy event organised by nudge body Nesta, which has been helping the government draw up its proposals for mandatory health reporting and targets, Streeting said it was likely the changes the regulation brought about would vary widely from store to store, depending on their size and business models.
He said ministers were looking to publish more details of the plans “very quickly”. This would start with the publication of data showing the proportion of healthy sales currently being sold by large companies, he said.
As previously revealed by The Grocer, major food companies had already agreed to report on this data under plans drawn up by the Food Data Transparency Partnership (FDTP), although it was previously intended to be voluntary.
“I want to move very quickly on publishing the data because it’s already there and that will show us where the country is today and what sales look like,” Streeting added.
“We want to work with the food industry to make healthy choice the easy choice.
“What’s different about this approach is it’s not about government dictating what people can and can’t eat and it’s not about government dictating what businesses can and can’t sell.
“Instead we’re urging companies to do what they’re good at and encourage consumers to buy healthier foods.
“Yes, we’ll make them accountable with mandatory reporting and we’ll push the largest companies to drive change with targets, but we’ll work with industry as we design those targets and it will be up to them to decide how they meet them.”
Under what Streeting has termed a new era of “smarter regulation”, he said it would, in future, be down to companies how they meet the new targets.
“We’re not micro-managing,” said Streeting. “What we’re saying to the food industry is you can do this however works best for you.
“For stores and supermarkets that might mean placing products differently around the shop, changing the food they offer promotions or how loyalty points are apportioned.
He stressed he wanted to “set companies free to innovate and do what they think will work”.
“The message I’ve always heard from industry on public health is you need to regulate to create a level playing field, but in this area we need to recognise that if you’re Iceland you’ve got quite limited shop floor space so if I were to dictate and say I’m going to be even more prescriptive about what can be sold where, that is a much harder task for an Iceland than a Tesco Extra.
“Understanding through dialogue and discussions what the different commercial risk for retailers is really important for making sure we don’t end up with unintended consequences.
“How this will look like for a Tesco and a Sainsbury’s will end up looking very different to how it looks like for a Waitrose and an M&S.”
Hugo Harper, director of healthy life at Nesta, said it was ”encouraging” that the health secretary wants to move quickly on health data reporting.
”Large retailers and manufacturers already have this data, so there should be few challenges to sharing it,” he stated, adding that “the faster this happens the faster we can fully implement mandatory targets”.
“It is essential that targets for supermarkets are mandatory for the healthy food standard to meet its potential in improving health and cutting obesity rates. The target-based approach gives businesses the flexibility to innovate in ways that work best for their customers and business model.”
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