MP pushes for junk food advertising law

Failing to ban the marketing of junk food to children will lead to an obesity crisis that is "too terrible to contemplate", Nigel Griffiths has told fellow MPs. 

Ahead of the second reading of his private member's bill on Friday, the former Labour minister said the government should introduce legislation to restrict advertisers from targeting children.

He told ePolitix.com that if current trends continued, most of the present generation of children would be overweight by the time they were teenagers.

The Edinburgh South MP warned that this would affect their "personal health and wellbeing", and have social and economic implications.

"The bill for the National Health Service, the costs of them not being able to work because of being overweight are all going to be too much for society to bear," he said.

Griffiths' private member's bill proposes introducing a 9pm watershed for the advertising of unhealthy foods, and includes measures to target marketing via the internet or mobile phones.

He warned that recently introduced regulations, which set a voluntary code of practice restricting advertising, would not affect many children who watch television with older siblings or parents.

Pointing to the government-backed Foresight report, "which basically compared the problem of obesity with that of climate change", he said: "We're facing a complete crisis over obesity in this country."

Media regulator Ofcom has estimated that a pre-watershed ban could cost the advertising industry over £200m a year in lost revenues.

And during the Commons debate, Conservative MP Nigel Evans raised concerns over how the move would affect the advertising industry.

John Whittingdale, the Tory chairman of the Commons culture, media and sport committee, also argued that the move would have a "dramatic effect" on broadcasting "when there is very little evidence that it will actually achieve its objectives".

But Griffiths insisted he did not "seek to ban advertising per se" but wanted to "encourage companies to produce products and to market products that are healthy - and there are plenty of those on the market".

"There is no magic solution to this but frankly, we would not legislate on advertising at our peril because that is one of the single most effective ways that companies use to make sure that people buy their products," he said.

Amid the Conservative criticism the Bill ran out of time without being put to a vote and now stands little chance of progressing.