Foodlaw-Reading
Dr David Jukes, The University of
Reading, UK
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Food Law News - UK - 2021
Prime Minister's Office, 11 May 2021
NUTRITION / ADVERTISING / ANIMAL WELFARE - Queen's Speech 2021: background briefing notes
The Queen's Speech contained a number of statements concerning the Government's plans for the coming session of Parliament. The Government published a policy document providing additional details. The document (163 pages) covers a wide range of topics. The following are extracts taken from the document which contain elements relating to food law issues (altdhough these are often contained within braoder plans). For the full document, see: Queen's Speech 2021: background briefing notes.
Health and Care Bill
“My Ministers will bring forward legislation to empower the NHS to innovate and embrace technology. Patients will receive more tailored and preventative care, closer to home.”
The purpose of the Bill is to:
- Lay the foundations for a more integrated, efficient and accountable health and care system - one which allows staff to get on with their jobs and provide the best possible treatment and care for their patients.
- Give the NHS and local authorities the tools they need to level up health and care outcomes across the country, enabling healthier, longer and more independent lives.
The main benefits of the Bill would be:
- Delivering on the proposals put forward by the NHS in its own Long Term Plan, while building on the lessons learned from the successful vaccine rollout.
- Making it easier for different parts of the health and care system, including doctors and nurses, carers, local government officials and the voluntary sector to work together to provide joined-up services.
- Removing bureaucratic and transactional processes that do not add value, thus freeing up the NHS to focus on what really matters to patients.
- Enabling the system to most effectively prevent illness, support our ageing population, tackle health inequalities, tailor support to the needs of local populations, and enhance patient safety and quality in the provision of healthcare services.
- Ensuring the NHS and the wider system can respond swiftly to emerging issues while being fully accountable to the public.
The main elements of the Bill are:
- Driving integration of health and care through the delivery of an Integrated Care System in every part of the country.
- Ensuring NHS England, in a new combined form, is accountable to Government, Parliament and taxpayers while maintaining the NHS's clinical and day-to-day operational independence.21
- Banning junk food adverts pre-9pm watershed on TV and a total ban online.
- Putting the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch on a statutory footing to deliver a fully independent national body to investigate healthcare incidents, with the right powers to investigate the most serious patient safety risks to support system learning.
Territorial extent and application:
- The Bill will extend and apply UK wide, with its substantive provisions applying in the main to England.
Key facts
- More and more people face morbidity and multiple diseases. Around 20 per cent of our lives are spent in poor health, which has been increasing in recent years and is likely to continue in future. The proportion of people aged 65+ with four or more diseases is set to almost double by 2035, with around a third of these people having a mental health problem.
- Life expectancy at birth in the UK is above the OECD average at 81.4. Death rates from cardiovascular disease have fallen by 60 per cent since 1990 in England, compared to around 50 per cent in the OECD. The UK has the 4th lowest adult diabetes prevalence rate amongst OECD countries.
- As of 2020, around 94 per cent of GP practices rated good or outstanding by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), around 82 per cent for NHS mental health core rservices and 85 per cent of adult social care providers.
- The UK is recognised internationally as a world-leader in driving the patient safety agenda in healthcare.
- As of 8 May 2021, over 35 million people across the UK have now received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine. In the early stages of the response, the NHS COVID-19 Data Store was established, which safely brought together accurate, real-time information necessary to inform decisions in response to the current pandemic in England.
- In October 2020 the Government announced the creation of 40 hospitals and a further competition for 8 new schemes for competition by 2030. The Government has invested record sums in our NHS, both before and during this pandemic. We are delivering on our historic long-term settlement for the NHS, which will see NHS funding increase by £33.9 billion by 2023-24. We have enshrined this in law
Prevention
“Measures will be brought forward to support the health and wellbeing of the nation, including to tackle obesity...”
- Our health is our most important asset. COVID-19 has highlighted the immense costs of ill-health, particularly to the most vulnerable in our society. People who are overweight or living with obesity are more at risk from severe illness and death from COVID-19.
- We are living longer but spending a fifth of our lives in poor health. We must do better. Looking towards the future we cannot hope to achieve better outcomes by doing more of the same.
- Our health is shaped by many factors including the conditions in which we live; the choices we make; and the services we receive. We need a robust public health system that can respond to the complex, twenty-first century challenges to health such as obesity, poor air quality, substance misuse, smoking, mental illness and inactivity.
- Individually and collectively, we can act in ways that will help us to live longer in good physical and mental health.
- The majority of health outcomes (around 80 per cent) are not related to the healthcare people receive but due wider factors, such as their diet and exercise levels. The policy levers to empower people to make healthy choices sit across many different Government departments.
- The new Office for Health Promotion will work across the Government to improve health. It will help the whole health system focus on delivering greater action on prevention, and will drive and support the Government to go further in improving health.
Obesity
- Helping people to achieve and maintain a healthy weight is one of the most important things we can do to improve our nation's health. Making healthier choices easier and fairer for everyone, and ensuring the right support is there for those who need it is critical in tackling obesity.
- We published a new Healthy Weight Strategy in July 2020 and are providing £100 million extra funding for healthy weight programmes to support children, adults and families to achieve and maintain a healthier weight.
- The Government will restrict the promotions on high fat, salt and sugar food and drinks in retailers from April 2022. The Health and Care Bill will include measures rto ban junk food adverts pre-9pm watershed on TV and for a total ban online.
- The Government will introduce secondary legislation to require large out-of-home sector businesses with 250 or more employees to calorie label the food they sell.
- We are funding a health incentives and reward approach (‘Fit Miles’) to support people to eat better and exercise more. The work will draw on the very best innovation in the public and private sector to test the role that rewards and incentives can play in encouraging healthier behaviours. We are also offering greater support through GPs, so that anyone with obesity can get support from their GP and referrals to weight management services.
Key Facts
Obesity
- Today, over 6 in 10 adults, and more than 1 in 3 children aged 10 to 11, are overweight or living with obesity.
- Obesity is associated with reduced life expectancy. It is a risk factor for a range of chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, at least 12 kinds of cancer, liver and respiratory disease, and mental health.
- The number of children admitted to hospital for obesity and related conditions has quadrupled in the last decade. Individuals who are obese in their early years are more likely to become obese adults.
- The Government is investing up to £35 million into the Breakfast Club Programme, to kick-start or improve clubs in up to 2,450 schools in disadvantaged areas. We provide healthy free school meals to around 1.4 million disadvantaged children, as well as free meals to all infant children, and we are working with Public Health England to update the school food standards to reduce sugar.
- We have doubled the PE and Sport Premium for primary schools to £320 million a year, already benefitting more than 1,800 schools; and we established a new £100 million healthy pupils capital fund in 2018-19, to increase access to facilities for physical activity and healthy eating.
- This year's expanded Holiday Activities and Food programme will be available to children in every Local Authority in England, building on previous programmes since 2018 – including last year’s summer programme, which supported around 50,000 children across 17 Local Authorities.
- Between 2015-19 the average sugar content of soft drinks was reduced by 44 per cent. The Government has also been successful in bringing about a 13 per cent reduction of sugar in breakfast cereals, yogurts and fromage frais.
- Primary care has a vital role in helping treat people with obesity and we will be offering greater support to GPs and patients to offer referrals to weight management services to anyone with obesity.
Animal Welfare Plan and Legislation
“Legislation will also be brought forward to ensure the United Kingdom has, and promotes, the highest standards of animal welfare.”
The purpose of the plan and legislation is to:
- Deliver on our commitment to the highest standards of animal welfare by bringing forward ambitious plans to improve standards and eradicate cruel practices through an Action Plan for Animal Welfare and legislation.
- Take advantage of our status as an independent nation outside the EU to go further in protecting our animals, whether on the farm, at home or in the wild and address the challenges presented to the welfare of animals in both the domestic and international spheres.
- Solidify and enhance our position as a global leader in protecting animal welfare by influencing practices and setting high standards for others across the world to follow.
The main benefits of the plan and legislation would be:
- Bringing in greater protections for wild animals by ending low welfare practices and enhancing conservation measures.
- Protecting and enhancing animal welfare for farm animals, bringing in more support for livestock farmers and ensuring effective powers are available to address welfare challenges.
- Recognising the importance of pets to people’s lives and cracking down on pet theft and improving the operation of microchipping practices.
- Continuing to lead the way in animal sentience by putting it at the heart of policy making and strengthening the penalties for those who abuse animals.
- Building on our reputation as a global leader for international advocacy on animal welfare and ensuring that our high animal welfare standards are not compromised in our trade negotiations.
The main elements of the plan and legislation are:
- Setting out our ambitious and wide-ranging plan for driving forward reforms in the first of its kind Action Plan for Animal Welfare.
- Delivering our commitment to recognise animal sentience in law through the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill.
- Increasing protections for pets, sporting animals, and farm animals by ending the export of live animals for fattening and slaughter, bringing in more effective powers to tackle livestock worrying, ending the low welfare practice of keeping primates as pets, improving standards in zoos, cracking down on puppy smuggling, and enhancing conservations through a Kept Animals Bill.
- Banning the import of hunting trophies from endangered animals abroad and ending the advertising for sale here of low welfare experiences abroad through an Animals Abroad Bill.
- Implementing the Ivory Act to ban dealing in elephant ivory and consider further steps to limit the trade and sale of foie gras.
- Co-designing and implementing an Animal Health and Welfare Pathway with industry to promote the production of healthier, higher welfare animals; and fulfilling our commitment to a wide-ranging review into food labelling.
- Bringing in mandatory cat microchipping, reviewing the operation of the current microchip databases, which also apply to dogs, with a view to introducing improvements.
- Continuing our initiatives to educate the public on how to buy pet dogs and cats responsibly via our National ‘Petfished’ Communications Campaign and drawing up recommendations on how to tackle pet theft through the newly created cross Government taskforce.
Territorial extent and application
- Animal welfare is devolved and we will continue to work closely with the devolved administrations to discuss these policies.
Key Facts
This programme of animal welfare reforms builds on the Government’s strong record on animal welfare and protection of animals to date, including:
- Banning commercial third-party sales of puppies and kittens in England, to end the terrible welfare conditions found in puppy farming.
- Banning the use of wild animals in travelling circuses.
- Introducing the world’s toughest bans on ivory sales to help stop the poaching of elephants.
- Supporting the passage of the Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Act 2021, sponsored by Chris Loder MP, which increases maximum custodial sentences for animal cruelty offences from six months to five years.
- Banning battery cages for laying hens, sow stalls and veal crates.
- Introducing CCTV in all slaughterhouses in England.
See also related news item:
- 11 May 2021 NUTRITION / ADVERTISING - The Food and Drink Federation responds to the Queen's Speech
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