Labour would rather you were ill than take the risk of offending their donors in the food industy

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I noted a report from the House of Lords Food, Diet and Obesity Committee entitled 'Recipe for health: a plan to fix our broken food system'  soon after it was published last year.

Now, the government has responded. I could summarise what they have said very simply. They have ignored what the Lords have had to say on everything from ultra-processed food onwards.

I can also summarise why. The Lord's said:

Now [is the time to] make a decisive shift away from voluntary measures to a system of mandatory regulation of the food industry [to] fundamentally reshape the incentives for the food industry through a coherent and integrated set of policy interventions to reduce the production and consumption of less healthy foods, and drive production and sales of healthier foods.

They added that the government should:

Exclude food businesses that derive more than a proportion of sales (to be defined by the Food Standards Agency) from less healthy products from any discussions on the formation of policy on food, diet and obesity prevention. This should also apply to the industry associations that represent these businesses.

They could not have been clearer about the need for the industry to be excluded from policymaking.

The government's response is to say:

As the providers of the food and drink we eat, the food industry has an important role in helping to improve the nation's diet and tackle obesity.

That's all you really need to know about what they said.

The Lords concluded that it is the food industry that is making us ill.

They reasoned that the food industry is promoting addiction to harmful products that are sinking the NHS under an intolerable burden of having to deal with the consequences of excess sugar consumption.

They believed that, as a result, others had to create policy and then impose it on the industry whose whole motivation is to make us ill.

The government has rejected that idea. It wants the food industry to continue making us ill. It does not want to root out the problems that are destroying the capacity of the NHS at source. It would rather we be ill. Profit comes first with this government.

But at least we now know how deeply corrupt they are, and what they will sacrifice for their own long-term futures. The answer is that it's you, me and the rest of the people of this country.


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