New junk food ad ban faces delay to save money on your ‘big shop’

New stricter rules on junk food advertising could be shelved by ministers over fears the regulations will further fuel the cost of living crisis in the coming months, The i Paper understands.

The Treasury has been holding talks with food producers and supermarket bosses about how to reduce household grocery bills as part of efforts to limit the impact of the conflict in Iran.

Last week, officials had sought to secure a guarantee from supermarkets to cap prices for certain essential goods in return for loosening certain regulations.

The move prompted a backlash from supermarket bosses, but The i Paper has been told that the talks are ongoing and could lead to a delay in strict new regulations on the use of healthier ingredients in certain products.

In particular, the Treasury is understood to be listening to industry concerns over the new Nutrient Profiling Model (NPM), which applies restrictions on promotions and advertising for food and drink products that are deemed to be “less healthy”.

Industry insiders said the new regulations, which form part of the Department for Health and Social Care’s (DHSC) 10 year obesity plan, are putting an extra burden on producers to reformulate their products to avoid the advertising ban.

Officials in the DHSC are looking to update the NPM, which is a scientific scoring system used to categorise foods and drinks as “healthier” or “less healthy” based on their overall nutritional composition.

This information is then used to place restrictions on “buy one get one free” offers and junk food advertising. For example, foods considered unhealthy cannot be placed prominently in supermarkets, such as at the end of aisles or near checkouts and cannot be advertised on TV before 9pm.

Sweetened breakfast cereals and fruit-flavoured yoghurts will fall foul of new rules

The new model has been designed to reclassify foods that consumers often mistakenly believe are healthier options, such as sweetened breakfast cereals and cereal bars, fruit-flavoured yoghurts, smoothies and fruit juices.

A source said that some within the industry are “optimistic” that the new rules could be paused because the new model is so stringent that most products will fail it.

The insider said: “The Government is hearing the message that there is too much regulation coming all at once.”

The regulations are being viewed both inside Whitehall and within industry as among the more straightforward to delay in a bid to limit extra price rises being fed down to shoppers because it is “cost neutral” for the Government.

Without a pause, the costs to producers of reformulating their products may end up being passed on to shoppers who are already grappling with cost-of-living pressures.

Under the regulations, some goods would also become more expensive because the rules will prevent them from being sold as part of multibuy offers. A ban on two-for-one junk food offers came into force last year after being delayed by former Tory prime minister Rishi Sunak in 2023 over similar cost-of-living fears.

Packaging tax set to drive up prices further

It comes after reports over the weekend warned food prices were likely to rise as the Government has refused to drop its new packaging tax, which forces producers to pay a charge for every piece of packaging they use.

The so-called Extended Producer Responsibility scheme was first developed by the previous Conservative government as part of its plan to force polluters to pick up the cost of recycling packaging that often ends up as litter, rather than leaving it to local councils.

Industry leaders have warned that around 80 per cent of the cost will be passed on to consumers in higher prices at the till, but insiders said they have not pushed for the tax to be dropped because businesses have already started preparing for it and they need the recycled packaging to come through the system to be reused.

The Treasury was forced to back down last week in its efforts to get supermarkets to agree to voluntary price caps on items, such as bread, milk and eggs, in return for a loosening of regulations.
Former Asda chairman Lord Stuart Rose branded a potential cap as “stuff and nonsense” at the time.
But the proposals demonstrate how concerned the Treasury is about rising prices as a result of the ongoing blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

The Bank of England warned inflation could rise to 6.2 per cent by the end of the year and as much as 7 per cent in food, whereas the Food and Drink Federation warned food prices could rise by 10 per cent.

المصدر: iNews