I am grateful to the hon. Lady for making her point clear.
As the hon. Lady and other hon. Members know, my amendments relate to the ways in which the Government are seeking to restrict advertising for foods that are high in fat, sugar and salt as part of their obesity strategy. Those measures essentially ban such advertising on TV before the 9 pm watershed and ban all paid-for HFSS advertising online at any time of the day or night. My hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) has already done a very good job in drawing out some concerns about that.
What are the concerns about what the Government are doing? First, I should mention that I have a number of important food businesses based in my constituency, including Unilever and the cereal company Jordans Dorset Ryvita, and I think everyone would be surprised to hear that products such as porridge, muesli and granola are going to be subject to these bans. All these products have ingredients such as naturally occurring oils and sugars, as well as fibre, vitamins and minerals, and because of those natural ingredients they will be caught by the Government’s definition of “HFSS”.
It is also worth considering—I was not on the Committee and I do not know if it was considered at length—the impact on food services such as takeaways and home-delivered foods. Papa John’s, which is located near me in Milton Keynes, supports hundreds of entrepreneurs and small businesses through its franchise model, and it writes to warn me:
“These would restrict our ability to invest in our businesses and our people, at a time of significant economic uncertainty for the UK economy, and would also place our franchisees, many of whom are single owner small businesses, on an unsustainable financial footing.”
I think the Government have to do a few more hard yards in support of our small businesses, and this is not a very good way of showing any support for them.