My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on his clear and succinct explanation of these regulations and of the risks of obesity, which we have witnessed a great deal during the Covid crisis. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, then spoke about the APPG’s work on obesity.
I probably should register an interest. Although I no longer have direct food sector interests, I have shares in Tesco. In fact, I recall that it moved early in banning sweets from checkouts, but obviously it will incur costs from these regulations. I also have shares in Amazon, which, I suspect, could benefit from a shift online as a result of the regulations, which probably bear less heavily on online.
Forgive me for a brief diversion, but I was absolutely delighted to see that the regulations were made under the Food Safety Act. The passage of that Act was one of my proudest achievements as a civil servant. In fact, I supported the late Baroness Trumpington, whom I miss so much; she even gave me a toy pig for my baby, which has now been passed on to the next generation.
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I have three points to make. First, I am glad that my noble friend the Minister and his department have produced an impact assessment. Such impact assessments are always a concern of mine, as he will discover. They really help one to understand the problem. However, I need some help in understanding the one before us today. Perhaps I should make it clear that it is attached to the back of the SI. The first page seems to say that the cost to business is £53.5 million of the package a year. That seems very low, given all that is happening. The industry estimates that I have seen suggest that the regulations will cost each small shop £13,000 per site and each supermarket between £50,000 and £100,000 per site. I do not know how many stores will be affected because we need an answer to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, about scope. That page also says that there is a net present social value of £2,916 million; that sounds like nearly £3 billion, if I have my commas in the right place. I am interested as to how that relates to the business net present value of minus £148 million in the second column.
Page 4 summarises option 2, which I think has been the chosen one; that seems to be what the impact assessment is telling us. It seems to say that the benefit will be over 25 years, so we are looking at this quite big figure over 25 years. However, it gives a slightly different total of £2,038 million. So I do not understand how the costs and the benefits stack up. Where are they coming from and what discount rate has been used? That will be key in the final figure you come to. Can my noble friend the Minister enlighten us?
My second question relates to a briefing that I received from the Association of Convenience Stores—it represents smaller stores so it must have some concerns—the British Retail Consortium and the FDF. I forwarded the briefing to the Minister so that he could have a look at it. While reiterating their commitment to tackling obesity, the organisations criticised the drafting of these lengthy regulations, saying that there are many unanswered questions. They attached a list of the 25 most important ones, which include everything from the scope of businesses covered, which we have already identified as an important area, to the products affected, the location of placement restrictions in stores, the way in which online delivery is affected and whether Trading Standards or Environmental Health officers will implement the new regulations. The Minister will not be able to answer these questions today, but I wonder whether he will undertake to answer them and place the reply in the Libraries of both Houses in, say, the next month. Businesses must know what they are being asked to do. I remember that we were very strong on that point in relation to the Consumer Rights Act 2015, which I worked on constructively across the party divide when I was the responsible Minister. Chaos ensues if you do not know what the rules will be.
These are not Covid regulations. We must give business proper notice. We are asking for a major shift, especially in store practice and behaviour. I thought the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, about substitution effects and incentives were very interesting.
My final, brief third question is this. How will whoever is going to enforce these regulations, whether
it is trading standards or environmental health officers, be resourced to enforce these complicated and important new laws?