Health committee  Thank you very much.

Health committee  I think it might also be worth saying that one of the ways in which we're targeting younger children is around restraints on the television advertising of food that's high in salt, fat, and sugar, because at the moment the advertising to young children is predominantly for food w

Health committee  Would it be helpful if I gave you an example? One of the more successful campaigns we've run has been around the reduction of salt in food. That has been done completely in partnership with industry. It starts by recognizing that industry has to sell products; it has to be prof

Health committee  No, we're not. I think the total budget for our communications department, for example, is about £5 million, but not all of that will be on nutrition. Actually, the amounts of money involved are really quite small. One of the reasons we work in partnership with community bodies

Health committee  I'd think the salt campaign and the reduction of salt is the campaign that is furthest on, and therefore the one where we know most about how effectively it's working. So I think one could choose it from that point. In 18 months' time you'll need to ask us the question again abo

Health committee  I think it's a very complex argument. If you go down the voluntary route, you actually have to win the hearts and minds of industry—

Health committee  —so that they understand why they're doing it. Interestingly enough, there is, quite counterintuitively, some evidence of a company's thinking about the fact that its products will be entirely red, but putting that on there because they're clearly placing their product as a treat

Health committee  Labelling is an EU competence, so it can only be made mandatory by the European Union. That would involve getting 26 countries to agree, so we don't see it in the near future. We would like to see it over the longer term have broad agreement across Europe, but it certainly won't

Health committee  I'm always very nervous about thinking we can teach other countries anything, Steven, and I wouldn't presume to do that, but I'm sure we're happy to tell you what we've doing.

Health committee  We certainly have heard that, and I'll hand it over to one of my colleagues.

Health committee  I'm not at all surprised you've had the push-back from industry. If you go back two or three years in the U.K., not a single company wanted to put front-of-pack nutritional labelling on their products. There has been an absolute sea change in the response of both manufacturing an

Health committee  It's part of the Food Standards Agency budget, so we pay for it.

Health committee  Without knowing on what basis they made that remark, it's quite difficult to answer. Truly, it is too early to say it isn't working in the U.K., and it's equally too early to say it is. But some of the anecdotal information we have is showing changes in consumer purchasing behavi

Health committee  But the major research I referred to, looking at what form of labelling most influences changes in consumer behaviour, will actually take about 18 months, so we should get the results of that about the middle to the end of 2008.

Health committee  Could I just make one point? I think what we're trying to do with this traffic light system is catch the consumer at the point at which they're making a purchase from the shelves. Research shows that you spend about 10 seconds buying a product, and that includes getting to the ri