House Points: A ban on junk food advertising?

My column from today's Liberal Democrat News.

Unhealthy food talk

On Friday all sensible Conservatives were away working in the local elections and Boris Johnson was busy in London. Which left just the real Tory Party at Westminster. And you can forget all that stuff about letting sunshine win the day and hugging huskies, because nothing has really changed.

The first piece of business was a private member’s bill, promoted by Labour’s Nigel Griffiths, to ban television advertisements for unhealthy food before the 9 p.m. watershed. Griffiths had an impressive range of organisations - Diabetes UK, the British Medical Association, Cancer Research UK - lined up behind him.

For the Lib Dems, Martin Horwood was an enthusiastic supporter while Don Foster clearly had doubts.

And, yes, this is the sort of bill that does divide parties. What was notable about Friday was not that there were Conservative MPs opposing Griffiths but how weak their arguments were.
Take Nigel Evans, whose many radio appearances have played a small but honourable part in establishing the Tories in the public mind as the nasty party. "Does the hon. Gentleman really want to go down in history as the man who killed Ronald McDonald?" he asked, pleased with his own cleverness.

But does anyone in Britain like Ronald McDonald? Whatever their views on junk food, whatever their views on McDonald’s, there is not a person in the country who would not rejoice if that gruesome clown were found hanging from one of his golden arches.

Other Tories were concerned with the effect a ban would have on the funding of children’s television or announced that the National Farmers Union is against the bill. And others urged the House to safeguard the advertising industry. That industry, you understand, is worth billions, but oddly its products have absolutely no effect on the behaviour of the children who are exposed to them.

So what is the Conservative answer to child obesity? Again and again they urged parental responsibility. And parental responsibility is a wonderful thing. But the thought that those parents are entitled to get together and use the institutions of a democratic society to make it a little easier to exercise that responsibility still seems beyond the sort of Tory MP who finds himself at a loose end in London on Fridays.