MPs call for ban on fast food outlets opening near schools to tackle obesity

Fast food chains such as KFC should be stopped from opening near schools, and advertising for junk food on billboards and public transport should be banned to help curb obesity, MPs will say today.

The Commons health committee will also urge ministers to stop giving in to food industry lobbying and get tough to tackle a problem that costs the UK £74bn a year and causes huge illness.

Bold action is needed as the hundreds of initiatives implemented since 1992 to address rising levels of obesity have failed, according to the cross-party group of MPs. Two-thirds of adults (66%) and 28% of 13- to 15-year-olds in England are now either overweight or obese.

The report also criticises Keir Starmer’s Labour government, saying it has not followed through on pledges to introduce policies to tackle bad diets.

Layla Moran, the committee’s chair and a Liberal Democrat MP, highlighted the widespread advertising and availability of unhealthy food, and urged ministers to take strong action to curb “the constant bombardment of promotions and adverts we see and hear in our daily lives – on our screens, on children’s journeys home from school, as we set foot in shops and queue for the checkout”.

Ministers must give local councils greater powers to stop fast food takeaways from opening near schools, the MPs say. Firms are exploiting “loopholes” in the national planning policy framework to mount successful legal challenges to councils’ efforts to stop them doing so. Those loopholes allow outlets that sell takeaway products to be classed as restaurants rather than fast food premises. “Ambiguity” in what counts as a hot food takeaway needs to be clarified urgently, MPs add.

“It has become common sense that if we want to stem the tide of the obesity epidemic in children, we should be removing the temptation of fast food outlets in the vicinity of schools and areas of high levels of childhood obesity,” said Moran.

“The upcoming reforms to national planning regulations should give local authorities the power to fight the big chains for the sake of our children’s health.”

In 2015 Gateshead council began restricting the opening of fast food outlets near schools and in its poorest areas, which it said helped cut childhood obesity locally. The report recounts how KFC took legal action against 43 councils seeking to do the same and won in more than half those cases.

The MPs are also backing “a holistic, consistent and watertight approach to restricting the exposure of children to all [advertising of foods that are] high in fat, sugar or salt”. About £680m a year is spent advertising food and non-alcoholic drinks on television, the radio and outdoors.

People’s everyday environments have become so “obesogenic” that all outdoor advertising of unhealthy foods – such as on billboards and on buses and trains – should be outlawed, they say.

The Advertising Association said such a plan would not reduce obesity. “Decades of research across multiple academic disciplines has repeatedly shown that advertising does not contribute to long-term changes in obesity or BMI and that advertising restrictions do not improve the nation’s health,” a spokesperson said.

“With regards to the committee’s call for a potential ban on all outdoor advertising, we would point again to the evidence this will have little to no impact whatsoever on levels of childhood obesity.”

The MPs also recommend:

• Supermarkets should be forced to display fruit and vegetables prominently, for example near entrances and checkouts, to help boost sales.

• All food must start carrying front-of-pack, traffic light-style labels telling consumers how healthy or unhealthy they are, which some supermarket chains already use.

• The government should urgently progress its previously announced intention to compel food producers to reveal what percentage of their sales come from healthy and unhealthy products.

• Ministers should “be more courageous [and start] standing up to challenge from industry”, which often seeks to delay the introduction of measures to limit bad diet.