House of Commons Hansard Debates for 22 Mar 1996 (pt 19)

Mr. Charles Hendry (High Peak): I have been following the hon. Lady's argument with great care. Does she think that the people placing the advertisements and the professionals involved in the dieting industry are deliberately misleading customers, or is it naivety on the customer's part? Does she not believe that more could be done by tightening a voluntary code, rather than by legislation?

Mrs. Mahon: I believe that a deliberate con trick is being foisted on women, after they have been led to believe that they are ugly if they are not incredibly thin. An awful lot of money is being made out of people's miseries and fears, as they lose confidence in themselves. I think that that is deliberate. People must know. Major multinational companies have every resource at their disposal, and they could soon find out whether a product that they were selling and advertising did what they claimed.

The largest number of advertisements considered tobe in breach of the rules--33 advertisements for21 products--were found in the four slimming magazines examined--Health and Fitness, Slimmer, Slimming and Weight Watchers Magazine. That is trading on people's vulnerabilities and misery.

In the 10 women's monthly magazines examined, 27 of the 30 advertisements were considered unacceptable. The 10 women's weekly magazines examined included only eight slimming advertisements, which were all considered to be in breach of the code. Six national tabloid newspapers and four Sunday newspapers were examined and found to contain 14 advertisements, of which71 per cent. were considered to be in breach of the code. It is true that the majority of miracle weight-loss claims appeared in newspapers and not in magazines.

The "Slim Hopes" report says:

"The single largest category of advertised products in the survey were foods making slimming or calorie-control claims (37 such advertisements) of which only 6 advertisements for three products were considered acceptable. Virtually all were considered to be in breach because they failed to state that they cannot aid slimming except as part of a diet in which the total calorie intake is controlled."

That aspect was common to all the advertisements. Advertisers failed to say in the small print that a near-starvation diet is necessary to achieve what they claim.

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The report goes on:

"Problem areas identified by the survey included 'miracle' claims, excessive weight loss claims, claims that failed to state the time period over which weight was lost, creams that claimed to have a physiological effect and exercise equipment and wraps which claimed weight loss."

The report clearly confirms that compliance with the code remains unacceptably low.

"Slim Hopes" made superb recommendations; I may have to change my Bill to catch up with them. "Slim Hopes" recommends that the Advertising Standards Authority

"should fully investigate all advertisements considered by this report to be in breach of the rules and to take effective action against all transgressors of the Code."

Some of us are putting pressure on the ASA to do just that.

On the vetting of advertisements, "Slim Hopes" recommends that

"Publishers should be instructed not to accept adverts for slimming products unless they have a certificate of pre-clearance from the ASA",

which seems to be common sense.

On effective enforcement, which is where we always encounter difficulties with a code of practice, "Slim Hopes" recommends that the ASA

"should implement more effective sanctions."

There have recently been one or two instances of fines being imposed on some of the more extreme elements of the industry, but they have been too low. The sanctions have not been sufficiently effective when they have been applied to transgressors, and I would certainly support making them more effective.

"Slim Hopes" also recommends that the ASA

"should undertake an annual review of slimming advertising to assess whether current measures are adequate to deal with the problem. The review should be undertaken in such a way that statistical comparisons can be made between years over time. If there is no significant improvement",

it should develop

"with independent experts and public interest groups, additional measures to tackle the problem."

I think that the Government should be involved in that matter.

On the specific claims that cause the worst and most worrying effects on health, as a consequence of the speed of weight loss, "Slim Hopes" recommends:

"The code should be amended to include a requirement that no advertising for a slimming product shall make any reference to the amount or speed of weight loss, or to a reduction in the sense of hunger or an increase in the sense of satiety. This should cover not only claims but also product names, testimonials and any other words or images associated with the product."

On dieting and people who are underweight, the final recommendation is:

"The Code should be amended to include a requirement that no advertisement for any kind of product should suggest that underweight is desirable or attractive or in any other way encourage individuals to become unnecessarily concerned about their weight. This should preclude the use of underweight models in advertisements."

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We often see unhealthily skinny models, who are very young people and whom children sometimes regard as role models for how to be beautiful, which causes all kinds of health problems. Even if children and young people do not go to the extreme of suffering from anorexia or bulimia, they suffer from constipation and develop gallstones because they do not have the right diet, because they are worrying too much about their image and believe that they have to look unhealthily thin.

The United Kingdom's slimming industry is estimated to have an annual turnover of approximately £1 billion a year, yet the number of overweight and obese people is increasing. By the year 2005, it is estimated that 18 per cent. of men and 24 per cent. of women will be obese. At the same time, there has been a rise in the incidence of eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia.

What is shocking about "Slim Hopes" is the number of well-known companies, almost household names, that it has caught out conning the public into believing that some miracle cure is available for those who have been led to believe that they are overweight.

I should like to give Sue Dibb, Claudia Grillo and Jenny Smith, the authors of "Slim Hopes", the last word. They say in their introduction:

"the dream that a physical ideal can be achieved through the latest diet fad retains its appeal despite the fact that the majority of people who embark upon diets to lose weight fail to do so in the long term. The medical and scientific consensus that has now emerged is that the way to maintain a healthy weight is to ensure that calorie intake does not exceed calorie expenditure; that is by eating a healthy balanced diet and by being physically active throughout life. Advertising plays an important role in maintaining the myth of 'miracle' or easy weight loss and thus undermining the important health message."

There we have it. The dieting industry and the advertising industry are contributing to the increasingly bad health of our nation. The Government have a duty to look into those matters seriously.

2.1 pm

Mr. Kevin Barron (Rother Valley): First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) on her excellent speech and on promoting the Bill. I know that it is second time around, and I hope that if the Bill goes into Committee and then completes its passage this year, my hon. Friend will not give up hope that we should look again at the industry.

As my hon. Friend said, her Bill would regulate aspects of the diet industry, or perhaps it would be more useful to refer to it as the slimming industry. First, the Bill would require slimming centres to display warnings about the damaging effects of rapid weight loss. She also advocates that those risks should be outlined in those centres' literature. Those are straightforward and sensible proposals. Regardless of the eventual fate of the Bill, I hope that the people responsible for such centres, who promote such weight-loss programmes, would want to inform potential customers of the risks. I am therefore disappointed that the slimming industry has not yet volunteered to do so.

Secondly, my hon. Friend suggested that dieting preparations and treatments should come under the Medicines Act 1968. That could be done almost immediately. Her proposal that the charges involved in an entire course of treatment should be detailed may cause some problems, but it is not an insurmountable hurdle.

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My hon. Friend is not asking for a massive new regulatory framework for the slimming industry, but she is calling for proper and reasonable regulations designed to offer protection to consumers from misleading or inaccurate information. She is also calling for decent levels of product safety. I am sure that all hon. Members would agree that such protection should be offered to consumers.

There is nothing in the Bill on which a sensible Government could take offence. I am sure that the House will be convinced by my hon. Friend's arguments that the slimming industry is in need of control. It is not feasible to leave an industry with an annual turnover of £1 billion largely unregulated, and the scope for it to abuse its position is obvious. Concerns are already being expressed about the number of women and young girls who are suffering as a result of the enormous pressures that they face to be thin, from the fashion industry, the media and the slimming industry. I highlight the case of women and girls, because the overwhelming majority of dieters are female--about 90 per cent. of them diet at some time in their lives. The intense industry pressures also affect men and boys, growing numbers of whom are taking up the slimming craze.

We must be clear about the damage that a badly regulated slimming industry can cause. I shall deal later with the medical effects but first, I shall consider the advertising pressures. It is clear that the Advertising Standards Authority does not have the remit to cover all aspects of regulations necessary for the slimming industry. Its scope for action is limited to printed advertisements and does not cover the practices of so-called dieting experts in their clinics. The Bill would help to complete the regulatory framework for that. Given the findings of the survey that my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax mentioned, does the Minister agree that the ASA should investigate the advertisements that the survey found to be untoward in respect of its code?

The Bill seeks to address the medical aspects of slimming and the diet industry. We must make distinctions between the extremes of clinical obesity and thinning eating disorders, and healthy eating and frequent dieting. Obesity is a problem. I hope that the Minister will say a few words about the Government's progress towards securing "The Health of the Nation" targets for the reduction of obesity and associated complaints.

To feel a little overweight, especially when the feeling is deliberately heightened by the effects of the industry's advertising campaigns, is far from clinical obesity. Few people who diet, especially those who diet obsessively, are clinically obese. Clinical obesity is the cause of many illnesses. Stroke and coronary heart disease are real dangers and the risks of diabetes, gallstones and arthritis are also increased. Many of those who diet do not need to. More importantly, in some cases the preoccupation of obsessive dieters with unnatural slimness may be a cause of other physical and psychological illnesses. Not everyone who starts dieting ends up with an eating disorder, but everyone with an eating disorder started by dieting.

Both groups are a call on national health service resources, and we should do all that we can to reduce that resource usage and to put such resources, where they are available, to other uses. The Bill would help to regulate some of the excesses of the diet industry and reduce that pull on national health service resources. The Minister

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should tell us what other measures he is taking to counter the effect of the diet industry and to reduce the incidence of eating disorders.

In particular, I hope that the Minister will say something about the role of healthy eating as opposed to dieting. The Bill makes it clear that dieting and healthy eating are not the same and I hope that he does so, too. I welcome the initiative of the Minister's colleague, Baroness Cumberlege, to encourage people to take more exercise and to fund a campaign to get that message across. What similar initiatives has the Minister planned to teach the public more about healthy eating? I put that question because I believe that the slimming industry does not want people to hear the healthy eating message, that the best way to maintain reasonable weight and keep weight down is to eat properly and healthily and to exercise regularly. The other message that the industry insists on keeping quiet is about the real effects of dieting and rapid weight loss.