Health Bill [HL]

Amendment 85 and the consequential Amendments 108, 110 and 111 are intended to probe what the Government mean in new Section 7C in Clause 19 about the display of prices. I crafted the amendments some weeks ago before several trees’ worth of briefing from all sides descended on my desk; they are not the product of any lobby group. Before I talk about the intention behind them, I want to point out to the Committee that in the space of half an hour the words "impractical", "enforceable", "proportionate" and "effective" have been bandied around by all sides. That is not surprising; for many of us, the largely regulatory powers set out in this part of the Bill are so vague that we are not able to come to an assessment until we hear more detail from the Government about the extent to which they are practical, enforceable, proportional and effective, in pursuit of the policy that the Minister rightly set out: to protect children from advertising. We all share that aim. The reason for moving this amendment was to ask the Government what their intention is. What is their reason for seeking to remove the display of a fact—that is, a price for a product that, at the moment, is legal to buy? Can the Minister help me by citing another legal product that is sold not under restricted licence and is treated in the same way? I have been trying to think of an equivalent and I cannot. This is not a sinister set of amendments; they genuinely seek to probe what the Government are trying to achieve by banning the display of a small fact. I beg to move.