Restricting promotions of food and drink high in fat, sugar or salt: consultation

Section 7: Legislative framework

159. In giving consideration to legislation needed, we propose to aim to ensure that there is also sufficient flexibility to future-proof public health policy to develop over time to improve diet and levels of healthy weight.

160. Ensuring that legislation is sufficiently flexible would enable changes to legislation or further legislation to be made in the light of experience of diet and healthy weight policies as well as to take into account changes to the underlying evidence base or new evidence becoming available. This would enable appropriate action to be taken to reduce public health harms of practices that facilitate or encourage the sale (and thereby consumption) of less healthy food and drink. It would include, for example the labelling, marking, presenting or advertising of less healthy food and drink, and the descriptions which may be applied to them.

161. We are considering whether Scottish Ministers and local authorities may need additional powers (or adjustments made to current powers) in order to allow for more rapid implementation and enforcement of future measures to protect public health relating to less healthy food and drink. We propose that Scottish Ministers would be able to make provision in secondary legislation, following consultation, for regulating such practices in relation to specified less healthy food and drink and to make suitable arrangements for their enforcement, including the setting of offences and the issuing of compliance notices and fixed penalty notices.

Question

Question 26 - Do you agree that Scottish Ministers should be able to make provision in secondary legislation, following consultation, to regulate in relation to specified less healthy food and drink and to arrange for enforcement (including the setting of offences and the issuing of compliance notices and fixed penalty notices)?

Yes/ No/ Don't know

Please explain your answer.