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The chair of Marks and Spencer has criticised a forthcoming crackdown on junk food advertising in the UK, saying it would amount to “regulating to stop people talking about mince pies”.
Archie Norman said on Wednesday that a plan to ban junk food advertising on television before 9pm meant the retailer would probably not be able to justify the expense of a Christmas food advert.
“You won’t be able to run an ad that includes Christmas pudding, your mince pies or sausages,” Norman said at an industry conference.
The government announced last year that junk food adverts would be banned before 9pm on TV from October 2025, as part of Labour’s push to curb obesity in children.
However, ministers have also publicly committed to pare back regulation to drive economic growth.
UK retailers’ Christmas adverts are launched with fanfare, with supermarkets in particular spending millions of pounds to compete for shoppers’ attention in the festive season.
“The issue this year . . . is we’ve got more incoming regulation than we’ve had [at] any time I can remember,” Norman said, speaking at the Retail Technology Show in London.
M&S is among the retailers most affected by levies designed to reduce unsustainable packaging, which are set to increase its annual costs by £40mn. Retailers have also criticised the Labour government’s employment rights bill.
He acknowledged that it was a “perfectly reasonable idea” to limit advertising of unhealthy products to children. But he added: “This country is regulating to stop people talking about mince pies during the day.”
The Advertising Standards Authority is preparing revised guidance on the ban.
Retailers have expressed concern that a lack of clear guidance could result in adverts being caught by the 9pm watershed even if they did not explicitly feature less healthy food and drinks.
The Conservatives announced a similar prohibition on TV promotions of junk food when Boris Johnson was prime minister, but later shelved the plan.
Eight of the 10 “most effective” Christmas adverts of 2024, based on Kantar data, would be banned under the proposals, including those of some big UK supermarket chains, according to trade publication The Grocer.
The health department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The ASA, whose role is to add such restrictions into its advertising codes based on UK law, declined to comment.
Separately, Norman went on to say that selling food online was “a desert of profit”.
“Nobody is really making true profit from food online,” he said before clarifying that this was “an exaggeration . . . [but] there has been more wealth destroyed in people trying to develop food online businesses than any other industry I can think of”.
He acknowledged that M&S investors “don’t think there’s a lot of value, probably zip” in its 50-50 joint venture with Ocado Retail, the online supermarket it bought in a £750mn deal in 2019, which allows it to sell M&S goods online.
But he said the business was still valuable. “I think it’s going to be worth a lot of money. I think it’s going to be, uniquely in the world, the way of delivering a better food online business.”
M&S previously expressed dissatisfaction with Ocado Retail’s lack of profitability but has been more positive recently, noting an increase in sales.
The Department of Health and Social Care said: “This government is committed to tackling the obesity crisis, and that’s why we’ve taken action to end the targeting of junk food ads at children, across both TV and online. Evidence shows there is strong public support for this move.”
