Craig LizDr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker. I didn't sit on the select committee that heard this bill but I'd just like to highlight that it is an important bill. But it's actually remarkable in its simplicity because it's only got two clauses essentially. Well it's got more than two clauses but essentially the working clauses basically say that in this section 1 March 2021 is replaced with 1 March 2026—that's the working part of the bill.So what the bill does is it extends the Dietary Supplements Regulations 1985 for another five years. As we've heard that's going to give us time to develop further regulations around this area which is incredibly important both for consumers but also thinking about our export markets.So what do the underlying regulations actually do? Well there's quite a few things that are really important. The first one is it sets maximum daily dosages because what it stipulates is that you should manufacture these supplements in such a way that a dose doesn't exceed the recommended daily dietary allowance and that makes a lot of sense that you're not actually running the risk of creating toxicity with your dosages.The second thing though is it says you've got to have clear labelling and that also includes weight so that people know exactly what's in it and why that's important—I'll get to that in a moment.Then the third thing is it says you've actually got to tell the consumer what the dosage is and that's how many pills you've got to take or supplements you've got to take and how often.Then finally you're not allowed to make any misleading statements or therapeutic claims. So you can't say If you take this it will reduce your risk of cancer." or "This will cure cancer." You've actually got to not make any claims but say that this is a supplement. And again that's incredibly important for consumers knowing what they're taking.So why are these regulations important? Why do we need to maintain them? The first one is consumers do need to know what's in their product. It surprised me actually—I didn't realise—but a lot of multivitamins don't actually contain iron and that's actually quite important if you're looking for an iron supplement that'll do something else. So what it means for consumers is that they need to get their glasses out and actually look at the back of the package if they want to know exactly what they're taking.But another thing that it's really important to have that labelling there for is in the case of accidental overdose. This is where in my previous job I used to do a lot of reporting on child health. We used to report on the child poisoning statistics and you looked at the age curve because every year a small number of kids are coming in to hospital having taken something. Usually about one year of age or two years of age is where we hit the peak in terms of numbers. Often when I was working in A & E it was that story where a child had gone to stay at some elderly relatives and they'd found what they thought were lollies but they were actually some pills. The first thing that you want to do when you get a child in to A & E—the question is first: what've they taken? So if you've got something clearly labelled with what's in it you can look up or refer to the poisons centre to know what you've got to do.Then the second thing is how many pills are missing. If obviously that's labelled clearly and then you can count you've got a sense of what the dosage is. So really important in terms of accidental overdose and poisoning to have that clear labelling.Then the third thing is about interactions. Because while you're not allowed to say in terms of therapeutic claims "This can do X Y and Z." a lot of these supplements actually do have activity where you can interact with medication. This is often important where you've got people that are medically fragile they're taking a lot of different medications and then they go and take a supplement and it can interact and throw everything out of whack. And so again it's really important when you're trying to figure out what's going on here to take a good look at the history in terms of whether you are taking any supplements; if so let's have a look at the packet and then you can go through and figure out what's actually going on.What happens if these regulations lapse because they are incredibly important? So what does happen is then it comes in under just the normal laws applying to food and those are not particularly fit for purpose particularly around those areas where you've got the potential for supplements to have potential health effects. It's important that we don't end up with these products that could cause harm. So we do need a fit for purpose regulatory regime. What we are going to be doing is extending this for a period of five years and as the Minister said we don't anticipate it would take five years to do this. But as with anything that we put in place you've got to develop the regulations but then you've got to go out and consult on them and make sure that people have had their chance to have their say. You've got to refine them in response and then you've got to allow a time for transition. So what the aim is here is to allow five years so we don't have to keep going back and extending it again which is going to take up our time but just get on and do that.So this is an important bill. What it'll do is it provides certainty for those manufacturing those supplying that they've got the certainty of the market over the next five years but also certainty for consumers that they're going to have a regime in place and also that they'll know what they're taking. So an incredibly important bill but really simple and I commend it to the House."