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Baby Milk Action supporters were amongst those encouraging their Members of Parliament to support the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Infant Feeding and Inequalities, which was formed on 19 January 2016.
Following the announcement of a snap general election, to be held on 8th June, the House of Commons is formally dissolved on Wednesday 3rd May. At that point, there are no MPs and all current APPG activity will be suspended.
If you are in the UK, you can ask candidates during the General Election campaign what they will do to better protect families if they are elected.
Specifically, will they pledge to bring UK marketing requirements for baby milks, feeding bottles and teats into line with international minimum standards to ensure parents who use these products have accurate information and breastfeeding is not undermined?
Baby Milk Action gave a presentation to the APPG in Parliament to the on 17 May 2016 on the action required to bring UK law into line with international standards. You can watch this here: http://archive.babymilkaction.org/scrolling/ en/appgmay16.html
The Introduction to our Look What They’re Doing in the UK monitoring report also sets out what need to be done. The company profiles show how current regulations are poorly enforced and international standards are broken.
The Chair of the APPG, Alison Thewliss MP, tabled a Bill in November 2016 to address some of these issues. It did not progress as the Government did not give it the Parliamentary time necessary. The APPG announced a national consultation on infant feeding services to inform its next steps. Details of these developments here: http://www.babymilkaction.org/archives/12617
Also ask candidates if they will take action to support mothers to breastfeed for as long as they wish.
The majority of mothers in the UK say they wanted to breastfeed for longer. It is a mother’s decision how she feeds her child. It is known what policies are needed to help those who want to breastfeed. They are set out in the Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding. The World Breastfeeding Trends initiative (WBTi) report on the UK sets out where the UK currently falls short. It includes score cards highlighting what needs to be done.
Click here to download the WBTi score card to show to candidates and ask them to pledge to take the necessary action to improve the scores.