At the end of October 2013, I led a debate on the regulation of jam, which caused a bit of a stir. It rightly warned of the end of the British breakfast as we know it. Thirteen years later, I have returned to discuss marmalade.
Last July, a lady called Vivien Lloyd, who inspired the debate about jam, returned to see me at one of my constituency surgeries—hopefully, she is in the Public Gallery this evening. She told me of her alarm about the arrangements being made for marmalade. This debate is particularly timely. Members may have seen that “Marmalade Madness!” was the headline of the Daily Express just a few days ago. I wondered whether it had earned a double-page spread. [Hon. Members: “Groan!”] Great, isn’t it?
I understand that “Paddington: The Musical” won seven Olivier awards this weekend—Paddington is the most well-known lover of marmalade in sandwiches and enjoys stratospheric popularity—but Members and the Minister will be delighted to know that I will not be breaking into song. I looked forward to welcoming interventions from hon. Members on the “Conserve-ative” Benches, but they are not here. What a disappointment! Anyway, that pun does not work very well, not just because it is a particularly corny pun, but because marmalade is in fact a preserve rather than a conserve. That is exactly the issue I wish to speak about: the enormous inaccuracy in the classification of jams, spreads and, importantly, marmalade.
Stories explaining the origins of marmalade are full of inaccuracies. One account says that Mary, Queen of Scots, was ill and requested a remedy made of oranges and sugar. Her maid supposedly whispered, “Ma’am est malade”, leading to the name of the preserve. Another story credits marmalade to Dundee, where a ship full of oranges is supposed to have sunk in the port. Resourceful Dundonians supposedly devised a way of preserving the cargo to make it last. Unfortunately, both stories are untrue. Quince jams existed throughout Europe much earlier than the dates of those stories. The French and Portuguese took their word for quince jelly from the Greek “melimēlon”, meaning sweet apple.
It seems that that lack of care for heritage can still be seen in the approach that we take to regulating our marmalade market today. As a consequence, preservers and food retailers are selling marmalades that do not comply with regulations on total sugar and fruit content, as specified in the Jam and Similar Products (England) Regulations 2003. Marmalade should be 60% sugar. There are rules for the percentage of a product’s total sugar content, and for marmalade it is 60% or more. The sugar content for reduced-sugar marmalade is anything from 25% to 50%. Statisticians and mathematicians among us will have noticed that that leaves products with a total sugar content of 50% to 59% completely uncategorised, and that loophole has been exploited by many marmalade manufacturers. However, recent regulatory changes shift the nature of the problem, and the Breakfast Foods (Amendment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2026 will come into effect in the next few months and make some welcome changes.
I commend the hon. Lady for securing this debate, and I spoke to her this morning to ascertain her thoughts on this matter. We were brought up on marmalade back in Ballywalter. My mum made marmalade. She is now 94 and not making marmalade any more, but although I am no Paddington Bear, I love nothing more than a good round of marmalade and toast. When I say that I enjoy it, I mean marmalade and not citrus jam. Does the hon. Lady agree that my constituents in Strangford and across Northern Ireland, with EU labelling interfering with our produce, deserve the same consideration as her constituents, and that labelling must reflect the hard-won distinction of marmalade, and not fruit jam or jam, just for the ease of the EU?
I partially agree with the hon. Gentleman, although if we were part of the EU, we might find ourselves in the position of being able to influence that a little more. He is right to recognise that our jams, spreads and marmalades have a distinctive characteristic. Indeed, they are one of our largest exports to countries such as Japan and Australia, because of the quality of our jams and marmalades.
While the 60% requirement remains in law, the Breakfast Foods (Amendment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2026 removed the requirement to display total sugar content as a percentage on labels. Instead, producers will have to display
“energy value amounts of fat, carbohydrates, sugars, protein and salt.”
Unfortunately, that does nothing to encourage marmalade to be made with 60% sugar content, although I understand the driver behind the regulations.
This matters, because the rules governing marmalade are not arbitrary, but grounded in just over a century of scientific research and culinary practice. The requirement for 60% sugar content was not dreamed up by bureaucrats; it was developed through rigorous experimentation in the early 1920s at the University of Bristol’s Long Ashton research station. That facility is not in my patch, but I am proud to consider Bristol University one of my local universities. Long Ashton research station—now closed—is but 15 minutes’ drive from the boundary of my constituency, and I believe it is also famous for being where Ribena was developed.
The scientists were interested not merely in taste but in consistency, preservation and reliability. Before their work, recipes varied wildly, yields were unpredictable and the shelf life of marmalade was uncertain. They established a standard that ensured that marmalade would set properly, taste balanced and keep for extended periods. That west country connection is not incidental; it is foundational. The work carried out in Long Ashton helped to define what we now recognise as traditional British marmalade. It brought together food science and domestic practice, producing recipes that became a benchmark for generations of home cooks and commercial producers. To depart from those standards is not to innovate; it is to move away from a carefully developed and distinctly British product.
It must be a Northern Irish thing. She often purchases marmalade at one of the excellent shops in Newcastle-under-Lyme. May I congratulate the hon. Lady on an excellent and interesting speech, and on giving voice to the sweet, sweet tastes of Paddington Bear himself?
Order. I made the point earlier in the debate. We have had a scattering of “yous” from Ministers, Front Benchers and Back Benchers. Hon. Members have been in this place for long enough to know that they must not do it and it will not be tolerated by the Chair.
I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker. I acknowledge the commitment shown by the wife of the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) to marmalade. The critical thing is that it is made from citrus. I have been to Fortnum & Mason—I will probably have to apologise to them tomorrow morning—and seen strawberry marmalade, pear marmalade and all sorts of other flavours. That is rubbish—there is no such thing.
Some manufacturers use the weight of sugar in the recipe to calculate the percentage of sugar instead of testing the end product in the jar with a refractometer. To summarise, consumers are getting a lower-quality, higher-sugar product that can be made more cheaply than proper marmalade, but can be disguised as the same thing. To avoid that, I ask the Minister to ensure that marmalades have total sugar content of 60% or above, as measured with a refractometer. That way, we can protect the heritage of British marmalade.
Another concern in the marmalade market is the definition of marmalade itself. That is being flaunted in cases where producers are developing creative new preserves. Only these additional ingredients can be used in true marmalade: spirits, wine, liqueur wine, nuts, aromatic herbs, spices, vanilla, vanilla extracts and vanilline. Every year, Penrith holds the world marmalade awards. Recent winners include Nordic fusion blackcurrant and vodka marmalade, coffee heaven marmalade and yuzu, passionfruit and apricot marmalade—I had to check what the last one was, as I had no idea.
Without clear and enforced regulation, those differences are obscured. Products that fall short of the standards are still presented to consumers as marmalade, trading on the reputation of a product that they do not in truth match. That is not innovation; it is misrepresentation.
Recent regulatory changes attempt to address that by tightening definitions. Marmalade will quite rightly be more clearly defined as a citrus product, and combinations of citrus with non-citrus ingredients will no longer be permitted to use the term. That is a welcome step towards greater clarity for consumers and towards protecting the integrity of the product itself. The vast majority of marmalades are already labelled as Seville marmalade or orange marmalade, but this measure would ensure that that applies to all marmalades.
I thank the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills (Tessa Munt) for securing this debate and providing an opportunity for me to outline the regulation of the marmalade market. As Paddington Bear wisely reminds us:
“A wise bear always keeps a marmalade sandwich in his hat in case of emergency.”
As hon. Members may notice, I do not have a hat, and I hope that we do not have an emergency. I certainly do not have a sandwich, so I hope that we will not get into any sticky situations, although I thought that we were getting into some spicy situations when I was listening to the hon. Lady’s speech.
After the flurry of media stories over Easter about marmalade, this is a topical debate, but I think Paddington himself would be mildly exasperated by all the marmalade nonsense that has been spread around in the papers. In response, I want to reassure Members of the House that absolutely nothing will be changing about the composition of marmalade. Despite misinformation that has now spread far and wide, there is no requirement for retailers or producers to change an orange marmalade label to a citrus marmalade label; in fact, the orange marmalade that is sold in the Tea Room is able to be exported, and will still be able to be exported once these changes come into effect in the European Union.
As the hon. Lady pointed out, marmalade is often already labelled as orange marmalade on UK supermarket shelves. This is in compliance with EU rules past and present, and many British manufacturers already meet international labelling standards voluntarily so that their products can be sold overseas. After our new sanitary and phytosanitary deal with the EU, we will simply support that trade by cutting unnecessary red tape with our largest market; we will not be subverting the meaning or composition of marmalade. I am sure the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) will welcome that news.
I thank the Minister enormously for her explanation, and I am pleased that there is no intention to damage our trade in any way. We should boost trade of this well-known product with its unique qualities. My constituent would be particularly concerned about the level of sugar. I know I have asked some detailed questions—I have a copy of those questions for her, so if I may, I will hand those to her after this debate—but I am also particularly concerned about the proportion of sugar and those old Bristolian standards that were set over 100 years ago. I think the Minister’s view is the same.
There have been no changes to the amount of sugar required for marmalade to be marmalade. If the hon. Member is hinting, as I think she might be, that various nefarious producers are masquerading non-marmalade as actual marmalade in the UK sense of the word, she should probably tell me, or at least tell local authority trading standards officers what is going on in the local area. They can then test to see what spreads or preserves are masquerading as marmalade. I am happy to write to the hon. Lady, if she wants to hand me those questions.
The Government are committed to supporting and protecting traditional British food products such as marmalade. We do that through meaningful regulation, which supports high food standards and covers marmalade. As I hope the hon. Lady knows, given the SPS deal, we will be aligning with some of the EU’s rules—as, indeed, we already do in respect of EU retained law—which ought to make it easier for consumers to know what they are buying.
Question put and agreed to.
8:14 pm
House adjourned.
The 60% sugar threshold is critical. At that level, marmalade achieves the correct gelled consistency, a bright and appealing appearance, and a balanced flavour that is neither overly bitter nor cloyingly sweet. It also ensures a shelf life of up to a year when properly sealed. Drop below that threshold, and the product becomes fundamentally different: looser, duller, less stable and far more perishable. In my debate back in 2013, I described such products as “gloopy sludge”. I then had to apologise to the Americans and the French for describing their efforts as such, but I am not doing that this time, of course. These are not minor variations, but material differences that consumers have a right to understand.
Under the new labelling rules, that understanding becomes hard to access. While full nutritional information will still be provided, the removal of a clear, single sugar percentage risks obscuring whether a product meets the long-established British standards. An obvious response might be that the reduction in sugar is a good thing, as we are rightly encouraged to reduce our sugar intake. However, lower-sugar marmalades tend to be boiled for longer, which lowers the water content and ultimately results in a higher sugar content following the boiling process. The right response for those who wish to reduce their sugar intake is to moderate the amount of marmalade we put on our toast in the morning.
Predictably, colleagues in the Conservative party and the Reform party have leapt on the bandwagon and claimed that, due to heavy-handed EU regulation, we may no longer call marmalade marmalade. While that claim is overstated, it reflects a misunderstanding of what is actually changing. Indeed, it is reminiscent of the banana-straightening nonsense spouted in the lead-up to the EU referendum in 2016. We are not losing the word “marmalade” but refining it.
The changes ensure that what is called marmalade is, in fact, made from citrus fruit. In a post-2016 referendum context—a post-Brexit context—that takes on an added significance and irony. We were told by some that we would now have the opportunity to define, protect and champion our own food standards, rooted in our own scientific and culinary heritage. There is a real risk that by drifting towards looser definitions adopted elsewhere, we could lose just over a century of British tradition.
Accurate regulation is not about pedantry; it is about protecting consumers and quality and maintaining trust. It is about ensuring that when something is labelled as marmalade, it meets the standards that generations of Britons would expect. If we fail to uphold those standards, we risk not just eroding a definition, but failing to preserve a meaningful part of our national food heritage.
These are my requests of the Minister. First, it is still unclear what will happen to the 50% to 59% sugar marmalades. Maybe we should have three categories: reduced sugar marmalade, which is 25% to 49% sugar; preserve, which is not marmalade but has 50% to 59% sugar; and marmalade, which has 60% sugar and above. Secondly, legislation should require that sugar content be measured with a refractometer. Thirdly, I request that we have a defined list of permitted additional marmalade ingredients, as I have mentioned, and that that should be enforced.
Fourthly, we have removed the requirement to label the sugar content, with an understanding that that will be expressed in the nutritional values information. That is doubly problematic for marmalade, because it is often made by artisan producers, who sometimes do not label their nutritional values, and, as I discussed in my speech, the 60% sugar content is so critical to producing something that is actually marmalade. My penultimate point is that legislation should require that, at a minimum, the sugar content is made clear, either as part of the nutritional values or just by having the sugar content on a separate label.
Finally, the new rules require that marmalade be labelled “citric marmalade” or “Seville orange marmalade.” That is fine, but it leaves the door open to so-called strawberry marmalade or raspberry marmalade. Can we ensure that the new legislation permits that only citrus fruits can precede the word “marmalade” on labels?
As the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills said, marmalade is a product steeped in tradition and loved by millions at the breakfast table. It delivers a perfect blend of sweet and tangy fruit preserve, made from the juice and peel of citrus fruits simmered with sugar and water. The well-known version is made from bitter orange, most commonly using Seville oranges, but other citrus fruits such as lemons and limes make an equally delightful change and are becoming more popular. While the marmalade we know today is a symbol of British breakfasts, its origins stem from Portugal, where—as the hon. Lady said—it was made from quince and known as marmelada. It was then imported into England in the 16th century from Mediterranean countries. Modern marmalade has existed since the 1700s, when, in Scotland, water was added to make it less solid. It was the people of Scotland who then made marmalade a breakfast item, and the rest of Britain soon followed. Interestingly, the word “marmalade” in the English language comes from the French, which came from the Portuguese word “marmelada”. As the hon. Lady pointed out, it started with the Greek “melimilon”, which means sweet apple. As is the case in many such circumstances, marmalade is more international than I suspect many people who are using it as a symbol of UK patriotism understand.
Our current domestic rules for marmalade are regulated by the Jam and Similar Products (England) Regulations 2003, which implemented the assimilated EU directive 2001/113/EC. Those rules help protect the quality and reputation of these important products and ensure that they meet consumer expectations. As the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills pointed out, our domestic rules lay down compositional standards for jam, jelly, marmalade and other similar products, meaning that marmalade and jelly marmalade must contain a minimum amount of citrus fruit—200 grams per kilogram of finished product—of which a set amount, 75 grams, must come from the endocarp. For those who do not know what the endocarp is, it is the segments and pulp of a citrus fruit. As the hon. Lady also pointed out, the soluble solids are also set at a minimum level of 60%. Very few other ingredients are permitted, and only in restricted amounts—for example, no food colours are allowed. I understand that the hon. Lady is very familiar with these regulations, because she was particularly active when changes to the minimum levels of sugar in jams were proposed by the UK in 2013. Food policy is devolved in the UK, but those standards are similarly accepted and set across all the devolved Governments.
I am pleased to say that our domestic UK market for marmalade is buoyant—it is worth £67 million. Our leading UK brand, Robertson’s, delivered £9 million in sales in the last year, and Mackays—the fastest-growing marmalade brand—is now the UK’s second largest and Scotland’s No. 1, with 19% of market share in Scotland and 7.6% across the UK. These successful brands are excellent examples of products already referencing “orange marmalade” in the name. Marmalade is synonymous with Paddington. In fact, it was reported in 2014 that marmalade sales soared following the release of the “Paddington” movie—the so-called Paddington effect.
As promised in our manifesto, this Government are focused on resetting our relations with the European Union and our closest trading partners. We have agreed with the EU to establish a common sanitary and phytosanitary area. When my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs met the French Agriculture Minister, Annie Genevard, she said that
“our friendship is built on co-operation, on mutual benefit and on a shared understanding that our security and prosperity are bound together”.
Alongside the Windsor framework, the SPS agreement will make moving goods easier, cheaper and more predictable. That is not just between the UK and the EU, but within the UK, too, between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This is about more than trade statistics. Short, regulated, high-standard supply chains between trusted neighbours are the foundation of resilient food security. We expect the agreement to cover the breakfast rules, to which the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills referred in her contribution, including the jam and marmalade rules that I mentioned earlier.
Members may be aware that in 2024, the EU updated its rules on jams and made some minor changes to marmalade provisions. In the EU, consumers use both “jam” and “marmalade” to refer to jams made from non-citrus fruits. That is what they have always done. To accommodate different linguistic preferences, the EU adapted its rules to allow the equivalent to marmalade to be used for the term jam, where that was commonplace in a member state’s market. That is an option that a member state can choose to implement.
To avoid confusion with jam, the EU updated the reserved term of what we know here as marmalade to citrus marmalade, but producers can still simply name the flavour of the citrus fruit—orange marmalade or lemon and lime—and have consumers understand the precise nature of that product. The change will not apply to jelly marmalade, because there is no provision for jelly to be used interchangeably with marmalade, and so no confusion will arise. Aligning with the EU rules would mean that a small change to our marmalade description rules would have to be made, but as most jars already list the citrus used, the real-world impact would be minimal and consumers are unlikely to notice any difference.