MP fights against jam changes

When is a jam not a jam? When its sugar content is less than 60 per cent, but maybe not for long.

The government has proposed loosening the rules so that fruit spreads containing between 50 per cent and 60 per cent can be termed 'jam'.

It comes after British entrepreneur Clippy McKenna told the ITV Business Club that her business was losing out because of red tape.

The government said Business Secretary Vince Cable had taken "a personal interest" in changing "these silly rules" since Ms McKenna raised the issue with him.

McKenna said: "People get frightened by a red tape scenario, and we're in it. A lot of small businesses get scared by going up to a bureaucrat, going up against a civil servant".

Liberal Democrat MP Tessa Munt has opposed the move over concerns that it may lead to inferior products, more like American or European fruit spreads.

Read: Rule change set to rescue jam entrepreneur from sticky situation

British jam producers will benefit from greater flexibility thanks to new EU rules on reducing sugar content in fruit spreads, according to environment minister George Eustice.

But Liberal Democrat MP Tessa Munt opposes the move to reduce minimum sugar content from 60 per cent to 50 per cent, in line with new EU rules, because it could lead to an inferior product.

"A lower percentage produces products with darker, muddier colours which may affect consumer confidence in the British product," Munt said.

"If the consistency lacks the characteristic gel and is instead more like a fruit spread or a fruit butter, consumer confidence in the properties of jam and similar products may be lost."

Mr Eustice said: "The reduction in the minimum sugar levels to 50 per cent delivers the greatest flexibility to the industry as a whole."

Jam and marmalade makers will be able to sell a "gloopy sludge" that is nothing like the tradtional British fruit spread if they are allowed to put in less sugar, a Liberal Democrat MP has warned.

Tessa Munt, MP for Somerset, said British spreads would become similar to European variants that often "tasted like mud" if producers were allowed to reduce sugar content from 60 per cent to 50 per cent.

She told MPs at a Westminster Hall debate that rules dating back to the 1920s dictating a minimum 60 per cent sugar content ensured a jam's gel-like consistency.

A Liberal Democrat MP will this morning argue against "the end of the British breakfast as we know it" by opposing government plans to cut the amount of sugar needed in jams and marmalades.

Ministers want to relax rules on the minimum amount of sugar jam or marmalade should contain, but Tessa Munt, the Liberal Democrat MP for Somerset, has argued this will reduce the quality and shelf-life of morning spreads.

"I'm actually quite worried because I think this is going to be the end of the British breakfast as we know it," Ms Munt told the BBC.

"Our jams and marmalades are so important. We know exactly what we're going to buy when something says jam on it or marmalade or jelly."

"If these regulations change, we'll end up with something much more like the French and German product - and worse still the Americans - where they have things a bit like a fruit butter or a fruit spread."