July 05, 2019

Andrew Campbell 

Boris Johnson, the UK Conservative leadership contender and near-certain next prime minister, declared to freeze “sin taxes” on sugary drinks and aroused a lot of criticism. Johnson chose to favor sugar on the same day as Cancer Research UK made sure obesity did more harm to health than cigarettes. However, the charity's chief executive Michelle Mitchell agreed to sugar tax and thought the government played an important role to solve the obesity problems of the country.

A UK’s former public health minister, Steve Brine, regarded the sugary drinks levy as a "remarkably successful piece of policy-making" and accused Mr. Johnson of being a “transparent dog” whistling highly. He argued that it was the manufacturers to pay for sugar tax, not lower earners. He insisted on levying sugar tax and threatened to see Johnson in the House of Commons if the parliament made any changes to the sugar tax.

What confused people was that Johnson’s announcement happened to be the opposite of his main supporter, the health secretary Matt Hancock, who was going to publish a green paper called Advancing our Health – Prevention in the 2020s several days later. It planned to extend the sugar tax to milkshakes and ban the sale of energy drinks to under-16s, hoping to improve public health.

Undoubtedly, Johnson’s rival for Leader of the Conservative Party in the 2019 leadership contest, Jeremy Hunt, challenged Johnson’s consistency with Matt Hancock. As the foreign secretary and the previous longest-serving health secretary in NHS (National Health Service) history, Mr. Hunt mentioned that there was “an obesity epidemic” in England whose number of obese young people was the second highest in Europe. He was also worried how obese young people started their happy life and would like to see Johnson’s detailed policy or plan, not just being populist to cut taxes.

In his defense, Johnson said that obesity is a big problem to deal with, but it should be solved according to some evidence. He said he would do some review before making any decision about the sugar tax, wondering if sin taxes could “actually reduce consumption” and do good to obese people.

Photo:Webshot.