Liz Truss has run into difficulties in her desire to scrap the sugar tax amid a growing backlash against the plan, which health experts have said is “dangerous” and “nonsensical”.
Whitehall sources say there is “a question mark” over how the prime minister can overcome a number of legal and parliamentary procedural obstacles to abandoning the soft drinks industry levy.
It is unclear what mechanism Truss could use to repeal the sugar tax, which was introduced in 2018 as a result of its inclusion in the Finance Act 2017.
She is an ardent critic of state intervention to promote healthier lifestyles and has previously said that “taxes on treats hit those on the lowest incomes” and that the government should not tell people what to eat.
Officials have made Truss and Thérèse Coffey, the health secretary, aware of the challenges involved in ditching the levy, which won wide support among MPs.
The Guardian revealed last week that the government was undertaking an unpublicised review of obesity strategy in England that was expected to lead to policies such as bans on junk food adverts on TV before 9pm and “buy one get one free” offers being jettisoned.
Senior doctors and health campaigners voiced deep unease about the plan. Senior officials in the government’s Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID), in effect the public health section of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), are appalled at the planned bonfire of restrictions.
There is consternation that Truss is ready to ditch the sugar tax. It raises £300m a year for the Treasury and has led to a cut of up to 30% in the sugar content of many soft drinks, which have been linked to tooth decay, obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
In the year after the levy came into force it led to a 10% fall in the amount of sugar households consumed through soft drinks, according to Medical Research Council (MRC)-funded research last year. The authors described it as a “win-win” for public health and for soft drinks manufacturers, most of which have adjusted the composition of their products to avoid being hit with the SDIL for including too much sugar.
“There are few policies that are good for business, good for health and good for government. The soft drinks industry levy is one of them,” said Katherine Jenner, the director of the Obesity Health Alliance, a grouping of 50 health charities and medical organisations.
The £300m it generates has paid for breakfast programmes, sport and equipment to promote physical activity in schools, especially in poor areas. Jenner said: “Removing the levy would mean those on lower incomes would have to actually pay more to access programmes like this, in a cost of living crisis. It is nonsensical.”
The British Association for Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine (BANT) warned ministers that “it is dangerous territory to move from having an inadequate strategy to no strategy at all”.
It said the plan to abandon the anti-obesity regime showed that “public health is being compromised to placate industry interests, choosing the easiest, least responsible option rather than addressing the underlying drivers of hunger and poverty being experienced up and down the country.”
Satu Jackson, its chief executive, said obesity already cost the UK an estimated £58bn a year in NHS costs and lost productivity.
He added: “Junk food does nothing to ameliorate hunger in households struggling to put food on the table. In fact, research shows that ultra-processed foods impair appetite control and make people feel hungrier, exacerbating the problem, and ultimately driving people to spend more money they don’t have on food or, worse still, go without.”
Dr Dolly Theis, an expert in obesity policy in the MRC’s epidemiology unit and centre for diet and activity research at Cambridge University, said axing the sugar tax risked leaving the NHS to treat even more patients with conditions linked to poor diet.
“Independent evaluations have shown that the SDIL has not only improved people’s health, provided more healthy product options for consumers and helped fund food provision programmes for the most deprived children, but it has also helped businesses too by resulting in an increase in the sale of healthier products,” she said.
“If the government is serious about helping people at a time when healthy food is out of reach for so many families and diet related ill-health is crippling the NHS, then it would not go through with its rumoured plans.”
The DHSC was approached for a response. It has described the Treasury-ordered obesity review as “an internal summary of obesity policy”. Ministers in the department believe it is right to monitor the impact of restrictions on the promotion of foods high in fat, salt and sugar because of families’ difficulties in coping with soaring inflation.
