PM Liz Truss is facing a backlash over her plan to ditch the sugar tax amid a growing backlash against the proposed move, which health experts have told The Guardian is both “dangerous” and “nonsensical”.
As part of her campaign to be named UK prime minister, Liz Truss said in August that she would also scrap plans to restrict multi-buy deals on food and drink high in fat, salt, or sugar (HFSS) and would not impose any new levies on unhealthy food.
Currently, Britain applies an additional ‘sugar tax’ to certain soft drinks. It also recently postponed the upcoming HFSS rules – which will put an end to multibuy promotions such as ‘buy one get one free’ on food and drink high in fat, salt or sugar – until October next year, citing concerns about the cost-of-living crisis.
It has since been reported that Truss is actively preparing to scrap the soft drink sugar tax and ditch other anti-obesity measures – such as the upcoming HFSS legislation – to ease the pressures of the cost-of-living crisis for households and families across the country.
Last week, The Times revealed that British finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng ordered health officials to review both the existing and impending obesity control measures, a move that is likely to see them being cancelled or removed.
However, Whitehall sources have now said that “a question mark” remains over how Truss will scrap the sugar tax while the backlash against her plan continues to grow.
There are a number of legal and parliamentary procedural obstacles to abandoning the soft drinks industry levy, which – while unpopular with some – raises £300m a year for the Treasury and has resulted in many soft drinks companies cutting their sugar content by as much as 30%.
“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,” Obesity Health Alliance director Katherine Jenner told The Guardian.
The British Association for Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine (BANT) said that removing the sugar tax would be “dangerous territory” as it would mean moving from “having an inadequate strategy to no strategy at all”.
The association estimates that obesity costs the UK around £58bn a year in NHS costs and lost productivity.
Truss is a long-time critic of state intervention to promote healthier lifestyles, advocating that the government should not tell people what to eat. She has previously said that “taxes on treats hit those on the lowest incomes”.
