Sugary Drinks Tax

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Monday 30th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) for securing this debate. I strongly identify with her comments about being brought up in the north and the change we have seen in children’s diets. When I was growing up in Oldham, fizzy drinks were a rarity for our family—the pop van did not come to our house. If we were thirsty, my mother’s response was always, “There’s plenty of corporation pop,” corporation pop being the stuff that comes out of the taps. That was normal in my family, and many people of a certain age will be able to relate to that, but our children’s diets have really changed. While I am talking about my mum, it is her 85th birthday tomorrow. She is a living testament to the benefits of a strict diet and lots of corporation pop, and I want to pay tribute to her.

I thank the Select Committee on Health for its report on childhood obesity. I was briefly a member of the Health Committee and enjoyed my time on it; I wish that I could have stayed there. I am looking forward to reading the report properly, and I applaud the Committee for its brave and bold moves.

I respect the opinions of several health bodies that support a sugar tax. I am far more persuaded by the views of the British Medical Association, Diabetes UK and the British Heart Foundation than those of the Food and Drink Federation. There has been some debate as to whether health research has been influenced by such bodies. I am unaware that any money has changed hands, but I am sure that, ethically, health researchers must declare it if they have worked in partnership with charities.

The BMA totally approves of the Government imposing a tax on sugary drinks, specifically to reduce the amount of drinks that people consume. It produced a report called “Food for thought: promoting healthy diets among children and young people”, which justifies the tax, noting that

“the strongest evidence of effectiveness of taxation approaches is for sugar-sweetened beverages; that these products are typically high in calories and low in essential vitamins and minerals (often referred to as ‘empty calories’); that the intake of added sugars by many children and adults in the UK far exceeds recommended levels; and that a high intake of added sugars is a risk factor for a range of health conditions.”

That neatly sums up the argument for considering a sugary drinks tax. As the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) pointed out, most manufacturers will produce a low-sugar alternative to their high-sugar drinks, which shows that they are aware of the problem. Most hon. Members have had access to the same data, so I will not repeat the things that everyone else has said.

The British Heart Foundation fully recognises that we cannot reduce obesity simply through a sugar tax—a point that many Members made—and says:

“a sugar tax alone will not solve the problem of obesity. It needs to be combined with other measures”.

I support that. The measures that it suggests include

“a reduction in the amount of sugar added to the foods”

that we buy. That sugar is often hidden. As other hon. Members have suggested, we need to look at convenience foods, because they contain an awful lot of hidden sugar. Someone’s first thought when choosing a savoury dish might not be that it is laced with sugar, but they often are, so we need to be careful when buying convenience and microwaveable food. The BHF also wants to restrict

“the marketing of unhealthy food and drink products to children and young people both online and on TV.”

Tracy Parker, a BHF heart health dietician, says:

“Cutting down on sugary drinks and replacing them with sugar-free options is a simple swap”.

That is why I am supporting the e-petition. It is a simple thing that we can do. We would end up not collecting any tax at all if everyone switched to a low-sugar alternative, and I believe that that, rather than penalising poor families through their food bills, is the tax’s intention.

We have already heard the statistic that poor diets cause 70,000 premature deaths each year, but it is worth bearing that in mind when discussing our nation’s health. Reference has been made to the sugary drinks tax introduced in Mexico, which has been shown to have cut consumption. Following the introduction of the tax on sugar-sweetened drinks, purchases were reduced by 6% in 2014. We need to be aware of the evidence showing that a tax will actually reduce the purchases of sugary drinks.

Diabetes UK also supports a sugar tax for the avoidance of type 2 diabetes, while stating that it needs to be part of a larger package of interventions, including marketing restrictions on unhealthy food, restricting advertising to children, supporting clear labelling and, interestingly, investing more heavily in active travel by dedicating a budget to walking and cycling nationally. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) is no longer present, but I am unsure whether that proposal includes electric bikes. I imagine that the intention is that people put in a little more physical effort—but hey, we have to start somewhere.

Today’s e-petition was initiated by Jamie Oliver, and many people have paid tribute to his activities in raising awareness of the campaign, which has really caught people’s attention. Many Members mentioned the teaspoons-of-sugar labelling system, which has drawn particular attention and which everyone can understand. When someone picks up a bottle and reads, “This half-litre bottle of Coke contains 13 teaspoons of sugar,” they can relate more to that than to grams per millilitre. Jamie Oliver has recommended that that labelling system be taken up, and we should really consider it as a simple way of getting people to visualise what they are about to drink or give their children.

Many hon. Members mentioned tooth decay. Unfortunately, tooth decay caused by sugar is the most common reason why children aged five to nine are admitted to hospital. We really need to do something about that. If we do not encourage good dental hygiene in our children’s younger years, we are just storing up a load of problems for their teenage and adult years.

I want to wind up by saying that I recently saw a film called “That Sugar Film”, which explores the problem of hidden sugars in our food. Among other things, the film highlighted a drink that I had previously never heard of called Mountain Dew, a half-litre bottle of which contains an astounding 17 teaspoons of sugar. The film referred to a condition in America known as “Mountain Dew teeth” and showed a young man of about 20 whose teeth were completely rotten as a result of his Mountain Dew habit. Sadly, now that I am aware of the drink and its lurid green bottle, I have actually seen it for sale in my local supermarkets. We really should be imposing some kind of tax on these high-sugar drinks to hopefully make them far less desirable and affordable. We need a clear, effective, easy-to-understand labelling system, and the teaspoons-of-sugar measurement is the right way to go. As many Members have said, there is no silver bullet for reducing childhood obesity, but the sugar tax would be a start, and I heartily recommend it.