Health Incentives Scheme

Debate between Richard Fuller and Maggie Throup

Friday 22nd October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Maggie Throup]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. We cannot do this with one action alone. To me, it is very much cross-departmental. Whether it is through planning legislation or encouraging people to be more active, there are lots of different ways we can tackle obesity and the health disparities it brings with it.

[Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I am sorry to strike a discordant note, but with regard to the Minister’s justification for this measure may I remind her that it is not the role of life to support the NHS; it is the role of the NHS to support life? Many despair of an obsessive cult within the Department of Health and Social Care for nudging. Can the Minister advise me on how this proposal is different from a social credit system that is adopted in other countries?

[Maggie Throup]

We want to have a whole range of measures to tackle obesity. The important thing is that we know how much obesity costs the NHS—£6 billion is a huge amount. That money could provide for a lot of more operations. There are a lot of other ways to stop people becoming obese, or to help them to lose weight and become more active. That is better for the NHS and saves money for the NHS, but it also helps people’s lives as well.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Richard Fuller and Maggie Throup

Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Richard Fuller]

My hon. Friend, the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, speaks with enormous sense and knowledge. He is, of course, absolutely right. It is much better to engage the industry than arbitrarily to impose a levy, especially one with such great uncertainty. The OBR states:

“The tax will operate with a specific revenue target of £500 million for the second year of implementation”.

It goes on—here is some real Budget gobbledegook—to say:

“From a pre-behavioural yield of over £900 million, the behavioural responses lower the yield to around £500 million a year. As a new tax likely to prompt a large behavioural response, these estimates are clearly subject to significant uncertainty.”

Well, there we have it—not a clue at all.

[Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)]

Surely the two-year lead-in for the sugar levy is the right approach because that tells the manufacturers to reformulate. Surely the future and health of our children are more important than anything else.

[Richard Fuller]

The health of our children is, of course, extremely important, but, as I said, the sector is already innovating. There have been remarkable reductions in the sugar content of soft drinks compared with what has happened in other sectors, in which there has been no change in the amount of sugar that people consume. There are question marks over whether the levy will have the impact on health it is supposed to achieve. In Mexico, for example, where a sugar tax was recently introduced, the calorie reduction amounted to six calories a day. This regressive measure goes much against the principles that the Chancellor himself rightly outlined as the overarching ethos of the Budget.