Looting for 'public health'

There is a budget on its way and the 'public health' vultures are circling.

 

"Campaigners" - i.e. ASH and some of their pals - are still calling for a levy on tobacco companies, partly because tobacco duty revenues of £10 billion a year are not enough for them and partly because the industry supposedly earns "absolutely obscene profits". According to the Guardian...

 

Reeves should also legislate to introduce a recurring annual levy on the profits tobacco firms make, they say, which in the case of Imperial Tobacco is a £66.50 margin on every £100 of sales.

 

This is such obvious nonsense that I never bothered to look up what the actual profit margin is, but the excellent Tim Worstall has...

 

A recent set of accounts from Imperial Brands, which owns Imperial Tobacco. Now, the question is, can you see a 66% net profit in there? Can you see 66% of anything that could in fact be taxed away? 

The company's post-tax profits were £2.3 billion from £32.5 billion of revenue. Not too shabby (regulation has turned the industry into an oligopoly, after all), but hardly extraordinary.

Who is really profiteering from tobacco? Step forward, the government. While Imperial gets less than £2.5 billion for making the product, governments around the world are creaming off more than £15 billion.

Where does the 66% claim come from? It comes from this study published in 2015. The estimates are based on the "author’s calculation" but since the author is the economically illiterate prohibitionist clown Anna Gilmore, they are very wrong. 

Her estimates are based on UK sales whereas the figures above are global but that makes no difference to the overall picture. Indeed, tobacco duty is well above average in the UK so the government's share is even higher.

Meanwhile, the government expects to make £3.6 billion from gambling duty this year, but that isn't enough for Derek Webb's mates at the Social Market Foundation who have just released a report calling for Remote Gaming Duty to be doubled from 21% to 42% - because arbitrary and capricious tax hikes on one of Britain's few world-leading British industries are just what we need to attract inward investment.

Incidentally, some activist-academics have their concerns about a tax raid on gambling companies...

https://t.co/IyuOGONi0m

If this happens, would increased funding for treatment, prevention etc come from these generalised funds or would the levy still be on the table?

— Heather Wardle (@shwardle) October 12, 2024

Don't worry, Heather. I'm sure you'll get your money one way or the other.

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Twilight of the pubs

Am I alone in thinking that modern politicians do not much care for pubs? They are happy to be photographed pulling a pint during an election campaign and have no problem drinking subsidised pints in the House of Commons bars, but there is something about the spontaneity, earthiness and insobriety of the traditional British boozer that sits uneasily with their vision of a regimented society. If the political class are not deliberately trying to undermine the pub trade, they are doing a good job of doing it accidentally.

In the first six months of 2024, pubs were closing at the rate of fifty a month. The total number of pubs in Britain has fallen by 14 per cent since the start of the pandemic. Pubs find themselves in a vicious downward spiral. To compensate for having fewer customers, they have raise the price of a pint, but higher prices mean that even fewer people walk through the door and so prices rise again. Drinking in a pub has for centuries been a great leveller. Everyone could afford to do it. It has increasingly become a luxury leisure activity.

After the exodus of daytime drinkers following the 2007 smoking ban, many pubs cut costs by reducing their opening hours. With the triple whammy of higher energy costs, higher food prices and above-inflation hikes of the minimum wage, some of them have now reduced the number of days they trade and many are closing long before 11.20pm. A survey by industry analysts CGA recently found that third of operators have reduced their trading hours due to cost pressures in the last year.

 

Read the rest at the Telegraph.

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Child obesity stats

As you may know, I have a long-running obsession with the fact that Britain's child obesity stats are a complete fiction. This came up in Radio 4's More or Less today in which I featured. The hook was the silly story in The Times claiming that child obesity is in decline (thanks to the sugar tax, of course). This is not true (as I discussed on my Substack).

You can listen here or, better still, subscribe to the podcast.

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Who wins out of minimum pricing?

Last week saw the minimum price of alcohol in Scotland rise from 50p per unit to 65p per unit. Thanks to inflation, 65p today is the same as 50p in 2017, but it won’t feel like that to shoppers who have seen their incomes fall in real terms. 

Those who lobbied for the price hike employed two arguments. The first was that minimum pricing has been a tremendously effective public health policy that saved hundreds of lives and the Scottish government should “build on the success”. The second was that deaths from alcohol are at a fifteen year high in Scotland and that “a radical step change” is required to tackle this “public health emergency”. Fans of George Orwell will recognise this as doublethink, but it worked. Booze prices have now shot up. 

The question that is often asked about minimum pricing is “where does the money go?” It is not a tax so it doesn’t go to the government. Does it go to the retailer? Does it go to the manufacturer? Who is making money out of it?

The answer is that it depends, but there is no reason to assume that anyone is reaping big profits. 

Read the rest at The Critic.

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An ultra-processed experiment

An interesting new study was published last week about 'ultra-processed food' (UPFs). The researchers tried to recreate the typical Western (or at least American) diet using 'less-processed food' rather than UPFs. It turned out to be a lot of hassle for no benefit.

 

Selecting less-processed foods according to the Nova classification system does not guarantee a high-quality diet. In this study, we used the Nova classification system to design a Western diet with less processed foods to match the meals of a Western diet with more processed foods. Using less processed foods did not improve the nutritional value of the diet and resulted in projected greater costs and a shorter shelf life than the comparable menu with more-processed foods.

 

Cue Chris van Tulleken accusing all the authors of being in the pocket of Big Food in 3, 2, 1...

 

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The three card philanthropist

The recent decision by the British media to portray all gifts to parliamentarians as scandalous, even when they are declared in the proper way, has been a boon to journalists. Up against a deadline and need a story? Simply look up the Register of Member’s Financial Interests and click on the name of any MP. Bridget Phillipson? Taylor Swift tickets from the Football Association. Peter Kyle? Madonna tickets from Sky TV. If the MP’s political stance can be loosely connected to the donor’s interests, so much the better. No one would be surprised that Kemi Badenoch is opposed to having a football regulator, but tell them that she once accepted free tickets from the Premier League and it becomes a story.

The implication is that money buys influence and it cannot be denied that having a word in a politician’s ear — or at least having them think well of you — must be the intention of those who make the donations. The latest of these scoops comes from The Times who today revealed that “Labour received gifts worth £1m from betting firms”. Regular readers of Britain’s newspaper of record know that The Times takes a dim view of betting firms and is therefore appalled that the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, accepted tickets from Entain to see England play Denmark in 2021 and the transport secretary, Louise Haigh, watched Barnsley play Sheffield Wednesday on the same company’s shilling. Wes Streeting even had a dinner paid for him by Allwyn, the company that currently runs the (state-owned) National Lottery! Pass the smelling salts.

Rachel Reeves has done particularly well out of the gambling industry, having received “£20,000 in donations from wealthy gambling bosses to fund her private office”, but this is all chicken feed compared to the cash donations to the Labour Party of one man:

In total, the Labour Party has accepted £1.08 million from those who made their money in the gambling sector. Most of this came from the little-known casino entrepreneur Derek Webb, who donated £750,000 this year and £300,000 in 2023.

Webb, a former international poker player and table game designer, has thrown his financial weight behind gambling reform efforts, including legal support for Gambling with Lives, which represents families bereaved by suicide, the successful campaign to curb fixed-odds betting terminals and Clean Up Gambling, a campaign group.

Webb is also the founder of the Campaign for Fairer Gambling, Stop the FOBTs [fixed-odds betting terminals] and the Coalition to End Gambling Ads. He bankrolls the All Party Parliamentary Group on Gambling Related Harm and the “informal” pressure group Peers for Gambling Reform, as well as commissioning numerous reports from economic consultancy firms (one of which I discussed last month). I suspect that he will not be pleased to be grouped in with “betting firms” in The Times article (his company Prime Table Games is no longer operational and I understand that he is no longer actively involved in the sector), but it is nevertheless useful to know that most of the money swishing around in this policy comes from people who want more regulation, not less.

 

Read the rest at The Critic.

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The Lucy Letby case

I've been writing a bit about the Lucy Letby case recently. Some people think she's innocent. One of those people is Peter Hitchens, with whom I had a debate recently. You can watch it below.

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