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.

Share

Tweet

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...

 

Share

Tweet

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.

Share

Tweet

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.

Share

Tweet

Christopher Snowdon on the Drinks Insider podcast

I was interviewed for the latest episode of the Drinks Insider podcast talking about the anti-alcohol lobby. You can listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Share

Tweet

A glimmer of hope for British healthcare

I've written for the Express about how public opinion is slowly changing with regards the NHS:

 

The NHS model is something of an outlier in not only paying for everyone’s healthcare but in owning the infrastructure, employing all the medics and being run by the government. In mainland Europe, it is more normal for people to take out health insurance with a provider of their choice and for hospitals to be running privately.

Governments ensure that everybody is covered, either by paying for everyone’s health insurance or by paying for those who cannot afford it, but none of them has an enormous state-run leviathan like the NHS. This introduces an element of choice and competition that raises standards and promotes efficiency.

Moreover, the NHS is not under-funded by any reasonable definition. According to the latest data, only five OECD countries spend more on healthcare as a percentage of GDP than the UK. NHS spending was ring-fenced in the ‘austerity’ years and there were never any cuts to its budget.

On the contrary, its budget has rocketed since 2018. The good news is that public opinion has started to change. As recently as May 2021, a YouGov survey found that 39 percent of British adults believed that the NHS provided better healthcare than other European countries while only 10 percent thought the opposite.

When the same survey was carried out last month, 33 percent said that European systems deliver better healthcare than the NHS and only 17 percent thought the NHS was superior (the rest said that they either didn’t know or that both systems delivered similar results).

Perhaps more surprisingly, when another poll published this month asked people what the biggest problem with NHS funding is, only 33 percent said it was that "the NHS does not receive enough funding" whereas 55 percent said that "the funding the NHS does receive is not spent as effectively as it should be".

 

Do read it all.

 

And read Kristian Niemietz's new report in which he shows how we can move the NHS towards a social insurance system and end the misery.

Share

Tweet

The dark arts of Chris Whitty

There was a period during the pandemic in 2020 when the pubs were open but you could only go to one if you sat on your own and had a meal. You were allowed to buy an alcoholic drink but once you had finished your meal you could not buy another one. There was also a 10 p.m. curfew when the pub had to close and everyone had to go straight home.

Whether this did much to stop the spread of Covid is debatable (there were reports of a lot of house parties starting just after 10 p.m.), but it allowed the ‘public health’ establishment to turn pubs into what it thought they should always have been: functional, sterile restaurants where fun is discouraged if not outright illegal. At the top of that establishment sits the Chief Medical Officer, Professor Sir Chris Whitty. Since the pandemic, Whitty has been busy lobbying successive prime ministers for a series of fanatical nanny state measures. He persuaded Rishi Sunak to announce the gradual prohibition of all tobacco sales and, according to the Times, has been ‘leading the push for an outdoor smoking ban’.

An outdoor ban would be a shattering blow for the pub trade, but Whitty is not done yet. According to the Telegraph, the public health minister Andrew Gwynne is considering ‘tightening up the hours of operation’ of pubs and bars. 10 p.m. curfew anyone?

Once again we see the hand of Chris Whitty at work. Speaking at a fringe meeting at the Labour conference, Gwynne explained that Whitty had met him on his first day in the job and shown him a series of slides (of course!). The first slide showed that 40 per cent of NHS spending is on preventable health conditions and that this is projected to rise to 60 per cent in the next 15 years. For Gwynne, the conclusion was obvious. Never mind reforming the NHS, we must reform the public.

Read the rest at the Spectator.

Share

Tweet