The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) has published what it calls “the most ambitious blueprint for the nation’s health since Beveridge”. I wouldn’t get too excited. Their previous contributions to the debate about the nation’s health include demanding plain packaging for crisps and sweets. Surprisingly, that doesn’t get a mention this time around but the report does include 20 recommendations, many of which don’t have much to do with health but are things that left-wing think tanks always want, including “a full restart of Sure Start”, a legal “Right to Disconnect” at work, abolition of the two child benefit cap, more spending on research, more work for quangos, even more “free” school meals, etc.
But the IPPR also wants a “healthy industrial strategy” based on the “polluter pays principle”. Their thinking is rooted in two absurd beliefs that have become the orthodoxy in ‘public health’ through repetition. The first is that if you drink yourself to death, it has nothing to do with you and is instead the fault of Heineken or the French wine industry or some other commercial entity. The second is that the greatest public health win of the last ten years was Lucozade putting more artificial sweeteners in their drinks. Despite the sugar tax having no effect on childhood obesity, the IPPR reckons it was “among the most successful government policies of the last decade” (to be fair, it hasn’t been a great decade for government policies) and wants it to be “expanded’, not just to food and drink but to a bunch of products and services that are already heavily taxed.
Read the rest at The Critic.
Meanwhile, EU countries have got their own problems...
European Union countries should consider extending smoking bans to cover children’s play areas, outdoor pools, amusement parks, and terraces, the European Commission will recommend Tuesday, according to a document obtained by POLITICO.
The EU executive will also recommend stricter rules on e-cigarettes “whether containing nicotine or nicotine-free” as it looks to tackle the “uptake and appeal” of vapes among children and young people.
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